The fourth day arrived, or at least, I assumed it did. Time had become a sludge of blackness and pain, marked only by the agonizing drip, drip, drip of water that I could no longer feel on my forehead. My body had entered a state of total, trembling shock.
The miracle of the third day, their absence, had been a cruel joke. It gave my nerves time to settle just enough to feel the true depth of my ruin. My left leg was a necrotic mess, and my right leg, shattered by the sledgehammer, was swollen to twice its size, turning a bruised, mottled purple. I sat there in the dark, stripped of everything. My maid dress was gone, shredded into useless rags. I was completely exposed, shivering in nothing but my underwear, with only the matted curtain of my black hair to offer a flicker of false modesty.
The hunger was the worst part. My Blood Curse was an entity, a starving beast inside my chest that was eating me from the inside out. I looked toward the corner where my toes lay. There was barely any flesh left on them now, just yellowed bone and stringy sinew, picked clean by the maggots that now crawled across the floor toward my fresh wounds.
The silence was broken by the heavy, familiar screech of the iron bolt.
Clang.
The door groaned open, and the intrusion of light felt like needles stabbing into my eyes. Dominik and Lara stepped in, looking refreshed, as if they hadn't spent the last few days systematically destroying a human being.
"Look at her, she looks like a half-eaten carcass. The smell in here is absolutely revolting, Dominik."
Lara remarked, her voice airy and light. She stepped over the puddle of blood and bile near my feet, her silk skirts gathered daintily in her hand while Dominik didn't say a word at first. He just stood there, staring at my exposed, trembling form with a look of pure, predatory amusement. He walked over to the corner and kicked one of the tiny, cleaned-off bones toward me.
"Fourth day, Roxy, you're still breathing. I'm impressed. Most people would have had the decency to die of shock by now." Dominik said
He knelt down, the torchlight casting his shadow over me like a shroud. He reached out and grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back so I was forced to look at him. My mouth hung open, the stump of my tongue a dry, scarred lump. I couldn't even whimper.
"You're probably wondering why we skipped yesterday, we had to give the maggots time to work. And we had to give you time to realize that no one is coming. Not Mochi, not Maine, not the Bureau. You're a corpse they already buried."
Dominik whispered, his breath hot against my cheek. Lara leaned against the wall, tapping a finger against her chin.
"I think today we should focus on the other side, don't you? Symmetry is so important."
Dominik let go of my hair, my head thudding back against the stone. He reached his knife from his scabbard
The metallic shing of the blade echoed against the damp, stone walls, but it wasn't a sword. Dominik reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, jagged knife. The blade was stained with a dark, crusty patina, the dried blood of the maids he had slaughtered back at the manor. Just the sight of it sent a cold, primal shiver through the little energy I had left.
I hadn't slept in ninety-six hours. Or exactly four days straight.
My mind was a fractured mosaic of hallucinations and shadows. Dark, sunken circles hung heavy under my eyes, making me look as skeletal as I felt. I didn't care anymore. The hunger, the thirst, the mutilation, it had finally hollowed me out. I stared at a crack in the floor, my gaze vacant, waiting for the void to finally claim me. I just wanted to die.
Dominik's grin faltered when he saw my lack of reaction. His ego, fueled by my suffering, couldn't handle my silence.
"Ignoring me, huh? Think you can just check out before I'm done with you? Maybe you'll find your voice once I peel back the curtains."
He knelt between my shattered legs. I felt the cold, rusted tip of the knife press against the top of my thigh. With a slow, deliberate twist, he sliced upward.
"Huh? Ahhhhh…"
I tried to scream, but without a tongue, the sound was a horrific, gargled braying, a wet, desperate animal noise that vibrated in my chest.
"Eirene, that's the spirit! Keep it up!" Dominik cheered,
He began to flay me. He worked the rusted edge under the skin, tugging and slicing until the dermis began to separate from the fat. I thrashed, the chains on my wrist rattling violently, my one good hand clawing at the air as I felt my own hide being unzipped from my body. The sound was the worst part, a wet, peeling noise like wet leather being torn apart.
Dominik looked up at Lara, his face splattered with fresh crimson droplets.
"Lara, darling, go to the kitchen. Prepare bags of salt. High-grade, if we have it."
Lara let out a melodic, tittering laugh, clapping her hands together like a child at a fair.
"Oh, Dominik, you always have the best ideas! I'll be right back."
