"Has he said anything yet?"
the polished, cultured voice was as short as a snap.
"Unfortunately nothing yet, your highness… he's being difficult,"
replied the executioner, his voice dragging like old leather.
The room was a bath of rot. The air, saturated with feces and urine, seemed to glue clothes to the body; the stone floor was streaked with black trails where blood had drained into clogged grates. Fat rats, glassy-eyed, gnawed unceremoniously on a piece of meat stuck to the metal grate. In the center, a man in immaculate linen wore the warm expression of someone who doesn't dirty his own hands while pointing a hate-stitched finger at a fat man completely smeared with dried blood. The contrast between the light fabric and the horror of the place cut the eyes like a blade.
The prisoner sitting in front of them was no longer a whole man: from wrists to fingertips, flesh and bone had vanished, torn off by a crude pair of pliers resting open on a soaked table. Broken nails, bits of flesh dangling like bloody ribbons; the stumps of his severed fingers bubbled with pus and blood. The face, once handsome, was now disfigured by hammer blows — cheekbones crushed, jaw fractured, one eye burst like a rotten fruit, leaking a thick fluid. His whole skin smelled of sulfur and burned flesh.
"I don't want excuses,"
growled the man in linen, each word a nail.
"He needs to talk. If he stays silent until the end of the night, I'll kill you. And believe me: what he went through will feel like a picnic compared to what I'll make you feel."
The executioner lowered his head, a tamed animal. He knew the man in linen; knew his promises turned into orders. There was pride in that cruel certainty: extracting information was his function. And he had done it with precision for decades. But there, in the face of that cutting silence, even his voice trembled.
"Don't worry, sir,"
murmured the executioner, teeth clenched.
"I'll get what you need. And about the girl…?"
The man in linen simply cast a sideways glance at the locked door, his eyes cold as ice.
"If the ringleader doesn't know, I doubt the other one knows anything. She's already bonded with a winged one… I'll send her to the coliseum with the others. But until then, she's yours. Traumatize her as much as you want, but no more visible marks — she's leaving today for the event. I don't want anyone badmouthing me behind my back."
Behind a door, locked up like an animal, the girl trembled. Her whole body was a map of violence: cuts barely closed, bruises black as coal, ribs jutting under the skin, a deep gash in her side where someone had tried to prove life still lingered. Near her, an egg — a strange talisman — pulsed with pale light and seemed to miraculously keep her alive; without it, she would already be dead. Her eyes, swollen, red, and wide, followed each step of those speaking without understanding, and her heart beat so irregularly it felt like a broken drum.
When the man in linen left, the executioner trembled inside. Rage exploded from him like acid. He crawled to the table, grabbed the bloody pliers, and brought them close to the half-conscious prisoner's face. Saliva clung to his cracked lips as he whispered, without compassion:
"I'm going to break you, even if it's the last thing I do. Either you talk now… or I'll make you beg for death. Got that? I'll tear every piece of you off, and each of your screams will be a reminder of what happens to those who defy me and my master."
The prisoner, his face covered in blood and shreds of flesh, had no strength left. But when the executioner raised the tool to resume his work, a thread of voice escaped, heavy as lead, so hoarse it was barely understandable:
"I… don't know… please…"
The words fell on deaf ears. From inside the locked chamber, the girl heard every sound: the creak of tools, the dragging moans, the wet whisper of something crawling across the floor. Two hours dragged by like an entire day; the clock of her will to live marked only pain and silence. When the door opened, terror took her face — it was her turn.
When she saw the figure in the center of the room, her body simply refused to obey: she vomited — an old reflex, a desperate attempt to expel from the world what her eyes couldn't endure.
The prisoner she had once known was unrecognizable: his face destroyed by violence, clothes soaked in dried blood and sweat, breath short and rattling. There were open wounds, makeshift stitches… and the metallic smell of blood mixed with the mold of the place seemed to pull her consciousness away. Her mind tried to erase the scene; instinctively, her eyes shut.
"Hahaha,"
laughed the tormentor, with terrifying calm.
"I see you appreciated my work."
The punch came before she could even react — hard, immediate, an order etched into flesh.
"How dare you pass out? Get up, you slut."
The tears, which had dried long ago, began to fall again, and despair took hold of her entire being.
"You're very lucky to have been chosen as a winged one; otherwise you'd be here in this condition. But I'm sure the coliseum will finish you off when they find out what you did. I have so many things to test — just thinking about it already gets me hard… You know what makes me hardest…"
The lewd stare of the fat, stinking executioner made the girl feel a despair beyond measure.
