Page 92 of Devoured
His skin peeled in sheets, revealing more burning scripture underneath. He screamed as his tongue caught fire—false sermons finally burning away. But even tongueless, scripture kept writing itself deeper.
The Mirror Eater shattered herself into a thousand fragments. Too late.
“Stop.”Shards froze mid-air.
“Helena Wolfe.”In each fragment, a different victim’s face appeared beneath my reflection. “You reflected their worst moments back at them. Made them relive trauma for entertainment.”
The shards reassembled wrong. Each piece now displayed a different woman. The girl too young to understand. The woman who’d blocked it out until Helena forced her to remember. The survivor who’d built a new life, only to have it shattered.
The faces screamed. All at once.
Helena’s body cracked like a mirror trying to hold its shape. Each fracture filled with a victim’s pain. She tried to scream, but a thousand voices came out.
“You made them see their worst moments repeatedly. Now you live them all. Simultaneously. The mind can’t process that much trauma at once—so yours will keep trying. And failing.”
“Kill me!”The words came in dozens of voices.
“You get what you gave—endless reflection. Except now, it’s yours.”
The Mawkeepers had tried fading into the walls. I pulled them back like dragging fish from deep water.
“Always lurking. Always reporting secrets.”I raised my hand. “You wanted to be part of the walls? Fine.”
Bones stretched and flattened. Cartilage spread like mortar. Screams turned to grinding stone as vertebrae became support beams, ribs became joists, skulls became keystones.
“Feel the weight of every soul who suffered because of your reports. Forever conscious. Forever load-bearing.”
Silence fell, broken only by thread pulling through flesh, scripture burning into bone, and the settling of living architecture.
Then it hit me. These weren’t just servants—they were victims first. Each one tortured until they embraced their tormentor’s tools. The Seamstress, broken with needle and thread until she became them. Gallows, carved with lies until he was lies. The Mirror Eater, forced to relive trauma until she weaponized it.
The ultimate corruption: turning victims into victimizers.
The whole system needs restructuring. But first...
“This is justice.”The words became law as I spoke them. “Not random torture. Specific punishment for specific sins. The cycle of victim becoming victimizer ends now.”
Marion, Isaac, and Sela looked at me. Not with fear, but recognition.
“You survived. Felt guilt for surviving. That marks you as sacred here.” I told them.
Suddenly, something shifted in the cathedral’s atmosphere. I felt a devouring want, focused upward through reality’s layers until it found what it craved: the ones who slept soundly after destroying lives. Who felt entitled to others’ pain. Who’d never experienced remorse.
I could taste them—their certainty, their casual cruelty. Up there right now, trying to summon their dead god.
“The remorseless.”My voice harmonized with itself. “Varnar. The cultists. Still calling for their Judge.”
The Executioner stood beside the altar, steam rising from his chest. Through helmet slits, his red eyes held understanding.
“What will you do?”
I looked around at what I’d created. Justice from chaos. But also a diseased system that needed complete restructuring.
A smile pulled at my transformed features. “I’m not sure. But I feel... hungry.”
The cathedral shuddered with anticipation. After centuries of random suffering, it would taste something different—justice for the untouchable.
“Then you’ll feed.”He spoke with prophetic certainty. “My queen.”
