When Mercy Dies – 3
The silence after the first death was deafening.
The dungeon seemed to lean closer around Froy, the cold stone sweating a deeper chill, the torches guttering as if gasping for breath.
The mercenary in front of him — the first — hung limp against his bonds, blood soaking into the ancient stones below.
Froy's small fists trembled at his sides, the brass knuckles slick and sticky with red.
Before he could even think, the black-robed priests moved.
With a sudden, almost ceremonial precision, they stepped forward and tore the blindfolds from the remaining captives.
The mercenaries blinked against the torchlight, confusion clouding their bloodshot eyes — until they saw.
Until they realized.
The broken body at their feet.
The small boy standing over it, fists dripping crimson.
The circle of black-robed figures, silent and waiting.
Terror exploded in them like wildfire.
"No... no, please!" one of them sobbed, struggling against the chains.
"I have a daughter! I have to go home!"
Another thrashed violently, tears streaming down his face.
"Mercy! Please, I'll serve — I'll pay — anything—!"
One simply broke.
Screaming wordless horror, thrashing like a snared animal.
The black-robed priests did not speak.
They began to chant.
Low at first.
A rumbling in the bones of the earth.
"Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Sacrifice."
Over and over, louder and louder, the word became a tidal wave battering the air itself.
Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Sacrifice.
Froy stood in the center of it all, frozen, bloodied, trembling.
The voices battered him from all sides, breaking down thought, mercy, fear — everything human left inside him.
On the dais, Pope Caeron watched with unreadable eyes, hands folded behind his back, lips sealed.
Sinclaire stood beside him, rocking slightly on her heels, humming to herself — not joining the chant, but watching with glittering fascination.
Froy's vision swam.
His heart pounded — slow, sluggish, like a drum fading in a battlefield lost long ago.
He didn't feel his legs moving.
He didn't feel his hand reaching out, grabbing another man's hair, pulling him down.
The man's scream ripped through the chanting.
It didn't stop.
Froy raised his fist.
Brought it down.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Blood arced through the air like red ribbons in a forgotten parade.
Teeth shattered like porcelain.
Hands clawed weakly at empty air, too broken to defend.
The chanting never faltered.
Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Sacrifice.
A second mercenary fell.
Then a third.
The fourth tried to crawl away, sobbing, begging — but the chains held him fast.
Froy moved with mechanical certainty, a puppet dancing on strings made of despair.
He struck.
And struck.
And struck, until there was no movement left.
The dungeon floor was slick with blood, shining darkly under the failing torchlight.
The chanting ceased.
Silence crashed down like a shroud.
Froy stood amidst the corpses, a boy wrapped in the ruins of humanity, the brass knuckles dripping steady drops of red into the stone cracks.
He wasn't breathing hard.
He wasn't weeping anymore.
He simply stood there, trembling, staring at the mess he had made — the mess they had made of him.
Something inside him, already broken long ago, twisted further.
It was not a snap, not a scream, not a collapse.
It was something quieter.
A soft tearing of what remained of innocence.
A small boy, with brilliant blue eyes and hair kissed by platinum light, standing in a pool of ruin — smiling faintly, unknowingly, like a child in a dream.
In that moment, he was no longer just a boy.
He was something else.
Something colder.
Something hollow.
A beautiful little angel sculpted from blood, sorrow, and madness.
Somewhere beyond sight, hidden deep in the folds of the mist, something vast leaned closer.
A voice, older than gods, brushed against Froy's mind — gentle, almost loving.
"You did well, little one.
Now, come.
Your true lesson begins."
The boy lifted his head slowly, as if drawn by that voice.
And as the mist swallowed him,
the boy fell —
not onto stone,
but into a sea of weightless darkness.
There, time unraveled.
Seconds stretched into eternities.
Breaths became endless sighs.
Heartbeats rang out like distant bells across a hollow sky.
Froy drifted — weightless, thoughtless — through a spiral of forgotten stars and drowned memories.
Here, in this twilight ocean where dreams and nightmares had no border, something vast awaited him.
Something that smiled with teeth unseen.
It whispered to him, not with words, but with promises woven into the very marrow of his being.
"Come deeper, little one...
This is your true home now.
We will shape you — slowly, sweetly — into something beautiful."
Beyond the unseen veil, others watched.
Ancient beings — Outer Gods — whose eyes had long tired of the petty squabbles of mortals.
They saw in this broken boy a new game, a new entertainment for their endless boredom.
And so they let the ritual stand.
They let the seed be planted.
The boy, Froy, would not grow as mortals did.
He would be sculpted —
bent, broken, reforged —
until he no longer remembered what it meant to weep.
In the black sea where time forgot itself,
Froy sank deeper.
And the whispers...
oh, the whispers grew ever sweeter.
And from the darkness,
the mist began to take form.
Not stable.
Not solid.
A shape of dreams half-remembered, half-forgotten —
arms outstretched, wide and welcoming.
The boy, small and bloodied, staggered toward it.
His legs moved on their own, clumsy, trembling.
His mind, frayed and unraveling, could barely register the world around him.
But somewhere, deep in the shattered core of his being, he felt it:
Warmth.
Twisted and wrong, like the heat from a dying star,
but warmth nonetheless.
And in his hollowed heart,
that was enough.
Froy stumbled forward, arms out —
seeking the embrace promised by the shapeless mist.
The arms of Sethvyr closed around him.
Not harshly.
Not cruelly.
Tenderly.
Like a lover.
Like a foster mother.
Like the end of everything sweetly whispered into a dying ear.
And in that embrace,
the last fragment of who he had been was sealed away.
A pawn for a new game.
A broken angel for the chaos yet to come.
And the mist sang,
soft and low,
as it devoured him whole.