Agent Deva awoke to the sterile stench of antiseptic and iron. His naked back clung to a cold steel table, its surface etched with grooves that channeled old bloodstains into cryptic runes. The ceiling swam into focus—a mosaic of water damage and flickering lumen-moss that cast jagged shadows like teeth. Fitting, he thought. The Monarch's dungeons always had a flair for metaphor.
His skull throbbed. Memories surfaced in shards: Claire's shattered buckler, Georg's hoarse scream, the Inquisitor's bone-mask grinning as sewage rats burst into ash. But the clearest memory was Georg's face—alive, dragged into the tunnels. That alone let Devon's lungs keep drawing air, even as the dungeon's chill gnawed at his bare skin.
The leather restraints chafed in all the wrong ways - too tight across his sternum, digging into old scars from Claire's ill-advised "knife juggling demonstration", loose enough around his left wrist that he could feel the frayed edge rasping against his pulse point. Every exhale fogged briefly before being sucked into a rusted vent above, carrying with it the sour tang of previous occupants' final breaths. Somewhere, water dripped in arrhythmic counterpoint to the lumen-moss's electric sizzle, each drop hitting what sounded like a shallow puddle of...something thicker than water.
Boots echoed outside the cell. Devon strained against leather restraints, his ISB-trained mind cataloging weaknesses: Left strap frayed. Hinge on the right cuff rusted. But his magic… gone. The loyalty tattoos writhed beneath his skin, acidic threads sewing his mana channels shut.
The door creaked open.
"Ah. The cockroach stirs."
Inquisitor Murdoch May loomed in the doorway, his helmet tucked under one arm. Yellow pupils glowed like swamp gas, illuminating a face that might've been handsome if not for the scars raking his jaw—a self-inflicted map of old heresies. He tossed a file onto Devon's chest. Photos spilled out: Georg's wife and children, shackled in a cattle car. A scrawled label: Batch 37—Fertilizer Processing.
"Your brother's family," Murdoch purred. "They squealed so prettily when we told them you signed the warrant."
Devon's throat tightened. Lies. The ISB's bread and butter. But doubt slithered in. He had buried his past, hadn't he? Burned the name Tamphon, forged orphanage records, let the ISB mold him into a blade. All to protect them.
Murdoch leaned close, his breath reeking of mint and rot. "You really thought we didn't know? The Monarch's census takers have traced every drop of Tamphon blood since your great-grandfather pissed in the wrong alley." He flicked a photo of Georg's youngest—a girl, six, her eyes wide as a purge-squad rifle found her forehead. "Rebel stock. Tainted. But don't worry… we'll make their deaths useful."
Devon spat. The glob fell short, splattering Murdoch's boot.
"Oh, ferocity!" The Inquisitor clapped. "Let's see how long that lasts."
First, they took his eyes.
A chirurgeon wheeled in a cart laden with tools—some steel, some glowing with stolen magic. Murdoch selected a pair of ornate forceps, their tips shaped like crow's feet. "A gift from the Seraphim," he said. "They adore… symbolism."
Devon thrashed as the forceps closed around his left eye. The pain was a white-hot spike, but worse was the sound—a wet crunch, like grapes popped under a boot. Murdoch hummed a lullaby as he worked.
"Hush now, princeling, don't you cry…"
Memories flickered—unwanted, unbidden.
Sixteen, standing in the ISB recruiter's office. Georg's fist connecting with his jaw. "You'd serve the bastards who killed Pa?"
"It's the only way to protect you!" Devon hissed, blood on his tongue. "They're purging families with rebel ties. But if I'm one of them—"
Georg's laugh was bitter. "You'll be their dog. And dogs get put down."
The forceps moved to his right eye.
Crunch.
Darkness.
The darkness came in nauseating waves. First the sterile white agony, then the warm gush down his temples that smelled incongruously of childhood summers - Georg pinning him in honeysuckle bushes during their wrestling matches, crushed petals mixing with nosebleed copper. Then came the phantom lights - not memories, but his optic nerves firing random patterns. A starburst of kitchen grease spattering as he flipped pancakes for Lapen's birthday. The oscillating green pulse of Melissa's firefly drones. Claire's hair catching dawn light through diner windows as she counted the morning till. Murdoch's face swam in this electric nowhere, his scars now glowing like the fissures in overripe peaches.
The chirurgeon dabbed styptic powder into the hollows—not to heal, but to map pain pathways. Devon's world became a fireworks display of neural static, every misfiring optic nerve tattooing the ceiling with remembered light.
