The chamber seemed to breathe with the presence of death.
Hadrain's boots echoed against the cold stone floor as he approached the box—a macabre coffin carved from the bones of ancient dragons, laced with rusted nails and cursed sigils. Abigail's blood had soaked into the wood, turning it a deep, disgusting black. The scent of rot thickened as he stepped closer, coiling around his nostrils like smoke from a burning corpse.
Abigail looked up at him.
What remained of her face was hardly human—melted flesh hanging in ribbons, one eye bulging grotesquely from its socket, her lips torn and trembling from weeks of gnawing on her own flesh to stave off madness. Her jaw had twisted out of place from screaming for too long.
But when she saw him, true fear bloomed in her ruined face.
Hadrain smiled.
It wasn't a smile of joy. It was the slow, deliberate curve of a predator who had waited patiently to make his prey suffer.
He knelt beside the box, brushing back a strand of blood-matted hair from her temple with a clawed finger, as gently as a lover might.
Then he whispered, "Did you think you'd die quietly?"
Abigail whimpered.
The sound was soft. Fragile.
The last shred of resistance leaking from her throat like blood from a slit vein.
He rose again and rolled his sleeves.
The walls themselves trembled as he reached into the air and summoned the Red Grimoire—a cursed tome bound in living skin, stitched together from the mouths of dying angels. It pulsed in his hand, moaning, as if the souls within could sense what was about to unfold.
Hadrain licked his lips.
"Let's begin."
He slammed the book onto a nearby obsidian pedestal and muttered an incantation in a tongue long buried in the pits of the Infernal Kingdom. Black tendrils shot out from the floor, wrapping around Abigail's wrists and ankles, ripping her from the box with a violent crack. The nails screamed as they tore free from her bones. Flesh peeled away in long, wet strips. Blood gushed from the wounds, arterial and savage.
She howled—a sound so deep and unnatural it silenced even the restless spirits haunting the estate.
Hadrain dragged her into the center of the room. The air grew colder. The torches lining the walls flared with blue fire.
With a flick of his claw, he split open her belly.
Just one quick slice—but it was enough.
Her intestines slithered from the gash like bloated worms, coiling on the stone floor. She choked on her own vomit, eyes wide in horror as Hadrain knelt, scooping a length of her intestine in his palm.
"I wonder," he said thoughtfully, "how many meters of this are inside you. Shall we find out?"
And then he pulled.
The scream that tore from her lips was inhuman. Her spine arched, blood geysering from her open stomach as foot after foot of intestine came spilling out. He tugged it like a magician pulling silk scarves from a hat, except this performance was bathed in gore.
When she fainted, he snapped his fingers.
A jolt of electric agony surged through her nerves, reawakening her. He wanted her awake for this.
She trembled violently, her voice nothing but a garbled hiss.
He took the bloodied coil of intestine and draped it around her neck like a royal necklace.
"You always wanted to be noble," he whispered, "now you wear your own filth like a queen."
He walked behind her and jammed two blackened iron hooks through her shoulder blades, lifting her until her toes barely scraped the floor. Blood rained in thick splashes beneath her. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.
He picked up a branding iron, the end carved with the sigil of the Black Dragon cult—the very cult that once revered her.
With no hesitation, he pressed it against her chest.
The sizzling was immediate. Her skin burst with blisters, smoke rising as the sigil burned itself into her flesh. The scent of charred meat filled the chamber. She screamed again, her voice cracking, raw cords snapping in her throat.
"I'm only getting started," Hadrain said coldly.
He reached into a chest and pulled out a jar.
Inside were leeches—not ordinary ones. These were blood wraiths. Tiny, fanged things that had been cursed to live in agony, feeding on pain and memories.
He poured them onto her wounds.
They slithered into her flesh like eager maggots, burrowing into her nerves, chewing, biting, devouring. She convulsed, veins darkening, eyes rolling back.
But still—he kept her alive.
He wouldn't let her slip away. Not yet.
He raised a claw and whispered a death incantation—but stopped just before it completed. A cruel glint shone in his eyes.
"I want you to feel every limb rot," he said. "Every inch of your soul peel away. You stole lives. You corrupted innocence. You tried to kill my son. Now, you'll beg for the Abyss to take you."
He grabbed her tongue.
Her eyes widened.
He reached into the Red Grimoire, whispered another phrase.
A small dagger formed in his hand—black steel, humming with necrotic energy.
Then, without hesitation, he sliced her tongue clean off.
Blood spurted violently from her mouth as she tried to scream, but only gurgled.
He stuffed the severed muscle back into her mouth and sewed her lips shut with a cursed thread—soaked in witch ash and dragon bile. She choked on her own blood, barely able to breathe, her body jerking uncontrollably.
And then—
A second figure entered the chamber.
Catherine.
She watched silently as Hadrain stood over the bleeding ruin that was once Abigail.
He turned to her, his hands soaked red, his expression stone.
"She's ready for the final rite."
Catherine stepped forward, her heels echoing sharply.
She raised a vial of liquid—dragon soulfire—a rare, forbidden potion that burned not the body, but the soul.
Abigail's eyes widened, wild and pleading now, shaking her head frantically.
Catherine knelt.
"You hurt my children," she said, her voice devoid of pity. "You broke into my home. You tore at my family. And now…"
She poured the soulfire onto Abigail's chest.
The effect was instant.
Abigail's body convulsed, her skin cracking like dry earth, glowing from within. Screams burst through her stitched lips, muffled and pathetic. Her soul ignited, burning with agonizing slowness. Not even death would accept her now.
As her body melted, her eyes met Hadrain's one last time.
And then—silence.
The corpse slumped forward, twitching once. The hooks snapped. Her body collapsed into a smoking pile of blood, ashes, and twitching organs.
Hadrain exhaled.
"It's done."
Catherine nodded.
But both of them knew…
The war had just begun.