The silence after the command was louder than thunder. It pressed in on Shanane's chest, thick and suffocating, but she did not move. Her knees ached from the stone, her hands trembled, but she did not lower her head. The words still rang in her ears: kneel, swear, serve...,each one heavy as iron, each one meant to shatter her will.
But she would not bend.
Her breath came shallow, fast, but steady. Her fear was real. It wrapped around her lungs like chains, crept down her spine like cold oil but something else rose to meet it: spark, a voice in her gut louder than the whispers in the air.
She would not choose her grandmother's path. She would not sell her soul for survival.
Not even to him.
She lifted her eyes slowly, stared into the blazing gaze of the demon. Her voice, when it came, was quiet. But it did not waver.
__Shanane: "No."
The demon lord did not speak at first. He tilted his head again, slow and unnatural, as if considering the defiance of a creature so far beneath him that her resistance was not even amusing, only pathetic.
The room pulsed.
Heat gathered at the edges of her vision. The symbols on the ground flickered like dying fire. The shadows began to stretch and twist along the walls, clawing upward as if pulled by invisible hands.
Then the voice came again.
__Atheramond: "There is no 'no,' child. There is no refusal in the tongue of the damned."
His voice did not echo. It did not need to. It filled every corner of the chamber. It filled her bones. It slid down her throat like smoke and made her teeth ache.
__Atheramond: "Your blood was signed over long before your lungs drew breath. Your grandmother bartered your future with her grief and her cowardice. And now, you will pay. You will kneel. You will serve. You will become what she promised, my vessel. My respectacle. My new mouthpiece upon this earth."
Shanane clenched her fists. Her jaw ached from how tightly she held it shut. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to run, but there was nowhere to go. She was surrounded by stone and heat and the gaze of something older than time.
She forced her voice up from her throat.
__Shanane: "I'm not her. I won't serve you."
Atheramond's smile was slow. Cruel. It did not belong on anything with a face.
Atheramond's eyes burned like twin coals as he leaned forward, the oppressive heat in the chamber surging around him. The air felt heavy and charged with ancient energy, pressing into Shanane's lungs and tightening around her heart. His voice rolled across the room like molten iron:
__Atheramond: "You speak of defiance as though it costs nothing. You speak of choice, yet you stand before me in the place of inheritance, bound by blood older than your line."
The sigils on the walls pulsed in the dim light, shadows crawling against the stone. Bones rattled in distant corners, stirred by the demon's malicious amusement.
__Atheramond: "Your grandmother acted out of desperation and fear. But you have the chance to embrace what she sealed in your veins. You can honor the pact...or collapse beneath its weight."
The young woman's raised her chin, placing one trembling foot forward. Her voice was a blade of steel.
__Shanane: "I do not believe I owe a debt to evil."
The Demon's Lord lips curved into a twisted smile.
__Atheramond: "Evil is merely a name made by those who fear power. I am more than death. I am dominion. I am destiny. You may label me wicked... but your blood calls me sovereign."
He closed the distance between them, each step resonating against the floor as if the ground feared him.
__Atheramond: "I offer you power beyond mortal dreams. Glory that will feed legends for centuries. Wealth beyond the mortals who dare to dream. Fear and respect from men and worship from the dead. Demons of ancient nights will bow to your will. They will carry you across shadowed paths and guard your every breath."
Shanane's hands clenched at her sides, fingers digging into her palms. Her heart raced. Rage and terror waged a war inside her. Yet she held her ground.
__Shanane: "I will not serve as your tool."
Atheramond's laughter echoed through the chamber, causing the runes to shiver.
__Atheramond: "Then you will be crushed beneath the power you refuse to command. Let me speak plainly: I will give you access to the secrets of death's threshold. Magic older than humans, whispered by the ancients and now lost yours, if you kneel. You will know the path of souls and bend it to your will."
He stepped even closer. The hot air inched between them, carrying the distant echo of his promise.
__Atheramond: "I promised you dominion, worship, protection, secrets. I promised you meaning. But if you will not kneel..."
He paused before saying:
__Atheramond: "Then you will see that power does not live only with the free. It lives in the enslaved, crackling beneath the will that knows it cannot defeat its own blood."
Every syllable echoed, like the chime of an abyssal bell.
Shanane's voice still trembled, but hardened.
__Shanane: "I will never bow."
__Atheramond: "Then I will make you watch."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. The words were already inside her head before her ears registered them.
Before she could blink, his head turned slowly and eliberately. And his gaze, those eyes like hollow furnaces, locked onto Eoghan.
The air shifted in an instant. The walls did not crack, but something deeper than stone did, something in the very air, the unseen structure of the room. It flexed, like space itself recoiling.
Then came the sound. It wasn't the thunder or lightning. It was Something deeper, like a root being torn from the earth.
The huntsman gasped sharply.
His body jerked. He dropped to one knee, clutching his face with both hands.
__Shanane: "Eoghan?...."
His fingers trembled. His mouth opened but no sound came out. A drop of blood traced down from beneath his palm, dark and stark against his pale cheek.
He looked up and she saw. His eyes were crying blood. They poured like broken vessels. Long red lines streamed down his skin, gathering at his chin before falling onto the stone floor in rhythmic drips.
The sight hit her like a physical blow. He gasped again, the breath catching hard in his chest, like he was drowning without water.
