Chains of Vengeance and Blood

by Sthari_night

Summary:

Calivan,
The other wardens don't want to go near that Crow's cell anymore. Can't we get someone else to do it? Slaves, maybe?
– Ovidius

Ovidius,
You are fortunate. A new shipment of slaves has arrived from Tevinter. One among them has already proven… difficult. I have no patience for insolence. If she survives feeding our little Crow, perhaps she will learn obedience. If not, then she serves her purpose as carrion.
Either way, you will not have to soil your hands with this duty again.
—Calivan

–––––

Prisoners AU
Or what if Rook had been captured, enslaved, and dragged into the Ossuary? What if there, in the heart of that underwater prison, she came face-to-face with the Crows’ deadliest mage-killer Lucanis Dellamorte, possessed by a Demon of Spite?

A tale of survival, corruption, and defiance, where freedom has a price and vengeance might be the only light left in the deep.

Notes:

Hi everybody! ✨
This story is going to be looong — I’m taking my time to explore the entire Veilguard story from a different point of view. 👀
I hope you’re ready to dive deep, see things from a new perspective, and follow along on this journey.
Thank you so much for joining me!

Chapter 1: Today it is

The night was calm.  

The ship creaked like old bones as it cut through the Antivan sea, sails slack in the lazy wind and salt stung the air. From the tiny cabin Lucanis’d claimed, he could hear the rhythm of waves against the hull, steady as a heartbeat. A cot wedged against one wall, a chest for his gear, and a narrow window cut high into the planks to let in the night air. Through that slit, the moon hung pale and bright, washing his face in silver.

Lucanis lay on the cot, one arm draped across his chest, eyes closed, his breath deep and even. To anyone watching he was sleeping. The light kissed his cheek, the furrow at his brow softened.

The ship groaned again. Then—another sound, softer. A careful hand testing the latch.

The door eased open, hinges protesting only faintly. A line of darker shadow split across the cabin floor, widening as the door crept inward.

An intruder paused at the threshold, listening.

No.

There were at least three of them.

The Crow did not stir. His body remained slack, chest lifting with the rhythm of sleep. The moonlight made him seem almost delicate, a phantom stretched in silver and shadow.

Lucanis Dellamorte’s body was the picture of repose—head tipped back, chest rising and falling in slow rhythm, lashes shadowing the sharp cut of his cheekbones. A lean predator in a velvet silence.

The footsteps came at last: too soft for sailors, too deliberate for men at ease. Shadows leaned over him, robes swaying with the night breeze. The reek of lyrium and blood magic clung to them—Venatori.

Then a dagger was drawn out. A whisper of steel.

Lucanis’s hand shot up, catching the man’s wrist, twisting until bone cracked. The Venatori barely had time to gasp before Lucanis buried a blade in his throat and rolled up to his feet in one smooth motion.

Another reached for his belt dagger. Lucanis got up, driving a hidden stiletto up through the man’s ribs. The dagger was wrenched free, red blooming dark across linen. Lucanis pulled it loose, already spinning toward the next.

Others kept coming, silent, efficient. But for every knife rey for him, another was waiting, strapped beneath a bracer, sheathed against his boot, hidden in the folds of his cloak. Steel blossomed in hands, necks, bellies, the floor slicking wet beneath their boots. Lucanis fought like a storm: quick, merciless, beautiful in its brutality.

Still they came.

More robed figures surged onto the deck, glyphs igniting underfoot. A sharp hiss of binding magic coiled around his legs, dragging him to a knee. He snarled, slicing through the first layer with sheer strength and fury, but the spell doubled, trebled, pressing in like chains of fire.

“Not—” he spat through his teeth, “—today.”

He lunged at one of the casters, blade arcing. A whip of arcane force lashed across his side, hurling him into the railing hard enough to crack wood. His daggers skittered across the planks. He reached for another, and another, steel glinting in desperate fists—but the circle was closing, tighter and tighter, their chants weaving a net he could not slip.

His breath came ragged. His muscles screamed. He could not stop. Would not stop.

