[ The kingdom beyond the borders of the Old World- Selene’s people ]
" Ravenna, wait... my mother... I need to see her! I really need to just see her once... I swear I will... "
But she did not get to finish the sentence.The mont Selene took her first step across the threshold of the first fortress...her boots had barely skimd the obsidian floor...when...
CLANG!!!
The sound rattled from both sides.
A dozen tallic chains, thick and coiled like sleeping reptilian sentinels, shot out from the shadows.
They slithered mid air, hissing,like ancient serpent kings, their tal bristling with dark runes that shimred red as they struck.
Before Selene could scream, they hit her.
One lashed around her ankle, another snapped around her wrist. She staggered back but more ca...faster...thicker...winding around her arms, waist, legs, neck.
"Wh...What...?!" she gasped, struggling as the iron burned her skin on contact.
At first, the chains only burned.
But then, they began to move with a mind of their own.
Slithering like hungry serpents, they crept beneath the tattered folds of Selene’s robe, curling around her thighs, hips, and spine...cold tal against hot, trembling skin. One slid upward, coiling around her ribs like a jealous lover, and another brushed across the curve of her collarbone, coiling gently around her throat...to choke enough, not to hurt but to stimulate pain... A paradox of twisted pleasure.
Selene gasped.
With a sinister grace, the chains pulled...slowly, deliberately...peeling the fabric away from her body inch by inch, like a veil being drawn back before a sacrificial altar.
Her clothes unraveled in silence, shredded and falling like wilted petals onto the floor of mist.
Her bare skin prickled in the cold, and yet the chains only grew warr...even more alive...breathing almost. They moved through her hair now, loosening the dark strands until they poured over her shoulders, cascading down her chest. With precision, they wrapped the silken locks around her breasts, concealing just enough... in the exact way Ravenna wore hers.
Her scream ripped through the corridor as the chains tightened like vipers around a dying bird. Her knees buckled, but the chains lifted her up, her feet rising off the ground, dangling, twisting in midair like a marionette caught in a puppeteer’s tantrum.
Ravenna turned. Slowly.
That sa cold smirk played on her lips. Her feet no longer touched the floor...she was levitating, her long gown flowing behind her like blood in water.
"Oops," Ravenna murmured, raising a finger to her mouth. "Did I forget to ntion the entrance toll?"
Selene gasped for breath as the chain around her throat pressed even deeper, bruising her delicate skin. Her fingers clawed at it, trying to pry it free.
"Ravenna!" she choked out. "Stop this! You said..."
"I said you could try pleasing them," Ravenna interrupted smoothly. "I never said you would succeed...or it would be easy..."
Then her smirk widened. "You are on your own with this, sis." She turned and floated backward into the red mist gathering like a sea of smoke. "See you later... on the other side...if you can make it I an...Good luck...you will need it."
And then she was gone.
The corridor turned deathly silent...except for the creaking sound of the chains tightening.
Selene thrashed. Scread.
"NO! LET GO! LET...GAHHHH!"
The first spike ca from beneath.
A barbed hook pierced into the sole of her foot...it moved slow, deliberate...like a molten needle lting through flesh and sinew. The agony shot up her leg like wildfire.
Her body arched violently in the air.
A tallic arm unfolded from the ceiling, crab like...almost chanical...its claws lined with obsidian razors, matching the colour of the floor. It dragged across her back once, then twice, until the rest of her cloak shredded like paper and skin followed.
"Ahhhh!! STOP! Please...!"
But no voice answered her except a low chuckle that echoed from the walls themselves.
The entire fortress felt alive.Like it was watching. Feeding on her fear.
Another set of chains twisted around her fingers, pulling them back until the joints scread under the pressure. With a wet snap, one of her knuckles cracked backward.
She howled.
Her vision blurred.
More crimson mist swirled tighter, pushing against her eyes, stinging, until blood leaked from her tear ducts.
Her lips trembled. "Ravenna... please... I am not... I am not like..."
A whisper answered her, but it wasn’t hers.
"Not yet."
Suddenly, a thousand more tiny needles erged from the floor beneath her. They hovered...humming...before launching upward into her thighs and calves.
Like rain. A tallic, cruel acid rain.
Each puncture sent a scream. Her throat grew raw.
Her thoughts splintered.
"This isn’t just pain..." she realized. "It’s building my muscle mory. It’s not punishnt...it’s training..." She repeated through gritted teeth.
The chains around her arms began to twist her shoulders back...pulling until tendons stretched like wires, ready to snap. Blood poured down her arms...like thick rivers.
Selene tried to bite down her sobs.
Her mind cracked open like a porcelain shell...mories flooding in... long obscured... Or not rembered that often...
Her first kill.
The look in Kieran’s eyes when he turned from her... when she betrayed him...when she told him she didn’t love him... That she used him...
The promise she made to her mother before the screams began....
And then a voice floated in...calm, female, cruel...It drifted from the ceiling.
"Beg, daughter of the damned. Show us you are worth unbreaking...swear your alliance..."
Selene gasped. "rcy...please...I can’t...I...am breaking...!"
A lash struck her across the face. Another along her belly.
She felt it tear through skin.
More chains slithered around her waist, arms, and thighs...pinning her body in a grotesque pose, like a crucified offering...as dozens of ghostly arms reached out from the red mist and touched her wounds.
Cold fingers. Unseen mouths breathing against her open skin.
Kissing the pain. Feeding on the pain.
Her head hung low, blood dripping from her chin.
She whispered to herself in a delirious haze...
"Kieran... if you ever cared just know that...I didn’t want to do it but I had to....rember as sothing more than what you think I am...and know that what I am about to do...isn’t sothing I want either..."
Then just as her consciousness began to slip...the torture...the fortress...stopped.
The chains went still.
The mist withdrew, reluctantly, as if sated...for the mont at least.
Selene hung limp in the air, every inch of her body shredded, bruised, broken. But she was still alive.
Barely.
Then, without warning, the chains dropped her.
She fell like a sack of bones, slamming into the cold obsidian floor. Her scream was more of a gasp...dry laughter and hollow sobs.
But in the darkness ahead,a door opened.
And a figure stood there.
Shadowed. Silent.
Watching her.
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