Page 14 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

Chapter Seven

SACHA

Some loyalties are born in silence, and sealed in fire.

Fragments of the Lost Veinwardens

Pain has become my universe.

Blood drips into my one functioning eye as consciousness returns. The stone floor beneath me is slick with my blood, pooling from too many wounds to track. Some are still weeping. Others are torn open again before they can heal.

I try to move, but my body doesn’t obey.

Every muscle has become a separate instrument of torture. Every breath sends shards of agony through broken ribs that click and grind with each inhale.

The shadows don’t answer when I reach for them. They’re there. I can sense them. But I cannot touch them. Cannot command them.

My lips try to form the words for Voidcraft.

It’s a simple command that would ease the pain, but my throat is too damaged, my voice too broken.

What emerges are wet rasps that bear no resemblance to the precise incantations Voidcraft commands.

Even if I could speak them clearly, the effort of gathering enough life force for even the smallest working would finish what Sereven’s torture started.

I can feel it, the thin thread of vitality keeping me alive, too fragile to risk.

They’ve left me with enough strength to suffer, but not enough to escape.

Where the void should be, there’s only distance, and the echo of the crystal’s destruction.

How long have I been here?

The place they have me in has no windows, no way to monitor time. Only the shifting intensity of pain marks the passage of hours, or days, as I drift between consciousness and merciful darkness.

They found me semi-conscious some time after the crystal shattered my shadows. Half-dead already, the sword wound in my side bleeding out. I only remember fragments. Flashes of rough hands, Sereven’s face. His expression caught between triumph and smug satisfaction.

The cell they threw me in first was dark, windowless, but not the embracing darkness I’ve known all my life.

This was dead darkness—sterile, empty of the living shadows that had always answered my call.

The air was thick with the residue of previous occupants.

Sweat, fear, blood gone sour with age, the rotting stench soaked into stone.

I drifted in and out of consciousness there, time measured only by the changing of guards’ footsteps and the sporadic visits from Sereven. His presence brought pain, not questions. He had no interest in information. Only in breaking what remained of me, piece by careful piece.

“He’s conscious again,” someone says, pulling me back to the present. “Inform the High Commander.”

Footsteps retreat, then return a while later. The tread is heavier, slower.

I know that sound.

A shadow falls over me, and I lift my head to find Sereven standing over me, crimson robes a stark contrast to the dungeon’s gloom. I can barely focus on his face. My vision swims, doubles, then resolves into his cold, satisfied expression.

“String him up again,” he orders.

I’m dragged off the floor. My legs won’t support my weight, but it doesn’t matter.

They chain my wrists to hooks in the ceiling, stretching my arms upward.

The position pulls on my dislocated shoulder, tearing a sound from my throat I didn’t know I could still make.

My feet barely touch the ground, forcing weight onto injuries that beg for relief.

The chamber is small, but well-equipped.

A torturer’s workshop hidden beneath the outskirts of Ashenvale, refined through years of practice.

The walls hold implements I’ve become intimately familiar with over days that blur into nightmares.

Whips of varying designs, some for precise cuts, others weighted for maximum tissue damage.

Blades both dull and sharp, devices whose purpose I didn’t understand until they were used on me.

Each tool is placed with the care of an artisan’s workshop.

A brazier glows in the corner, metal rods heating within its coals, their tips already bearing the residue of flesh that isn’t mine. The floor is designed with channels to collect blood, to allow for easy cleaning between sessions.

Between bodies.

This isn’t improvised cruelty. It’s institutional. Practiced. Perfected through repetition on how many before me?

I am not the first to occupy this space. Nor will I be the last. I am merely its current offering.

Sereven circles me, examining the torturer’s handiwork.

The Authority symbol branded into my chest. My back flayed open by the whip.

My fingernails removed one by one. The festering sword wound left deliberately untreated.

Burns across my ribs where heated metal was pressed against flesh.

The purple-black bruising where internal bleeding spreads beneath the skin.

“You know, I’ve imagined this moment for twenty-seven years.”

He stops in front of me, tangles a hand into my hair, and wrenches my head back so he can study me. I dig deep inside and summon up a smirk. His features darken, and he releases my hair.

“I want him near death, but conscious for the journey to Blackvault.”

The torturer steps forward, a whip uncoiling from his hand.

This one is different from the others. It’s designed for maximum damage, each strand weighted with tiny metal blades that catch and tear, extending the lashing pattern.

My muscles tighten in anticipation, an instinctive response I can’t control.

“Count them, Sacha,” Sereven commands.

The first strike tears across my already destroyed back.

Barbs catch flesh and rip free, taking strips of skin with them.

A scream builds from somewhere deeper than my throat, but what emerges is a wet rattle.

I have no voice left after days of this.

My tongue, already lacerated from biting through it during earlier sessions, spills fresh blood into my mouth.

The metallic copper mingles with bile rising up my throat, creating a paste that makes breathing feel like drowning.

“One.” Sereven counts for me when I remain silent. His voice carries an almost reverential cadence. This is a ritual to him. A ceremony of erasure.

The second strike crosses the first. Skin separates from muscle, muscle from bone.

Fresh blood runs warm down my spine, a sharp contrast to the cold dungeon air that finds every open wound like seeking fingers.

My body tries to curl away from the pain, but the chains hold me suspended, stretched between floor and ceiling.

“Two.”

The third lands lower, across kidneys already bruised from earlier beatings. My body convulses involuntarily. The world whites out briefly—not from unconsciousness, but from pain so complete it temporarily overrides vision.

When sight returns, it comes in pieces. Stone walls.

Dripping water. Blood pooling on the floor beneath my feet.

My blood, forming a grotesque halo. The torturer’s expression as he prepares for another strike, professionally detached, like a craftsman assessing his work.

There’s pride there. In his precision. In the art of causing maximum damage without causing death.

I imprint his face into my mind.

“Three. You always were stubborn, Sacha.”

By the fourth, I’m hanging limp from the chains, consciousness flickering like a dying flame.

The pattern of the lashes forms a deliberate design.

Not wild strikes but placed with the knowledge of a master at his craft, creating a map of torment across my back.

Each wound connects to the last like tributaries joining a river of pain.

My skin hangs in ribbons. I can feel it all.

Every separation, every tear. Blood flows freely, soaking my legs, a growing pool beneath me that reflects the torchlight like a dark mirror.

The pain has moved beyond unbearable into something transcendent.

A white-hot clarity that strips away everything but pure sensation.

“Five.” Sereven pauses, circling to examine his torturer’s handiwork with the appreciation of a connoisseur.

“Did you know that ancient texts speak of pain as purification? Each strike burns away another piece of your arrogance, your power, your very identity. Soon, there will be nothing left of the Shadowvein Lord. Nothing but meat and memory.”

The torturer pauses, whip dripping crimson onto the floor. He looks to his master for instruction.

“The salt,” Sereven orders.

A wooden bucket appears in my peripheral vision. The torturer dips the bloodied whip into it. Even before the liquid touches my wounds, I know what’s coming. My body begins to shake in anticipation, an involuntary response I cannot control.

Salt water .

This time, my scream rips free, torn from a throat that rebels against making any sound. The salt finds every wounded place, every strip of exposed flesh, every nerve the whip laid bare. It’s not just pain, it’s fire in my blood, demons dancing through every open wound.

My body writhes against the chains with such force that something in my shoulder tears loose, not only muscle but the joint coming apart. The movement tears open wounds across my back that had barely begun to close, rips away stitches the healers had sewn so they could be torn free again.

My vision shatters. For a moment, I see ghosts in these chains, other prisoners, other times, all wearing the same mask of endless agony.

“Six.”