Then a hand touched the back of his head. “Seems like today it is, Lucanis Dellamorte.” The voice cuts the air like broken glass—high and precise, with edges meant to slice. Each word is measured, deliberate, but dripping with cruelty, as if every syllable were a knife pressed to the skin. There’s a rasp beneath the smoothness, a hint of venom that makes even soft-spoken tones feel dangerous.  

The hand on his head was warm at first, almost gentle, as though some benevolent god had taken pity. Then, in an instant, the warmth collapsed into ice, burrowing straight through skull and spine. His vision wavered. The ship’s cabin, the Venatori’s snarling faces, the crash of waves—all blurred into black.

Lucanis tried to snarl, to spit defiance, to wrench free. But the ice spread, numbing thought and bone alike, and the last thing he felt was the dagger slipping from his fingers.

Then nothing.

Chapter 2: Golden plate

Summary:

Upon a plate of gleaming gold,
she brought him ruin, cruel and cold.
A breathing flesh, a tainted lie,
she forced it in—no choice, no why.

It burned like fire, bitter, sweet,
a demon’s curse in bloody meat.
Now spite and hunger fuse as one,
the crow undone, the abomination begun.

Consciousness returned like a wound being forced open.

Lucanis gasped, lungs burning as though he were drowning. For a terrible moment he thought he   was —until his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he saw the water. It was everywhere. Pressed against the walls, the ceiling, the floor of his cell. A vast, endless ocean on the other side of a thin barrier of glass. The weight of it seemed ready to crush him, to splinter through and fill his lungs with salt and silence.

His body ached. The familiar weight of armor was gone. Daggers—gone. Even his clothes had been stripped away, replaced by damp, stinking rags that clung to his skin. Shackles scraped his wrists when he moved, the metal heavy and cold.

Around him elven ruins were on the seabed. He could   feel   it—this place reeked of death and magic.

A scream tore through the walls, raw and human, carried as though from far down a tunnel. Another followed, then another, overlapping until they blurred into a chorus of agony. The sound vibrated through the glass, through his bones, like some hellish hymn. He forced himself not to flinch.

Then—movement.

From the corner of his vision, something lurched across the corridor beyond his cell. A corpse, wet and half-rotten, its eyes milky, jaw unhinged. It staggered in a grotesque parody of life, limbs jerking like a puppet with cut strings.

It ran—if it could be called that—and smashed against the glass of his prison. The impact thundered, rattling his teeth, and made the glass of his cell become red. Rot smeared across the surface as the body pressed and clawed, desperate to break through. Lucanis braced himself, muscles taut, ready for whatever horror came next.

It never got the chance.

A bolt of magic split the dark—white-blue, blinding, furious. The lightning struck the corpse mid-motion. For a heartbeat the world was nothing but light and ozone, the body writhing, burning, searing against the red glass before collapsing in a heap of charred flesh. The smell of scorched rot filled the corridor.

“Ah. You’re awake.”

The voice was the same one he’d heard before the world went black. Sharp, feminine, threaded with amusement. Lucanis turned his head, muscles taut, eyes narrowing against the red glow of his cell.

On the platform beyond, she stood with her back arched in effortless poise, robes of crimson and black sweeping about her like spilled ink. Her face was flawless, disturbingly so—the kind of beauty that screamed   manufactured . Skin stretched too tight, lines erased by blood’s cruel alchemy. Zara Renata.

She stopped at the railing above his cell and laughed softly, tilting her chin. “There he is. The famous assassin. The First Talon’s heir, the Crows’ perfect executioner. And now…” she spread her hands in theatrical delight, “ours, caged beneath the waves.”

Her voice carried, echoing down the wet stone corridors. Then, as if conjured by her words, another figure stepped from the shadows at her back.

He was tall where Zara was slight, his frame wrapped in understated silks and armor, the colors muted, the cuts expensive. He moved like a man who never doubted his right to command, each gesture spare, deliberate. There was no gaudy vanity in him—only the calm, cold certainty of power long held and never challenged.

Zara turned her head toward him, a smirk on her lips, and gestured down toward the red glass. “Calivan, I present to you the infamous   mage killer .”

The man stepped behind her, the target Lucanis had sailed across half the sea to find. Calivan—calm, unhurried, his eyes gleaming with quiet mockery.

