Berith descended into the crypt-choked spine of Ashenholt duchy. The path to the crypts was steep and lightless, slick with the condensation of centuries. The black gate recognized his fury before it recognized his blood. It groaned open to receive him.
Cold air spilled out to greet him. Berith crossed the threshold into the tomb-throne without hesitation. Darkness embraced him like kin.
And there he was.
Volden Montclair was already waiting, draped in the remnants of nobility—his corpse-thin body wrapped in funeral silks, white braids cascading over the curved throne of darkwood and bone.
His cataract-rimd eyes glistened, as though they saw sothing Berith didn’t yet understand. "You’ve co again."
Berith stopped a few feet away. He didn’t kneel this ti. "Where is she?" he growled. It was a demand the dead would be wise to heed.
Volden was not startled. Surprise was for the young. Instead, he breathed out a dry amused sigh, "Ah..." he murmured, not to Berith but to the stone around them, to the ghosts hanging from the rafters. "I warned you about attachnts." he said, dragging the word with surgical disdain, "They are tender to the fla."
Berith stepped forward, fists curled tight at his sides. "Did you order her disappearance?" he asked, though it landed more like an accusation.
Volden leaned back, his fingers tapping the bone-inlaid armrest. "You think I have ti for such petty sches? That I busy myself ddling in the lust and loyalties of my descendants?"
Berith’s jaw clenched. "She’s the Vessel," he snarled through his gritting teeth. "The balance to the Gate. My Gate." His hand moved instinctively to his chest.
"You have forgotten your place in this chain." Volden remarked.
There was no anger in it—just certainty. The worst kind of condemnation.
"She was never yours to keep." His eyes glead, burning with ageless cunning. "If she is gone, then perhaps she went where her kind always goes."
"You sent her to the Black Vale?"
Volden didn’t answer. His silence was enough.
Berith’s nostrils flared as fury warred. He didn’t have the ti for one of Volden’s riddled gas. Not now. Not when his woman was sowhere out beyond the reach of light. "I’ll find her," he grounded out, stepping back. "Before it’s too late."
A hum rolled from the depth of the chamber. "You cannot go," Volden warned. "unless you want to disappoint the Lord."
Berith stopped in his tracks. "You think I care about the consequences now?" he hissed.
"You should," Volden snapped, his chair groaning as he wheeled closer. "Would you dare to defy the Lord who made you what you are? You know the price of betrayal."
Berith turned, fully. His stare t Volden’s, unflinching. "He’s not my lord."
Silence fell like a guillotine.
Volden exhaled, a long, brittle breath. "You carry His breath in your bones. You are nothing outside his will. He gave us boon when our Montclair house was rotting at the roots and the world mocked our noble na."
Berith’s jaw clenched, teeth gritting until his temples throbbed. "That boon..was a curse. It was never freedom."
Volden laughed. His head tilted back, mouth parted in sothing between exaltation and madness "Oh, how bold we grow with borrowed power," he rasped. "Now you dare blasphe the very boon that kept this house from rotting into obscurity?"
Berith swallowed against the chill crawling up his spine.
Volden’s smile widened. "It was I who signed the pact," he hissed, tapping a bone-pale finger to his chest, where the bloodline mark pulsed beneath layered robes. "Centuries ago, when Montclair stood on the edge of extinction, I called upon Him. And He..the Lord answered."
A pause. A breath that tasted of ash.
"In return, He gave us everything—power, wealth, legacy, the resurrection of our na and more than that..." The finger tapped again. Thump. Thump. "He gave us Himself. The Lord lives in us," Volden murmured, smiling as if rembering an old lover. "In you. In . In every first born son of our line. But not all of us had the strength to carry him."
Berith’s fists curled at his sides. "My father..."
"was a coward," Volden spat, the word cracking like a whip. "He fought the essence of the Lord inside him." His voice thickened, venomous. "Your father deluded himself into thinking he could be free. He tried to sear the essence from his bones—burned holy oil, etched wards into his own flesh, begged the old gods with a severed tongue. But the soul," he sneered, "was never ant to hold anything but the Lord. And when it tried to run, it shattered."
A chill ghosted up Berith’s spine, deeper than fear. The kind that knew your na, knew your blood, and whispered in the marrow of your bones.
His jaw tightened—too late.
The mory struck.