Next, his tongue.
"Such a shame," Murdoch sighed. "I've heard you're quite the chef."
The chirurgeon's saw whirred—a tiny, serrated thing that sang as it bit into flesh. Devon choked on copper and bile, his screams gurgling. Murdoch leaned in.
"Your little diner friends—Claire, was it?—they've hung your apron like a shrine. Pathetic. But don't fret. We'll reunite you soon."
Lies. Claire's too smart. She would've already left, somewhere and prepared to fight again.
But doubt lingered. Would she?
The saw pushed through.
The taste outlived the tongue. Iron, yes, but beneath it - the chalky aftertaste of ISB-issued nutrient bars. The phantom burn of Claire's "special" chili oil they'd dared him to chug during last Winterfest. The creamy sweetness of stolen honey straight from the diner's comb, filched during closing hours. Now his mouth filled with molten lead and lilacs, the latter scent so strong he half-expected petals to spill from his severed muscle. His throat became a bellows pumping useless air, each wet rasp fluttering the cauterized stump.
Murdoch tossed the severed tongue into a jar of brine. 'For the diner's soup stock,' he explained. 'Rebels love recycling.'
Finally, his limbs.
A bone saw this time, its blade etched with frost runes to numb the pain. Murdoch paused. "A deal, cockroach. Give me Claire's bolt-holes, and I'll let you keep a hand. You can flip me off as you die. Dignity."
Devon's remaining fingers twitched. One gesture. So easy.
Flashback: Claire, grinning as she "accidentally" set his toast ablaze. "Call it cremation practice," she'd said. He'd retaliated with a ladle to the ribs.
He curled his middle finger.
Murdoch sighed. "Pity."
The saw bit deep.
The frost runes lied. Cold bloomed only in the marrow before the saw teeth hit bone, vibrating up his jaw in a mockery of laughter. Then came the furnace roar as magic bone-dust hit open air, igniting in brief coronas of blue flame - the ISB's calling card. His right arm hit the floor with a meaty thud, fingers still curled in that defiant gesture. Through the cleric's sustaining haze, he watched detachedly.. as a janitor's broom swept it toward a drain, the middle finger tapping twice against the grate like a final punchline.
Healing was the worst part.
Clerics hovered at the edges of his consciousness, their censers spitting emerald smoke that writhed into his wounds like maggots. No regrowth—only preservation. His eye sockets crusted over with crystalline scabs that refracted dungeon light into his brain. The tongue stump oozed blackened bile, nerve endings kept raw and shrieking where frost-rune sawteeth had gnawed bone. Stumps of limbs twitched with phantom fire, muscle fibers chemically bullied into endless contraction. Each cycle left him less human, more exposed nerve cluster.
"Why bother?" he tried to scream.
Murdoch answered anyway. "The Monarch believes in teaching moments." He gestured to a mirrored ceiling. Devon's mangled reflection stared back—a puppet strung up for invisible spectators. "Every purge squad captain watches this feed. Your suffering is… instructional."
Devon laughed then—a wet, broken sound. Joke's on you. Then Devon with all his focus went stiff and stopped reacting to anything. A last revolt against the absurd.
Death, when it came, was almost kind.
Murdoch slit his throat with a ceremonial dagger, its edge dull enough to hurt. "Any last words?"
What remained of Devon's tongue fumbled - a cauterized nub that flapped uselessly against teeth now loosened by endless screaming.But in his last moment, he lied there defiant, showing nothing by resistance.
The blade sawed.
The ceremonial dagger tugged at his throat fibers like overcooked mutton. For one merciful moment, the pain transcended into sensation - the vibrating steel became Melissa's drones humming near his ear during kitchen prep, the gushing warmth became Claire dumping stew broth down his shirt after a prank. Then reality crashed back. His final breath escaped as a wet whistle, the same pitch as the diner's broken kettle. Somewhere beyond the mirrored ceiling, he imagined the Monarch's pigs already stampeding in their pens, jostling for first taste of irony.
Murdoch left without wasting a second more. "What a waste of resources." He muttered.
Then the corpse was unstrapped, thrown down onto a wagon and pushed away. The room was duly cleaned to make way for new victims to torture.
The next day Devon Vael and his family were hung on pikes in the gallows, before a new set of rebels were hung, their deaths a slow enduring defiance, the hanging was done in a slow way, they were hung standing up, the ropes being slowly pulled by an incremental increase in weight.