What the actual fuck.
That was my first thought that ca to my mind upon watching a man feast on another man’s thigh like it was a holiday roast glazed in sothing red, fragrant, and definitely once alive. He didn’t flinch when I gasped or when I took two steps backward into sothing that crunched. Whether it was bone or burnt sugar, I had no intention of finding out.
I turned and ran, boots slipping against the slick, sticky floor beneath . Wine, at juice, and gods-know-what else turned the ground into a maze of near-misses and stomach-turning sars.
But running made noise. Noise that stirred the walls.
Low giggles echoed behind , childlike and wet, like laughter from a cracked music box soaked in syrup. Shapes erged—shadows unfurling themselves like cloaks shrugging off hooks, bones bent in the wrong directions.
They didn’t speak. They moaned fragnts.
"Mine," hissed one, its jaw unhinging wider than anatomy allowed.
Another limped behind , arms too long and mouth already chewing nothing. "Feed ..."
One lunged. I spun, dagger flashing—a single shallow cut across its shoulder. It hissed and recoiled, more shocked than hurt.
"Darling," I muttered, sliding backward and catching my balance on a nearby pillar, "you’ve got to buy dinner first."
More ca. They weren’t attacking to kill. They were starving for sothing—anything. Not food. Not flesh. Sothing deeper. A need that clawed from the inside out.
My dagger danced through the dark like a whisper.
One jab—slipping beneath a ribcage, soft as breath. A slash—quick and clean, carving a red line across a thigh.
None of them died.
But they fell—bodies collapsing with choked gasps, limbs curling inward, mouths parting in breathless wls. Like broken marionettes, like lovers after ruin.
I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t.
The chamber sprawled into infinity, coiling back on itself in impossible geotry. Large rectangular pillars rose from the ground like the bones of so long-dead leviathan, their sleek surfaces wrapped in rotting vines and moss. They weren’t just structural—they were ribcages, guiding through the womb of a broken beast.
Loop after loop.
Blank tables littered the path like forgotten altars. Broken chairs. Tipped trays. Everything was frozen in so mont of abandonnt. The scent of decay and perfu lingered, like a ballroom that had outlived its dancers.
Ti curled inward. Minutes stretched into forever.
Then, finally—a wall and a corner.
Yes, a corner.
A blessed, sacred, actual corner.
I stumbled toward the wall, my hand splaying across the cold stone like a dying pilgrim at an altar. It felt real—rough, solid—but in the tower, that ant nothing. I gripped it anyway. Clung to it, like it might vanish if I blinked.
That’s when I heard it.
Sobbing, soft, and unmistakably human.
A wet, stuttering sound, too fragile for this place. Too real.
I turned.
She was tucked between the ruins of a toppled wine basin and a collapsed fruit cart, half-buried in rot. Blonde curls clung to her sweat-damp cheeks, knotted and matted with old sugar and tears. Her dress—once sky-blue—was ripped at the hem, stained with sothing dark and sticky that might’ve been wine, or blood.
She clutched her knees to her chest. Both arms shaking. In one trembling hand, she held a jagged shard of porcelain—white with delicate gold trim—as if it were a holy relic. Or a weapon. Or maybe both.
When I stepped closer, her eyes, crystalline blue, snapped up.
Wide and feral.
"Stay back!" she rasped, her voice raw and broken, like she hadn’t used it in days. She brandished the shard like a dagger, her grip so tight her knuckles had gone bloodless.
I froze mid-step.
Raised my hands slowly.
Kept my voice gentle, dry with practiced ease. "Easy now," I said, voice low, coaxing. "I’m not here to carve you up. Not really my style."
She didn’t drop the shard, but her hand trembled so badly it might’ve sliced her own cheek if she wasn’t careful. I needed sothing to ground her.
I reached into my coat, fingers brushing past vials, feathers, and secrets, until they found it—a simple gold crown, filigree-thin, no bigger than a ring.
A token. A trick.
With a flick of my wrist, it danced across my knuckles—spinning once, twice—then vanished in a flash of sleight. Her eyes followed it, wary, uncertain.
When it reappeared in her open palm—placed there so gently she didn’t even notice my approach—she blinked. Her fingers curled around it instinctively.
The shard of porcelain fell from her other hand with a soft clink, cracking on the stone like the last barrier breaking.
Her lips twitched. Not fully into a smile, not yet—but the beginnings of one. A delicate tremble at the corner of her mouth like a thaw.
I crouched in front of her, careful to move slow. No sudden movents. I was still sothing dangerous in her eyes. Maybe I always would be.
"My na’s Cecil," I offered, voice low, warm. "Not a threat. Unless soone asks for it."
She wiped at her face with the back of her wrist. Smudged tear-tracks streaked across her cheeks.
"Aria," she said. Soft. Cautious.
"You hurt?"
She shook her head automatically, but I watched her body betray her. Shoulders knotted so tight they barely moved. Breath shallow. Fingers twitching against the crown like it might vanish again if she let go.
