Chapter 29

• The air inside the lair was thick, suffocating, laced with the cloying perfume of decay and the metallic tang of dried blood. It clung to Kael’s senses like a shroud, a stark contrast to the crisp, life-giving air of the ravine he had just breached. This was the heart of the beast, a place where darkness had festered for millennia, feeding on fear and desperation. The passage, once the ward had shattered, had opened into a vast cavern, its ceiling lost in impenetrable shadow. Torches, fueled by some unnatural, sickly green flame, flickered along the rough-hewn walls, casting long, distorted shadows that writhed and danced like captive souls.
• Before him, bathed in the eerie luminescence, stood the coven’s elite. They were a tableau of predatory stillness, their eyes, like chips of obsidian, fixed on Kael. And at their center, on a raised dais of polished, dark stone, sat the architect of this nightmare. Lord Valerius. His form was skeletal, yet possessed a terrible, gaunt beauty, his alabaster skin stretched taut over sharp bones. His eyes, however, were the true horrors – bottomless pools of crimson, burning with an ancient, unholy malice. Beside him, flanking the throne, were two figures who radiated a palpable aura of power. One was a brute, his shoulders as broad as a bear’s, his face a brutal mask of scarred flesh and predatory intent. The other was slender, almost elven in her grace, her movements fluid and serpentine, her gaze sharp and calculating, the very embodiment of deadly precision.
• “So, the wolf comes to its own slaughter,” Valerius’s voice was a dry rasp, like stones grinding together, yet it resonated with an authority that commanded attention, that echoed through the cavern, chilling Kael to the bone. “You tread where you are not welcome, creature. And for that, you will pay the ultimate price.”