WHAT LIVES BENEATH THE VEIL
Book One: The Unblooded Lamb
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CONTENT WARNING: This series contains explicit sexual violence, human sacrifice, psychological torture, murder of innocent characters (including children and family members), ritualistic killing, and extreme horror. No character is safe. Read at your own risk.
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Chapter Fifteen: The Tenth Seal
Year 8 – Seven Months After the Ninth Sacrifice
The castle had stopped pretending.
Not openly. Not in a way that could be acknowledged or discussed. But the pretense was gone. The servants no longer smiled when the princess passed. The guards no longer met her eyes. The nobles no longer invited her to their gatherings.
They did not know what she was.
But they knew they were afraid.
And fear, Liora had learned, was its own kind of truth.
She walked through the corridors with her white dress and her soft smile, and people parted before her like water before a stone. Not out of respect. Out of instinct. The same instinct that made animals flee before an earthquake.
They sense it, she thought. Not what. Not why. But something.
Something wrong.
Something dangerous.
Something that should not be.
She found it amusing.
They could not stop her. They could not even name her. They could only step aside and lower their eyes and pray that she would pass them by.
And she did.
For now.
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Liora – The Tenth Victim
She had waited a month for this.
Not because she needed to—the hunger was constant now, a low thrum beneath her skin that never faded. But because the tenth sacrifice was special. The old texts had made that clear.
The tenth sacrifice seals the bond. It is the point of no return. After ten, the dark will be part of you forever. There is no going back. There is no redemption. There is only forward.
Choose the tenth carefully.
It will be the first soul that truly belongs to you.
Not borrowed. Not consumed. Bound.
Bound to you for eternity.
Bound to serve you in death as it could not in life.
Liora had thought about this for weeks.
A servant? Too common. A traveler? Too forgettable. A noble? Too risky.
She needed someone significant. Someone whose death would mean something. Someone whose soul would be worth binding.
She chose a knight.
Not one of the castle guards—they were common soldiers, barely a step above servants. A true knight. One of the king's own men. Someone with rank and reputation and a name that people knew.
His name was Sir Aldous.
He was forty years old, broad-shouldered, gray-bearded. He had fought in a dozen battles. He had killed more men than she had. He was strong, experienced, dangerous.
He was perfect.
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The Approach
She found him in the training yard, practicing with a sword.
The other knights had left for the day. The sun was low. The shadows were long. He was alone.
She approached him slowly, her white dress catching the evening light.
"Sir Aldous."
He turned. His eyes narrowed.
"Princess. You shouldn't be here. The training yard is no place for a child."
"I know. But I need your help."
He lowered his sword.
"What kind of help?"
"There's something in the old cellar," she said, widening her eyes. "Something that scares me. I've heard noises at night. Scratching. Whispers."
Aldous frowned.
"The old cellar? No one goes down there. It's locked."
"I have a key," she said. "I found it. I know I shouldn't have kept it, but I was curious. And now I'm scared."
She let her lower lip tremble.
"Please. You're the bravest knight in the castle. I don't know who else to ask."
Aldous looked at her for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
"All right, Princess. Show me."
Liora smiled.
Thank you, she thought.
You're so kind.
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Aldous – The Cellar
The door was old. Iron. Locked.
The princess produced a key.
"It's down there," she said. "I heard it scratching. I think it's trapped."
Aldous drew his sword.
"Stay behind me, Princess."
He opened the door.
He walked down the steps.
She did not stay behind him.
She closed the door.
The lock clicked.
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Aldous – The Realization
He heard the lock turn.
He turned around. The door was closed. The princess was not behind him.
"Princess?"
Silence.
"PRINCESS!"
He ran up the steps. Pounded on the door. The wood did not break. The iron did not bend.
"OPEN THE DOOR!"
Silence.
He stood in the darkness, his sword raised, his heart pounding.
Why? he thought. Why would a child do this?
He did not understand.
He would never understand.
The darkness pressed against him.
The cold seeped into his bones.
And the princess did not open the door.
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Aldous – The Fight
He did not break.
Not like the others.
He was a knight. He had been trained for this. Not for dark cellars and betrayed trust, but for combat. For killing. For surviving against impossible odds.
He found the stairs in the darkness. He climbed them. He threw his shoulder against the door.
The wood cracked.
He threw himself against it again.
The wood splintered.
One more, he thought. One more and I'm out.
He drew back for another charge.
And then he heard it.
A whisper.
Not from the door.
From behind him.
"Sir Aldous."
He turned.
The cellar was empty.
But something was there.
Something in the shadows.
Something that had not been there before.
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Liora – The Tenth Ritual
She had not expected him to fight.
The others had given up. They had wept and begged and waited for death. But Aldous had attacked. He had tried to break the door. He had almost succeeded.
Interesting, she thought.
He's stronger than the others.
His soul will be worth more.
She descended the stairs.
Aldous was standing in the center of the cellar, his sword raised, his eyes scanning the darkness.
"Show yourself," he growled.
