Page 49 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)
The passage opens into a cathedral of bloodstone and starlight.
The Sovereign Forge rises before us, a monument to impossible architecture that stretches up into darkness and down into depths that are too deep to contemplate.
Crystalline conduits snake across its surface like veins, pulsing with captured magic.
Each pulse sends waves of energy through the air, making my skin crawl and my bones ache.
The structure defies comprehension with angles that shouldn’t exist, surfaces that reflect things that aren’t there, doorways that lead into folded space.
The corruption in my veins explodes into motion. Black fire races through my system, spreading faster than thought. It reaches my heart and squeezes. I gasp, stumbling against Verik as agony tears through my chest. The pain is exquisite, precise, designed to break me without killing me too quickly.
Ancient murals cover the cathedral walls, depicting scenes of previous creatures standing before this very Forge, their eyes holding only terror. In the final panels, they lie broken on the floor, their voices stolen, their power consumed.
The Tenebris Vinculum materialises above the Forge’s entrance, its two eyes burning with triumph. The grimoire hovers there like a dark star, its leather binding rippling with anticipation. Violet words dance across its pages, forming and reforming in patterns that make my head ache.
I try to speak, to tell it exactly what I think of this shitshow, but only air escapes my lips. The corruption has warped my vocal cords, choking off the last remnants of my power. Each attempt to form words sends fresh agony through my throat.
Opposition forces flood into the chamber behind us.
Hundreds of them pour through entrances I hadn’t noticed before.
Hidden passages carved into the cathedral walls, concealed doorways that open like wounds in the obsidian.
The shadow-crowned leader sweeps forward, his bone crown reformed into a spiked diadem of malice.
The bones appear to be moving, reshaping themselves as I watch.
Behind him march his troops, their weapons gleaming with hostile enchantments. Creatures with wings like razors circle overhead, their formation precise and predatory. Mages wreathed in shadow magic take positions around the chamber’s perimeter, their spells already gathering like storm clouds.
“Surround them,” the leader commands. “The Siren comes with us. Kill the rest.”
Verik’s hellfire erupts in a protective circle around us, but I can see the strain in his face. Sweat beads on his forehead despite the cold air. The flames flicker as the magic-dampening spell forces us into submission.
Evren raises a wall of ice to deflect the attackers, his face tight with concentration. The impact sends cracks through his barrier. More attackers pour in from the sides, testing our defences, probing for weaknesses.
Dathan’s nightmare magic tears through their ranks, twisted shadows that reach into their minds and pull out their deepest fears. Screams echo through the cathedral as attackers turn on each other, their terror made real. But they reform and attack again, their discipline overcoming their horror.
I reach for my power, desperate. Nothing. Not even a whisper. The corruption seeps like venom through my vocal cords, strangling every note before it can form. Each attempt sends lightning through my nervous system, a reminder of what I’ve lost.
The chamber fills with the sounds of battle. Steel clashing against ice, hellfire meeting shadow magic, the screams of dying attackers mixing with the crash of falling masonry. Blood spatters across ancient murals, obscuring the faces of long-dead Sirens. But more enemies keep coming. Always more.
A creature charges at me with a serrated blade that hums with malevolent energy.
The weapon leaves trails of distorted air in its wake.
I dodge, trying to counter-attack with my voice, but silence greets my effort.
The weapon whistles past my ear, close enough to feel its corrupted wind.
Verik’s hellfire catches him mid-swing, reducing him to ash and screaming metal.
The stench of burnt flesh fills my nostrils.
Heat roars up the back of my head as the corruption floods my system. The world tilts sideways, colours bleeding into each other like watercolours in rain. My thoughts scatter like leaves in a hurricane, coherent ideas fragmenting into useless pieces.
The shadow-crowned leader raises his hands, dark magic gathering around his fingers like storm clouds.
The air crackles with hostile energy. A massive spell erupts from his hands, a lance of malice aimed directly at my chest. The attack tears through the air with the sound of breaking reality.
I try to deflect it with my voice, but nothing emerges.
My shadows are useless as the corruption takes hold.
The spell hits me, and I fly backwards, crashing into the Forge’s base.
Pain explodes through my ribs, white-hot agony that steals my breath.
Verik roars with fury, his hellfire turning white-hot. Flames wreath his body like armour as he charges the shadow-crowned leader. They collide in a shower of sparks and screaming metal, their magic intertwining in patterns of destruction.
Evren and Dathan fight back-to-back, ice and nightmares tearing through opposition ranks. For every enemy they kill, three more take their place.
I struggle to my feet, my vision swimming like oil on water. My balance fails repeatedly. My thoughts fragment into pieces I can’t reassemble, memories mixing with hallucinations until I can’t tell what’s real.
The grimoire descends, hovering just above my head like a carrion bird.
My vision darkens at the edges. The cathedral fades into shadow, its murals becoming indistinct blurs. I can hear my guys’ voices, calling my name, but they sound distant now. Unreachable. Like echoes from another world.
“Help us,” I rasp as the two unblinking eyes on the grimoire focus on me as my vision swims. “You need us to end this. We are close.”
The grimoire’s two eyes narrow to slits. The violet words on its pages stop their chaotic dance and coalesce into a single, brutal question branded directly onto my fracturing consciousness.
Will you bleed for me?
My silent answer is a scream of pure desperation. Yes.
The book slams open.
A single, blank page tears itself free. It whips through the air, its edge sharp as a dagger, and slices across my throat before I can take my next breath. Pain, clean and absolute, cuts through the fog of corruption.
Hot blood streams down my neck, a shocking, wet warmth against my cold skin.
I gurgle as the world sharpens, the fog in my mind burned away by the clean agony of the cut.
The blank page hovers before me, a thirsty ghost. It drinks my blood, the liquid soaking into the parchment without a single drop falling to the floor.
As it drinks, the black veins of corruption recede from my face, my throat, drawn towards the wound like iron filings to a magnet. Fiery script, written in my own life force, bleeds across the page. A new law. A new pact.
I hear Verik’s roar of absolute fury, a sound that shakes the cathedral’s foundations. The shadow-crowned leader’s triumphant smirk falters. He sees it. The shift. The reclamation.
The page, now a bloody contract, flies back to the grimoire, snapping into place with a sound like a breaking bone. The book snaps shut and glows, its two eyes burning with a power that is now part of me.
I take a breath. It doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts anymore.
I choke, my hands going to my throat as my blood pours out.
The ground trembles underneath us, and I fall. The stench of smoke and ash hits my nostrils, and I gag, spilling blood all over the stone.
With my cheek pressed to the cold ground, I watch helplessly as lava erupts from the ground. The Midnight Spire shakes uncontrollably around us.
“Verik,” I mouth, as the first wave of hellfire melts stone into screaming liquid.
His eyes find mine across the chamber—wild, desperate, glowing with power no creature should possess—and I realise what spell he’s summoning.
The Armageddon spell from the book. The world around us fractures, reality itself splitting at the seams as the forbidden magic builds, and I can only watch as my life slips away and everything we know burns toward oblivion.
Infernal Crown, Book 3: Infernal Crown