Page 52 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Lysithea

T he river of souls carries us into hell itself.

I can feel them beneath the black water. Thousands upon thousands of spirits flow with the current, surrounding us with their silent screams. They brush against my legs as we’re swept along, ghostly fingers trailing across my skin with touches that burn like ice.

The Tenebris Vinculum appears to be protected against waterlogging, pressed against Evren’s chest. Its ancient eye scans the darkness ahead with what I can only describe as anticipation.

This isn’t an escape, it’s arrival. The grimoire has been guiding us here all along, using our desperation and determination to deliver us exactly where it wants us to be.

My golden shadow snake lashes out next to me, but holds its own against the river, its luminescence the only light in this crushing darkness.

“The water’s getting warmer,” Dathan shouts over the rushing noise.

What started as ice-cold water has become something else entirely. It’s thick, viscous, with a taste of copper and old pain. Not water anymore, but blood diluted by centuries of flow.

Verik’s hellfire sputters as he tries to create light, but the atmosphere down here seems designed to smother flame. His demonic nature should make him immune to most environmental hazards, but even he’s struggling against whatever power flows through this place.

A spectral hand breaks the surface near my face, reaching with desperate hunger toward the warmth of living flesh. I jerk away, but more spirits rise from the depths, dozens of them, their forms becoming more solid as we approach whatever destination awaits.

“They’re getting stronger,” I call out, watching as ghostly figures pull themselves from the blood-dark water onto rocky outcroppings that line the tunnel walls.

These aren’t the whispered warnings from before—these are aggressive, hungry, trying to drag us down to join them in their eternal submersion.

One spirit, a woman whose form flickers between skeletal remains and rotting flesh, lunges for Evren.

Her claws rake across his shoulder, leaving frost-white trails that steam in the warm air.

The Tenebris Vinculum blazes in response, its eye fixing on the attacking spirit with something like recognition.

“It knows them,” I realise, watching the grimoire’s reaction. “These spirits, they’re connected to it somehow.”

“Its victims?” Verik calls back.

“Probably,” I mutter.

More spirits emerge from the blood-water, their forms becoming increasingly solid and aggressive.

They claw at our limbs, trying to drag us under, their touch burning like acid against living flesh.

I sing a note of pure dismissal, watching several fade back into the depths, but more take their place immediately.

The tunnel walls around us shift from carved stone to living surfaces.

A massive spirit rises from the depths ahead—not humanoid like the others, but something that might once have been a sea creature before death and centuries of corruption twisted it into a nightmare.

Tentacles thick as tree trunks lash out toward us, each one tipped with hooks that gleam like blackened bone.

“Link up!” I shout, extending my hand toward Verik. “Use the brand—share power through the connection!”

The moment our hands touch, I feel Verik’s hellfire surge through our bond, warming the blood-water around us and causing the attacking spirits to recoil.

Dathan grabs my other hand, his nightmare magic joining the flow, while Evren maintains his grip on the grimoire with one hand and reaches for Dathan with the other.

The combined power flows through all of us, our individual abilities amplifying each other in ways I’ve never experienced before.

My Siren song becomes something greater when supported by their energies.

It’s a force, capable of banishing even the most persistent spirits back to their watery graves.

The massive creature shrieks as our combined assault tears through its corrupted form, its tentacles dissolving back into the blood-dark current. But I can sense more rising from the depths, larger things, older things, drawn by the disturbance we’ve created.

Then I hear voices ahead, singing in harmonies that make my blood freeze.

Water Sirens. Dozens of them, their voices weaving together in a song that’s beautiful and grotesque. But there’s something wrong with their music, something that speaks of pain endured for so long it’s become worship.

“Do you hear that?” I call to the others, though I already know the answer. Siren song affects everyone differently, but no one can ignore it entirely.

Verik’s expression goes blank, his hellfire dimming as the voices wash over him. Dathan’s magic sparks wildly, responding to the emotional chaos the song induces. Even Evren, usually so controlled, shows signs of strain as he fights against the compulsion woven into those haunting melodies.