"No… please…"
The man screamed.
The executioner halted his advance, watching the reaction of the deformed man.
"So this was your weak point all along."
He moved toward the deformed man with slow steps, his sole slipping on the carpet of blood and flesh that gleamed under the flickering light. With calloused hands, he grabbed the bundle of viscera coiled around the wood like rotten rope and pulled more of it out, forcing the man's belly to give way like a torn sack. A dark thread of fluid spilled out, licking the floor, and the prisoner gasped as if each pull tore away a piece of who he still was.
"Repeat it."
The executioner's voice sounded hard, crushing, leaving no room for mercy.
The prisoner, in the midst of convulsions, babbled. A name, almost unrecognizable. The executioner froze, surprised. Even after nails torn out, bones broken, the organ mutilated… nothing had made him speak. But now, at the edge of death, he yielded. Because of the girl?
The executioner's smile shone like a knife. He pulled more viscera out, the man's body writhing like a rag doll. The man closed his eyes for a moment, trying to escape the light and the pain he felt.
"Repeat it!"
he roared. A hard slap forced the prisoner's weary eye open again.
Between spasms, the man repeated it, his voice broken, drowned in blood. The executioner finally understood. Joy set him ablaze — and, laughing uncontrollably, he ran out, satisfied.
Before leaving, however, he set the mechanism spinning faster. The viscera were twisted around the axle like rope. He wanted the girl to watch. He wanted that sound etched forever into her mind.
Now, only she and the prisoner remained. He gasped, spitting blood. Each word was a mountain to utter:
"I'm sorry… I didn't know… that she would betray us… if I had known…"
The girl's tears flowed like rivers. The man tried to continue, but his voice faded when the machine turned one last time. His body gave in, exhausted, and collapsed in silence. Dead.
The only sound left was the girl's convulsive crying, echoing through the cold stone of the room.
The girl, already nearly out of strength, wavered between fainting and abrupt awakenings. Each time she opened her eyes, the scene before her was worse — as if hell had decided to show her new horrors in fragments. Nothing made sense. She had never asked for this. Her only dream had been simple: to become a winged one, to protect the empire from the monsters that threatened the borders. But in that moment, she understood with cruel clarity — the evil was not out there. It had always been inside. Inside the empire itself. Inside the flesh and the laughter of the people who claimed to be her friends.
Pain burned, fear tried to break her, but it was hatred that consumed her. A dull fury, growing with every second. The egg at her side glowed in response, pulsing like a wounded heart sharing her agony. Colors alternated in unstable bursts — blues, reds, greens — until they fixed into a single shade, never seen before: a snowy white, cold and absolute, like the promise of inevitable death.
The gods did not want it to be quick — they were not that benevolent. She had spent hours tied up, forced to watch the torment of the one she had respected, the one who had given her a chance. She knew he did not deserve such a fate. No one did.
The blood soaking the floor was living proof of her helplessness. And as hatred rose like a black fire in her chest, fear persisted: the fear of the door's creak. The fear of the moment when she would be next.
When the hours already felt like days, the gate creaked open. Dim light entered, along with the obese shadow of her executioner.
"Girl,"
he said, with a rotten smile.
"You're lucky. Your golden ticket arrived early. Thank the man who held out long enough to keep me entertained on his own."
Those words, spat with scorn, were the spark. The girl was no longer beautiful. Innocence and sweetness had been ripped away with every tear, every scar. Her face was now a reflection of something much deeper: rage distilled into pure hatred. Her eyes, red from crying, now burned like embers about to set the world on fire.
She lifted her chin, trembling, and spoke with a hoarse but steady voice:
"I'll go to hell to come for you."
The fat man shuddered for a moment. Just a moment. The intensity of that gaze had hit him like a blade. But he quickly composed himself, letting fear give way to a sneer.
"You know something…?"
he said, spitting the words like poison.
"Everyone's got a plan to kill me… until they take the first punch."
His hand rose, heavy, the shadow covering the girl's face. She saw the fist close, approaching in slow motion, and didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Rage had already conquered fear.
When the impact came, everything went dark.
But her last thought wasn't pain. It was a promise: Vengeance.
And beside her, the egg glowed once more — the white light intensifying even further until it cracked like breaking ice, as if the entire world was about to feel the same fury that burned within her.