The candlelight flickered across the bloodstained floor of Reed's private interrogation chamber. The room—buried three levels beneath his fortress's main dungeons—existed on no official blueprint. Its walls, lined with sound-dampening enchantments, had witnessed methods Reed had once sworn never to employ again.
Yet desperate times bred desperate measures.
The cultist's body hung limply from iron shackles, his once-pristine ceremonial robes now tattered and crimson-splashed. His breathing came in ragged, wet gasps—the sound of a man whose lungs had begun to fill with fluid. Despite his condition, a fevered smile twisted his features.
"You still don't understand," the man wheezed, bloody spittle flecking his cracked lips. "Every drop of blood you spill... every moment of pain... feeds Them. Your very resistance... strengthens Their coming."