Not yet a man, barely a boy of thirteen, Berith had found his father’s body in the solar at dawn. The scent reached him first, a rot that slled like tal, salt and sorrow.
His father was kneeling—still kneeling—head bowed before the family altar. His skin peeled in blackened layers, arms carved with ruinous glyphs. Smoke coiled from his open mouth, the jaw torn wide by the force of what had tried to escape.
The eyes... gods, the eyes.
They were still open. Still burning.
Berith’s throat closed. Even now, the mory clawed and haunted him.
"He failed," Volden said coldly. "And in failing, he denied the only thing that ever made him worthy."
"I warned him," Volden murmured, gaze distant now, as if reliving the warning himself. "Just as I’m warning you."
His fingers resud their patient drumming against the bone-inlaid armrest—tick, tick, tick. "Others before him tried to resist. One cut out his own tongue to stop the growing darkness inside him. Another doused himself in sanctified oil and lit the match, thinking fire could burn out what runs deeper than blood and another went mad, burning down three wings of this house in attempt to escape."
Volden leaned forward, a terrible softness in his smile. "They’re all dead, Berith. Because the devil.." his voice dropped to a whisper, "does not tolerate betrayal."
Berith’s lips parted, his voice trembling with rage. "You call him a devil... yet you serve him. Kneel for him."
Volden’s head tilted. His smile, this ti, was not cruel. It was devout. "I obeyed him, served him, endured him because he allowed it." he hissed. "That’s why I still breathe while others rot." He spread his arms wide, the long folds of his robe rustling like funeral cloth.
Sothing slithered beneath his skin then — subtle, sickening — a ripple that passed across his throat like sothing trying to crawl out from within the cage of his ribs.
"He raised us from ash," Volden rasped, "and all he asked in return was fealty."
Berith’s lips curled. "Fealty?" He was disgusted. "You’re no patriarch. You are only a puppet of his. Can’t you see it? This so-called boon has only devoured us from within."
"Call it what you will. The Lord does not tolerate defiance, nor does he forgive betrayal. If you interfere...if you go after her, you will not just sha this blood. But you will also burn yourself."
"I don’t care." Berith replied nonchalantly as if nothing mattered anymore to him.
Volden’s face contorted with rage. His cataract eyes flashed with the remnants of a god’s fury. "You reckless child," he snarled, the bones in his throat rasping. "You would throw away everything? The power, the strength, your future, all for that girl who was ant to be an offering from the very start?"
Berith didn’t blink. "You call it a birthright. I call it a cage. If saving her ans setting it all on fire then light the damn match. But I will not let her burn."
For a mont, Volden said nothing. He simply stared then he wheeled himself back into the darkness. His laugh was almost pitiful. "When the Lord wakes," he whispered, the words like dust slipping from a mausoleum wall, "you will learn what wrath truly ans."
Berith turned, the serpent gate yawning before him. "I’ve lived in wrath all my life," he said, stepping toward the threshold. "It’s ti I lived for sothing else."
***********
The hooves of Berith’s warhorse struck the frozen road. The wind tore at his coat as his horse galloped, his fists were clenched tight around the reins. The trees had long since turned skeletal here. The world knew rage when it rode.
Berith didn’t feel the cold anymore. Not when she was missing.
The gate in his chest wasn’t just burning—it was howling. Lashing against his ribs like a chained god demanding release. It had never acted like this before, not even in his past life. But this ti, everything was off script.
But he welcod it. Let it bleed into his bones. Let it fuel him.
"Why did I leave her alone?" Berith couldn’t stop thinking about it. "If she’s hurt..." His whisper vanished into the sleet. "If they laid a single hand on her...I’ll burn the Ashenholt myself." he growled, eyes burning.
Berith ant it. He would choke the life out of the Patriarch with his bare hands, burn Ashenholt to the foundations.
His thoughts whirled back to the first ti it happened. The attack at Marcella in Cardania before their wedding. That was no petty noble’s assassin. That was a demon. Berith had investigated and found no trace of Montclairs back then. For once, his cursed blood was not to bla.
So who?
Who else attempted to kill her?
The thought clawed at him.
Let it burn. Let it all burn, as long as she walked out untouched. Because if they were all monsters in this story, then he would be the one to teach them what a monster truly was.
"I’m coming," he whispered, as the night swallowed his voice. "Marcella... hold on."
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