Her whole fra scread of bruises and terror, even if she didn’t.
"Anyone else with you?"
A pause. Too long. Then... "No." Her voice cracked under the word. "I tried to find the exit. I really did. I kept going and going but... it’s like the place resets behind . Like it wants to stay lost."
I nodded slowly, glancing around.
The chamber still hadn’t stopped breathing.
The walls pulsed in and out with a barely perceptible rhythm, like a lung made of silk and stone.
It was suffocating and I could see it wearing her down.
In the tight lines of her brow. In the way her knees kept pulling closer to her chest. In the way she kept glancing behind her like the shadows might lunge.
"Yeah," I said quietly. "It does that. This place... it wants things from people."
She clutched the little crown tighter. "What does it want from ?"
I looked at her.
Young. Frightened. Alone for too long in a place that fed on loneliness.
"Maybe it doesn’t know yet," I said. "But you’re still you. That’s sothing."
She looked up at again.
Not quite trusting.
But not afraid anymore.
"Will you help ?"
I gave her a lopsided grin. "If you follow , you’re either getting rescued or caught in sothing worse. Flip a coin."
She let out a shaky, reluctant laugh. It was the smallest sound. But it was human. Real.
"I’ll take my chances," she whispered.
I stood. Offered her my hand.
She took it.
I leaned against the stone and exhaled slowly.
"All right. Ti for a plan."
Aria blinked up at .
"If we can’t find the exit, we don’t go hunting it. We let it co to us. The escorts—those bastards who bring guests in—they’re the key. We wait by the entrance and when the next guest cos through...we jump them."
Her eyebrows rose. "You want to fight them?"
I shrugged. "Unless you have a better plan involving a unicorn and a map, yes."
To my surprise, she smiled again. "Okay. I’m in."
We returned the way I ca, tracing the wall this ti and using the shadows as cover until the entry doors reappeared like a mory I’d nearly forgotten. We flanked the threshold—opposite pillars—and crouched low.
We waited.
The silence hung heavy.
Aria kept glancing at , her fingers still curled protectively around the little crown.
"Can you teach that trick?" she whispered, eyes wide with the kind of cautious hope that felt rare down here.
I reached into my coat again and pulled out a coin—plain, gold, slightly worn at the edges.
With a flick, it spun across my knuckles, vanished between two fingers, then reappeared behind my ear. I gave her a wink as I pald it back into my sleeve.
"Magic’s in the fingers," I said, smirking.
She tried to mimic the movent with her free hand—no coin, just hopeful muscle mory—but fumbled before she even got halfway. Her fingers tumbled over each other like nervous dancers.
I watched, then gave a low whistle. "Wow. You might be the worst apprentice I’ve ever had."
She looked mock-offended. "I didn’t know you had an apprenticeship program."
"I do now," I said, with a mock-formal nod. "Congratulations. You’re the founding mber."
She giggled—quiet, breathless, but real.
For one fragile mont, it felt like we were just two strangers killing ti in so sunlit square.
Then footsteps sounded from outside the door.
Aria’s body tensed. She ducked low, gripping her shard like a dagger again.
The handle turned. The doors creaked open.
We jumped to our feet, weapons ready.
And then—
"Gods, it slls like soone deep-fried a cow inside a brothel," said Willow as she strode in, nose wrinkled in disgust. Then she put on a smirk, entirely unbothered.
Behind her, Miko dragged one limp escort by the arms. Leo handled the other like a sack of flour—quiet, firm, a shadow cast in steel.
Willow blinked at us.
"Oh," she said, as if noticing soone had left the stove on. "There you are."
Aria lowered her weapon slowly. "You know her?"
"Unfortunately," I said.
Willow scoffed. "I heard that."
Miko wiped his brow. Leo gave a short nod, his coat stained with sothing viscous.
"Why did you kill them?" I asked, blinking.
"They were following us and I was worried about you," Willow replied. "I took offense."
Aria gawked at the unconscious bodies. "I...thought they were unkillable."
"Not unkillable," I corrected. "Just inconvenient."
Willow stepped beside and took a deep breath, imdiately regretting it.
"Gods," she muttered. "What happened in here? It slls like a slaughterhouse fucked a dessert tray."
I gestured vaguely toward the carnage—the overturned platters, the crimson sars, the torn figures cooling on the floor.
"They got hungry," I said, voice low. "Not the kind you fix with fruit and wine. The kind that scrapes the soul raw. And then...I suppose they started turning on each other."
Her expression shifted—sothing between horror and fascination.
"Well shit," she replied.
Miko propped one of the escorts against a vine-wrapped column. "What now?"
I glanced at Aria. She looked steadier now, cheeks no longer streaked in tears. That spark of belief in her eyes had returned.
Now that we were together again, it was ti to find the true exit from this floor.
And if the Tower didn’t offer us a way out...
We’d carve one ourselves.
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