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Days. How many days had passed since it all began? Shaw couldn’t tell. Brothers vanished and reappeared, but nothing changed.

Darkness was the constant state of the waking world.

Awake.

Shaw wondered sometimes if he was awake at all. Maybe he was stuck in a perpetual tormenting nightmare.

Winter’s whip slashed him across the face, he could feel the pain. It burned, but it wasn’t the quick heat of fire, it was the slow burn that couldn’t be escaped.

Shaw had stepped outside to know if he was awake, to feel anything. But he couldn’t say. Hands, slimy and cold, sometimes crawled over his face, jutting their rotting fingers into his flesh. Sometimes they did not. Sometimes ghosts whispered in his ears; memories that screamed with terror. Sometimes they did not. Sometimes it was only the cold of winter, the wind’s endless howls and shrills. He couldn’t tell whether he was awake or forever cursed to dream.

You are mad.

You are lost.

Light escaped from the sole window of the Raven Tower. Light from a place that should have shone its last.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He is dead.

Dead? Does anything die with you? Trapped within you?

Shaw wound blistered fingers around the cold hilt. He strode towards the place he had hoped to leave forever alone in its dark bliss.

As he wandered up the treacherous stairs that twisted into the darkness before leaving for the light, he thought himself a wolf walking into the snare of a hunter. It was a feeling buried deep, a primal fear. It whispered its warning, pleaded him to go back. The feeling would devour him if he let it. It had happened before.

He is dead.

Arms stretched out from the tower walls, now black as obsidian. They had bleeding wounds, torn flesh, others warped and twisted, bent far and unnatural. They grabbed, jerked, and pleaded. Shaw drew his sword and cut himself free, dead arms flopping down the stairs for others to take their place. He ran, upwards, towards the light, hounded by the screams from the depths of the earth, of souls who demanded their due.

Shaw broke through the door and collapsed, gasping, and spitting. The Madman’s chamber, however, gave him no respite. The pewter that had been subdued by the scent of citrus had broken the spell, consumed, and grown. The stank of it gagged him — it was unbearable — but he managed to stand against his body’s will to heave all that he had eaten.

‘I’m better than all of you… I’ll prove it. You are nothing… but peacocks… nasty words… but no bite.’

Shaw’s weary eyes saw the Lord Commander lying on the floor, spasming and frothing at the mouth. His eyes were delirious staring into a world of his own conjuring.

‘What happened to you, Arthur?’ A black bottle lay near the Lord Commander’s sprawled out hand and Shaw could see spillage around the Madman’s strange contraptions. ‘What did you do?’

‘I could kill all of you….one hand behind my back. You are no better… than the rats in your castle.’ The Lord Commander laughed before his laughter burst into a horrific scream.

His whole body arched, throat grew and bulged, and Shaw could hear the jaw pop and crack, seeing a black feathered creature rise drenched in mucus and blood.

The raven stared at Shaw with eyes of cold jet. It laughed, and Shaw screamed with his sword raised.