Page 72 of Crown of Storm and Silence
"Oh, much more creative than that," I reply, my smile sharp enough to cut shadows. "I'm thinking something involving their reproductive organs, several days of careful attention, and the kind of screaming that makes poets weep with inspiration. Really explore the artistic potential of suffering, you know?"
Emir makes a sound that might be choking. "My lord, perhaps we should focus on tracking?—"
"The wolf grows restless," Mikail observes with obvious delight. "Soon he will abandon pretense and embrace the beast that dwells beneath civilized restraint."
He's not wrong. With each step through the forest, I feel the poison in my veins responding to my fury, transforming it into something far more dangerous. The poison I absorbed from Isil, carefully contained for decades, feeds on my rage until it's no longer just shadow magic flowing through me.
It's become something hungry.
"You know what?" I say suddenly, stopping in the middle of the path. "I think I'll handle this personally. These creatures deserve... individual attention."
"Kaan," Emir says warningly, recognizing the tone in my voice. "Don't do anything?—"
"Spectacularly inadvisable? Creatively violent? Guaranteed to traumatize future generations?" I interrupt with cheerful malice. "My dear Emir, you wound me with your lack of faith in my restraint."
The poison in my veins finally reaches the threshold where shadow-travel becomes possible, my rage overriding my usual caution about using shadow-form. Before he can respond, I dissolve into shadow, racing ahead through the forest with inhuman speed. Behind me, I hear Mikail's delighted laughter echoing off the trees like music composed specifically for damnation.
The fourth location reveals itself within minutes—a shallow cave concealed by fallen logs where Obur cower like beaten dogs. The previous three locations had been empty, their occupants having fled deeper into the forest, but these were too slow, too confident in their makeshift refuge. The stench of my wife's terror still clings to their skin, and that's all the invitation I need.
The rage that consumes me transcends emotion and achieves something approaching divine wrath.
The first Obur dies before he realizes I'm there. My hand punches through his chest from behind, fingers closing around his still heart. I hold it for a moment, feeling the cold organ against my palm, before I slowly begin to crush it.
"Gentlemen," I say pleasantly as he drops and the others spin toward me in alarm, finally seeing the threat that appeared in their midst, the dying Obur's heart crumbling between my fingers in a shower of gore. "I believe you've been sampling something that doesn't belong to you."
They scatter like startled prey, but in this darkness, surrounded by shadow and death, they might as well be moving through molasses. My magic responds to my fury by becoming something far more terrible than simple darkness.
The second Obur makes it three steps before shadows erupt from the ground beneath him, piercing through his feet, his legs, his torso like spears forged from crystallized night. My hands crave direct contact at first, but as the poison spreads through each kill, my shadows become extensions of my will, creating possibilities I never imagined. The satisfying crunch of bone and wet tearing of flesh sends a surge of dark pleasure through me that feeds the poison in my veins. He hangs suspended, screaming as the darkness holds him aloft while slowly, methodically, tearing him apart from the inside out. I feel every fiber rip, every organ punctured, and instead of horror at my own brutality, I feel... alive. More alive than I've felt since finding my wife broken and bleeding in that medical room, her eyes full of accusation and devastation. "Where were you?" she had whispered, the words cutting deeper than any blade. "I called for you. I screamed for you. And you weren't there." The memory of her pain, her disappointment in me, feeds the darkness in me like fuel on fire. The poison in my system doesn't just approve—it celebrates, spreading through my bloodstream like liquid ecstasy, demanding more violence, more creative suffering. His screams harmonize with the howling darkness in my soul, and for the first time in months, the agony of losing Isil quiets to a whisper.
"You know, they really should teach a class on this," I muse conversationally to the others as they press against the cave walls in terror. "Introduction to Creative Dismemberment, perhaps. Or Advanced Screaming Techniques. I could be a guest lecturer—'Therapeutic Violence: A Hands-On Approach to Stress Relief.'
The poison in my veins sings with approval, feeding on their fear, growing stronger with each heartbeat. I can feel myself changing, becoming something that would make even Altan pause in admiration.
Or horror. At this point, the distinction seems irrelevant.
The third Obur tries to run. My shadows catch him mid-flight, wrapping around his limbs like silk ribbons. But instead of simply restraining him, they begin to twist. The sound of bone snapping fills the cave—not the quick crack of a clean break, but the slow, grinding symphony of joints being rotated beyond their natural limits. His shoulder pops free of its socket with a wet sucking sound, then his elbow bends backward until the bone pierces through skin in a fountain of crimson.
Blood spatters across my face, warm and copper-sweet, and I laugh as it drips from my chin. The poison in my bloodstream celebrates with each drop, mercury-bright channels of toxin flaring beneath my skin like veins of molten metal. My hands shake—not with horror, but with anticipation, with hunger for more destruction.
"You fed from her," I whisper, my voice no longer entirely human, carrying frequencies that make reality itself shudder.The cave walls begin to weep bloody moisture as my power seeps into the stone itself.
His hip joint separates next, the ball tearing free of the socket in a spray of gore that paints the cave floor in abstract patterns. I'm drenched now—the shadows don't just tear, they ensure maximum blood flow, turning what should be clean cuts into fountains of gore that coat everything in reach. Crimson covers my clothes, my skin, pooling at my feet in warm puddles that reflect my silver-veined face like mirrors made of carnage. The scent of iron and terror fills my nostrils, and the darkness inside me purrs with satisfaction.
The Obur's screams become something beyond normal screaming—a frequency of agony that resonates through shadow magic itself, feeding the poison until it's no longer just flowing through me—it's rewriting me, cell by cell, into something that exists purely to create beautiful agony.
"Tell me," I continue, pressing my hand against his chest, letting shadow-fire begin to eat through his skin, “what did she taste like? What flavors did you savor while violating my wife?"
The answer comes in the form of more screaming, but I'm beyond caring about words. The darkness flows through me like liquid night, showing me exactly how to maximize his suffering while keeping him conscious for the longest possible time.
The poison flowing through me awakens older memories, ones that explain why this toxin feels so familiar, why it responds to my rage with such eager hunger.
Isil writhing on our bed, her pale skin marked with spreading patches of shadow-rot as the curse consumes her from within. I'm above her, my hands pressed to her chest, pouring my own life force into her body in a desperate attempt to halt the poison's advance.
"It burns," she gasps, her back arching as pain tears through her. "Kaan, it burns like acid in my veins."
"I can take it," I whisper desperately, feeling the poison flowing into me through our connection. "Let me take the pain, sevgilim. Our bond allows me to draw it into myself—shadow calling to shadow, darkness recognizing its own."
But with each transfer, something fundamental shifts inside me. The shadow poison rewrites my very essence, and the changes manifest in ways that horrify us both. Three months into the ritual, when Isil reaches for my hand to comfort me after a particularly brutal session, I grab her wrist and twist until she cries out—not from anger, but because the sound of her pain sends pleasure coursing through my corrupted veins. When she flinches away from me, tears in her sapphire eyes, I smile. Actually smile at her suffering.