She ran to him, catching his arm just as he began to fall sideways. He was heavy, heavier than he should have been, as if his body was being pulled down by something unseen. His skin was cold. His muscles were tight with pain. His teeth ground together as he tried, and failed, to speak.
The Demon Lord stood still, not moving, not speaking. Just watching with that hollow, expectant satisfaction.
__Atheramond: "Refuse me again, and I will leave you nothing to love."
The words slid into the air like poisoned silk. They didn't need to be screamed, they were already etched into the walls of her mind.
His clawed hand rose, elegant and terrible. The room darkened like a shutter had slammed across the sky. The glowing symbols on the stone bled crimson, pulsing like veins.
__Atheramond: "Aurora."
Shanane froze.
__Atheramond: "Dalen. Maylis. Elira. Ren."
Each name cut through her like a shard of ice.
__Atheramond: "Every soul you have touched in your fragile, self-important little life… I will find them."
The chamber began to tremble again. Not from the structure, but from something deeper. The pressure in the air became unbearable, pushing against her eardrums, her skull, her spine.
__Atheramond: "I will unmake them slowly. I will slip beneath their skins and remind them of what you brought into this world. I will watch them scream, Shanane. I will break them open, piece by piece, until the very memory of you is soaked in their blood. I will whisper your name as they break. I will leave behind ruins soaked with your guilt."
The whispers returned, faster this time, overlapping in voices not meant to be spoken together. Some sounded like her own. Some like her grandmother's. Some like children, weeping. Others laughing.
Shanane's knees buckled. Her hands tightened on Eoghan's arm. He groaned again, head slumped forward, blood dripping steadily onto the stones.
__Atheramond: "And him."
He pointed with one claw.
__Atheramond: "He will die last. Slowly. After he has forgotten the taste of hope. After he has begged me for the release of death. After you have watched him suffer in ways your kind cannot imagine. You will kneel, eventually. But by then, there will be no one left to kneel for."
Shanane's hands were shaking. Her breath came too fast, like it could never fill her lungs. She held Eoghan like an anchor. She tightened her grip on his arm, her nails dug into her palms. She forced her feet to stay rooted, even as the world around her felt like it was tilting.
The fear was there. Of course it was. This thing, was not bound by the rules of men. It could do everything it promised. And worse.
Her vision blurred, not from tears, but from the rage rising in her chest. Rage at her grandmother. Rage at this monster. Rage at the way her life had been dragged into something she never asked for, never wanted.
She looked up: eyes burning, heart racing and whispered through clenched teeth:
__Shanane: "You'll never own me."
The demon lowered his voice until it rippled through the walls like poison seeping into stone.
__Atheramond: "You have three days, child, until the light dies in their hearts. You will lose every person you have ever loved, no exceptions. Their souls will not find peace. They will wander the void between mortal life and death, forever lost in the shadows where neither salvation nor oblivion awaits."
The chamber's heat froze to a brittle chill. Each rune etched into the stone underfoot pulsed darkly, as if feeding on his words themselves.
__Atheramond: "I will claim them one by one. Their souls will be mine to command. They will know no rest. They will know no end. Their existence will become an echo, an eternal reminder of your failure to serve."
Shanane's breath hitched, each inhalation stinging like shards of ice in her lungs. Her legs trembled, her fingers curved in desperation around Eoghan's arm. Her heart thundered, demanding escape, defiance, mercy, all at once.
He watched her. Every word sank into her chest and shattered against her ribs.
Then he softened his tone.
__Atheramond: "But still, a door remains open, even now. If you reclaim your sense, if you bend that stubborn pride of yours, if you kneel and speak the words, then I will halt the darkness I have unleashed."
He leaned forward, crimson eyes locked into hers.
__Atheramond: "Swear your allegiance to me, declare that your soul is mine, right now, in this moment, and you will end what is coming. You will save them. All of them."
His hand reached out, a gesture slower than grace, and colder than the grave.
Every shadow in the room recoiled. The air crackled with suspended power. Even the stones underfoot quivered, powerless to refuse.
Shanane pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, torn between worlds.
A dull ache settled in her chest. Breath rushed through her throat like flame consumed by wind.
Then he smiled. It was not a salvation, but a verdict. And just like that, he disappeared.
He did not walk away. He folded into the air behind him. The echoes of his presence shimmered in the silence, and then faded.
Shanane exhaled, though the air felt too thin for comfort.
Eoghan gasped. His hands left her arm and flew to his face. The blood had stopped flowing. His eyes no longer poured crimson but each rim of red could not be wiped away. Each stain was proof. He touched his cheeks, pressed a finger to the red line still etched in dried warmth.
He looked at Shanane, his voice low and hoarse.
__Eoghan: "It… it was real."
She nodded, though her vision blurred.
The chamber remained wrapped in a brittle hush. Every rune had gone dim, yet something unspoken pulsed between them, a promise of doom, a question that had no answer.
She wiped her hand across her face, blinking away tears she could no longer stop. Fear sat heavy on her shoulders. Guilt weighed down her chest. But underneath all of it, a single flame burned.
She had three days. Three days to save them all. Three days to speak the words that would save their souls.
Or refuse, and bury them all in eternal darkness.
And the silence stretched forward into those days.