Page 104 of The Madness Within

“You’re too late,” he whispered.

Placing Ember very carefully on the ground, I crossed the battlefield in a blur. My hand found his throat. And Idraggedhim toward the Gate.

It screamed at him.

Itrecognizedhim.

I snapped.

Not with fury, but with something older. Wilder. The thing beneath my skin that I’d kept chained, buried behind law books and silk suits.

The Madness.

Mine. Ancient and rotting. It surged up my spine like a scream.

Kreed tried to run. Pathetic. I called the shadows home.

They answered with a hiss.

They erupted from the ground like black serpents laced with blood rot. They weren’t just shadows anymore, no, they hadform. Antlers curled from the void like a beast crawling out of a cathedral crypt. Red hot veins pulsed through the barked crown. My fingers flexed and the shadows obeyed.

Kreed choked on his breath as they speared into his thighs, into his gut, lifting him into the air like a marionette.

“Dorian, Dorian wait!” he screamed, his mouth foaming with terror. “We can talk—”

“You talked enough,” I snarled, eyes blazing red, pupils slit, my fangs bare and gleaming. “Nowlisten.”

The vines answered for me. Red and wet, threaded with sentient muscle, they burst from the orchard floor and slithered up his legs, splitting flesh from bone like peeling fruit. His skin came off in ribbons. His teeth cracked one by one.

And I kept walking forward.

“You killed Ember’s mother,” I said coldly. “You mocked the Watchers. You hunted Ember like meat. You thought the Gate would serve you.”

It didn’t.

The Gatefed.

One shadow coiled around his jaw and ripped it downward until the bone snapped with a sound that echoed. Another plunged into his throat, tearing through muscle, flooding his lungs with blood.

His eyes boiled, one at a time. His screams turned to gurgles. His body shook violently as the madness reached for the final thread of his soul.

I could feel it, his horror, his regret, his crumbling mind trying to bargain with the darkness.

But I didn’t look away.

Iwatched.

Ilethim feel every cell unravel, every ligament pop. His bones cracked and collapsed inward, crushed by the weight of the Gate’s sentient hate. My shadows yanked him apart, slowly, until the only thing left was a twitching heart, suspended in air.

I walked past it. Let it drop.

The ground swallowed the rest.

And Kreed… ceased.

Cassian lunged.

His mouth tore wide open, jaw unhinged, spiraling rows of teeth gnashing like a worm wearing a man’s skin. Not human. Not demon. Just rot in disguise.

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