She skipped out of the cellar, the heavy door groaning shut behind her.
Dominik turned back to his work with renewed vigor. He gripped a flap of the skin he had loosened and yanked it back. I felt the air hit the raw, exposed nerves of my musculature for the first time. It was a cold, searing agony that made my vision white out. He continued the slow, methodical process, stripping the skin away from my shins and thighs in long, ragged ribbons.
Red, pulsing muscle and white, stringy tendons were revealed to the dim torchlight. The floor beneath me turned into a lake of gore, slick and steaming in the cold air. Dominik leaned in, his breath hot against my ear as he watched the exposed meat of my legs twitch involuntarily in response to the trauma.
"Look at that, underneath all that hero skin, you're just red meat and salt-starved nerves. And don't you worry, Eirene... the salt is coming."
The cellar door creaked open once more, and Lara stepped into the dim, torchlit room with a heavy burlap sack slung over her shoulder. She looked at the raw, flayed meat of my legs, the exposed muscles twitching in the damp air, and a wide, ecstatic grin split her face.
"I hope you're ready, Eirene, Dominik says you need a little seasoning."
With a sudden, violent heave, she tipped the sack.
A heavy cascade of coarse, white salt poured out, hitting the stone floor and bouncing directly into the open wounds of my shins and thighs. The effect was instantaneous and apocalyptic. It was a chemical fire that surged through every exposed nerve ending in my lower body.
I arched my back so hard the magic-damping chains groaned against the stone. A scream tore from my throat, a raw, jagged, gargled sound that was the loudest thing I had ever produced. It was the sound of a soul being scorched. My vision exploded into white sparks, and my heart hammered against my ribs like a dying bird. The salt drew out the moisture, tightening the raw muscle and making the flayed ribbons of my skin feel like they were being cauterized by lightning.
Dominik threw his head back, laughing so hard he had to lean against the wall for support.
"Look at her! She's dancing! Even without a tongue, she's singing for us!"
Lara stood over me, kicking more salt into the deep gashes with the toe of her silk slipper.
"Oh, stop being so dramatic, little flea. You wanted to be a martyr, didn't you? This is what it looks like when a hero dies and nobody cares."
She leaned down, her face inches from mine, watching the tears and sweat pour down my face.
"You smell like a butcher shop, Roxy. It's a pity no one is coming to claim the meat."
I couldn't even form a thought. The agony was a physical wall, blocking out my memories, my name, and my hope. I was just a mass of screaming nerves and salt.
"I think she's had enough for today, Lara, we don't want her to go into shock too fast. We still have five more toes on the other foot to play with tomorrow."
"True, sleep tight, Eirene. Try not to let the maggots get too salty."
They turned together, their shadows retreating as they stepped out of the cellar. The heavy iron door slammed shut with a final, echoing thud, and the bolt slid home.
I was left alone in the absolute, crushing darkness, my body convulsing on a bed of salt and blood, unable to even whisper a prayer for the death that refused to come.
The silence returned, but it was different now.
I lay there in the absolute dark, my body twitching in rhythmic, involuntary shocks. Every tiny movement caused the salt crystals to grind deeper into my raw flesh. But the physical pain was beginning to be eclipsed by something far more terrifying: the psychological snapping of my mind.
In the darkness, I couldn't remember what Cassius's voice sounded like, the constant flirting through me made me drive crazy. I tried to picture the Flower Manor, but all I could see were the rusted head-shears and the white crystals of salt.
The "Eirene Rynd: Deceased" scroll played on a loop behind my eyelids. I started to wonder if Roxy ever existed at all. Maybe I had always been this, a nameless, skinless thing in a hole. Maybe the vineyard, the girl who wanted to pluck vines and grapes suddenly vanished.
I began to feel a sick, twisted gratitude for the salt. It was the only thing that felt real. The pain was the only proof I was still alive, and yet, I hated myself for it. I was a hero who had eaten her own flesh. I was a girl whose friends were currently crying over an empty coffin, oblivious to the fact that their Roxy was being unmade, layer by layer, in the dark.
I stared into the void, my eyes wide and unblinking, the dark circles under them looking like bruises on a corpse. I didn't want to be saved anymore. Being saved meant having to remember who I was. And as the salt continued to burn into my soul, I realized that I didn't want to be Roxy anymore. Roxy was a girl who could feel hope.
In this cellar, there was no Roxy. There was only the salt, the dark, and the crushing weight of a world that had already said goodbye.