Liora stepped into the light of her lantern.
"Hello, Sir Aldous."
His eyes widened.
"You. You did this."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I need your soul."
She raised her hand.
The shadows answered.
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The Fight
Aldous was fast.
Faster than she had expected.
He lunged at her with his sword, and the shadows screamed. They wrapped around his blade, his arm, his throat. He stumbled. He fell. He tried to rise.
The shadows held him down.
"WHAT ARE YOU?" he roared.
Liora knelt beside him.
She opened her book.
"I am what comes next," she said. "I am the end of heroes. I am the beginning of darkness."
She placed her hand on his chest.
"Thank you for your soul."
He opened his mouth to scream.
She was faster.
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The Power – Ten
The fire in her veins became an inferno.
Ten sacrifices. Ten souls. Ten streams of darkness flowing into her, merging with her blood, becoming her.
She raised her hands.
The shadows exploded from her body.
They filled the cellar. They climbed the walls. They covered the ceiling. They pulsed with hunger, with power, with the terrible joy of finally being free.
Ten, they whispered. Ten and the bond is sealed.
You are ours now.
We are yours.
Forever.
Liora opened her eyes.
They were not the color of weak tea anymore.
They were black.
Pure, endless, consuming black.
She looked at her hands.
The shadows clung to her fingers like gloves.
This is what I am now, she thought.
This is what I will always be.
She smiled.
The shadows smiled with her.
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The Return
She walked back to the castle as the sun rose.
Her dress was white. Her hair was braided. Her face was soft and sweet and completely ordinary.
But her eyes—
Her eyes were wrong.
She knew it. She could feel it. The darkness was there, always there, lurking behind her irises like a predator behind a veil.
She would need to hide it.
The old texts had instructions for that.
The eyes are the windows to the soul. When the dark takes root, the eyes change. They become mirrors of the void.
To hide this, one must learn to wear a second mask. Not over the face. Over the eyes.
Focus on the memory of light. On the image of innocence. On the reflection of the girl you were before the dark.
Hold that image in your mind.
Project it through your eyes.
And the world will see what you want them to see.
Liora practiced as she walked.
She thought of sunlight. Of flowers. Of the way her mother used to smile at her, before the cold grew between them.
She held those images in her mind.
She pushed them into her eyes.
When she reached the castle gates, the guards nodded at her.
They did not flinch.
They did not stare.
They saw a princess. A child. A girl in a white dress.
They did not see the darkness.
It worked, she thought.
The mask still holds.
She smiled.
The guards smiled back.
They had no idea what they were smiling at.
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Finn – The Morning
Finn saw her return.
He was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes, when she walked past the window. Her dress was white. Her hair was braided. Her face was soft and sweet and completely ordinary.
But something was different.
Something he couldn't name.
She moved differently now. More smoothly. More deliberately. Like a predator who had finally stopped pretending to be prey.
She killed again, he thought.
Last night.
Someone important.
He looked at her eyes.
They were the same as always. Weak tea. Soft. Innocent.
But for a moment—just a moment—he saw something else.
A flicker of black.
Then it was gone.
He looked away.
He did not want to see.
He peeled his potatoes and kept his mouth shut and prayed that she would never look at him the way she had looked at the others.
But he knew she would.
Eventually.
They all did.
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Aldric – The Collapse
Aldric saw her too.
He was standing in the courtyard, staring at nothing, when she walked past. His eyes were hollow. His face was gray. He had not eaten in days.
She stopped.
"Aldric."
He flinched.
"Princess."
She tilted her head. Smiled.
"You look unwell."
"I'm fine."
"Are you? You've lost weight. The other pages are worried about you."
Liar, he thought. The other pages avoid me. Just like everyone else.
"I said I'm fine."
She studied him for a long moment.
Then she nodded.
"If you need anything—anything at all—you know where to find me."
She walked away.
Aldric watched her go.
His hands were shaking.
His heart was pounding.
She knows, he thought. She knows that I know.
She's waiting.
Waiting for me to break.
Waiting for me to give her a reason.
He closed his eyes.
He wanted to die.
But he was too afraid to do it himself.
So he waited.
Just like she wanted.
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Liora – The Evening
She sat in her chamber, reading by candlelight.
The old texts were clear now. Every word. Every meaning. Every secret.
Ten sacrifices seal the bond. Twenty strengthen it. Fifty make you immortal.
One hundred make you a god.
She closed the book.
Ninety more, she thought.
Ninety more until the curse.
Ninety more until forever.
She looked at her reflection in the window.
The girl who looked back was not a girl.
Not anymore.
She was something else.
Something more.
Something that the world had never seen before.
Ninety more, she thought.
And then—
Then the real work begins.
She smiled.
The darkness smiled with her.
And somewhere in the depths of the castle, in a cellar that no one visited and no one remembered, ten souls whispered her name.
Liora.
Liora.
Liora.
She heard them.
She always heard them.
They were hers now.
Forever.
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End of Chapter Fifteen