The current carries us faster now, the tunnel widening as we approach whatever lies ahead. The singing grows louder, more complex, as individual voices join the chorus. I count at least thirty distinct melodies, each one perfectly pitched to create maximum emotional impact.

They’re singing because they have to, because something forces them to maintain this eternal performance.

My own voice rises instinctively, seeking harmony with the distant chorus.

But the moment I join their song, pain lances through my skull like a red-hot spike.

The golden snake coils around my shoulders and hisses in alarm, its light flickering as whatever power flows through this place tries to claim me.

I cut off my voice immediately, gasping as the pressure in my head recedes.

The other Sirens’ song continues unchanged, as if my brief participation meant nothing to them.

But I caught something in that moment of connection.

Desperation, hunger, and the absolute certainty that they’ll never escape this place.

The spirits continue their assault, but now there’s purpose to their attacks.

They’re not randomly violent. They’re screening us, testing whether we have the strength and unity to survive what awaits.

Those who can’t work together to fend off the hungry dead don’t deserve to reach the final destination.

Wave after wave of corrupted souls rise from the depths, each more twisted than the last. Former humans who sought power and found only endless hunger.

Creatures that might once have been animals before death and time warped them into something else entirely.

Things that were never alive to begin with, born from the confluence of so much accumulated suffering and malice.

We fight them off through our joined power, but each victory costs us. The brand burns against my back as more energy flows through it than it was designed to handle. I can feel the others struggling too.

The river slopes downward more steeply, the blood-water rushing faster toward whatever destination awaits.

Carvings appear in the tunnel walls, depicting scenes of binding and submission that make my stomach churn.

Figures kneeling before entities of impossible geometry.

Chains that seem to move even in stone. Eyes that watch from every surface, tracking our progress with hungry interest.

The singing ahead reaches a crescendo, and suddenly the tunnel opens into empty air.

I scream as we plummet through darkness, the black river cascading around us like a waterfall into an abyss I can’t see the bottom of.

My shadow snake’s light reveals glimpses of massive architecture rushing past in the shape of columns the size of cathedral spires, walls that stretch beyond the reach of any illumination, carved figures that move in my peripheral vision.

The fall is rapid.

We hit another pool of the viscous liquid with a bone-jarring impact. I surface, coughing up fluid that tastes of iron and ancient suffering, my whole body aching from the fall. The others splash nearby, all of us battered but alive.

The pool we’ve landed in is perfectly circular, carved from black stone that absorbs light rather than reflects it. Around its edges, torches burn with silver flames that cast no shadows, their light revealing the true scope of what surrounds us.

We’re in a chamber so vast it could contain the entire DarkHallow Academy with room to spare.

The walls rise in tiers upon tiers of seats, each one carved from the same light- eating stone.

But it’s not empty—shadows move in the higher tiers, suggesting an audience of beings I don’t want to know the species of.

At the chamber’s heart, a raised dais supports a number of thrones arranged in a perfect circle, each one occupied by a figure that makes my every instinct scream warnings.

We are expelled forcibly from the pool, being pushed out before it closes off with a loud boom, the stone slamming into place over the surface, echoing through the chamber with an awful finality.

The Tenebris Vinculum quivers expectantly against Evren’s chest, its ancient eye opening to survey the assembled powers with what looks suspiciously like satisfaction. The grimoire isn’t surprised by this place, it expected to be here. More than that, it wanted to be here. It led us here.

The true scope of what we’ve walked into dawns on me. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.

This isn’t the end of our quest.

This isn’t the completion of the grimoire.

This isn’t even the real test.

What I thought was the finish line is only the starting point. We are sealed off from DarkHallow, from Blackgrove. We are on our own in a hostile environment with a god-like grimoire that is clearly happy to be here.

Which means we, very definitely, shouldn’t be.

Blood Court, Book 2: Blood Court