He tilted his head, considering. His voice, when it came, was smooth, resonant, a blade wrapped in velvet. “I expected… more.”

Lucanis’s jaw clenched, every muscle straining against the shackles.

“Oh, do not be deceived, my dear,” Zara purred, circling the red glass like a cat tracing its prey. Her nails clicked softly against the barrier as she dragged them across its surface. “He’s dangerous. They called him a   mage killer   for good reason.” Zara glided closer to the cell, her heels clicking delicately on the stone. She stopped just beyond the glass, tilting her head like a cat inspecting prey. “Do you like your new home, Lucanis Dellamorte?” she purred.

His lips curled back. “What do you want from me?” The bark of his voice cracked against the glass, stripped of patience.

Zara smirked, running a finger along the barrier as if caressing it. “What do I want? Mmm. An excellent question. You know, my orders were to slit that handsome throat of yours and let the sea drink you clean.” She tapped the glass with a lacquered nail, sharp as a needle. “But wasting potential has never been one of my vices.”

Lucanis’s eyes narrowed. “You should have finished the job.”

Her laugh was low, mocking. “Oh, but then I would have nothing to play with. Why destroy such… delightful raw material?”

She leaned closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that still carried its blade-edge. “No, no. Killing you would be a waste. I think you’ll be far more useful alive.”

Calivan’s lips curved faintly, though he said nothing. Watching. Measuring.

Lucanis met her gaze, voice low, dangerous. “If you think I’ll serve you, you’re a bigger fool than you look.”

Zara’s smile widened, sharp as broken glass. “Oh, darling. You’ll  not be able to do anything else , when we’ll be done with you.” She turned her back to him, and walked to Calivan, ready for giving him orders. “Take his blood. Don’t take too much – a few vials will be a good start. We need him strong for what’s next.”

Red crystals scrawled out of her hand and entered the glass wall of his cell, glowing of a gruesome green light, and everything went dark again.

---

Lucanis woke to the stink of iron.

His arm throbbed, dull and heavy. A strip of cloth—tighter and cleaner than the rags he wore—was bound around the crook of his elbow. He pushed himself up slowly, blinking against the dim red glow. The room tilted, and his body lurched with it. Dizzy, weak. They had drained him. Too much blood, perhaps, though he could still feel his heart dragging it stubbornly through his veins.

The screams had quieted. Not gone entirely—an occasional cry still echoed through the black halls of the prison—but the chorus that had once shaken the glass was reduced now to scattered voices. A lull between storms.

Lucanis braced himself against the wall of his cell and studied it closely. The glass wasn’t ordinary; it pulsed faintly, like a living thing, veins of crimson magic running through it. He laid his palm flat against its surface. Cold. Smooth. It hummed under his skin, the way a blade sings before the killing stroke.

Unbreakable by dagger or fist. He knew it in his bones.

He let his hand drop and turned, forcing his vision to steady. Beyond the barrier, the sea loomed vast and infinite. Schools of fish drifted like silver smoke, their scales catching what little light crept from glyphs in the ruins below. Farther off, the bulk of a whale passed, its song reverberating through the water like an organ’s low note. Sharks circled lazily above, their shadows cutting sleek and cruel across the prison ceiling.

And beneath it all—ruins. Elven masonry, pale and delicate, grown over by coral and centuries. Towers split by pressure, arches bent but not broken. Sigils flickered faintly on the stone, traces of magic older than memory, alive even here in the drowned dark.

For a moment—just a moment—Lucanis almost forgot the shackles biting his wrists, the dizziness coiling behind his eyes, the prison that held him. Almost forgot the taste of blood in his mouth.

Even he, no mage, no scholar, could recognize the magnitude of what lay around him. The Ossuary was a tomb and a treasure both, suspended in impossible sorcery. If not for the red cage that bound him, for the weight of Zara’s laughter still clinging to his skull, he might have even been impressed.

But awe was a luxury. And Lucanis Dellamorte had no use for luxuries anymore.

The first time they came with food, he did not wait.

The Venatori acolyte stepped too close to the barrier as it hissed open, tray trembling in his hands. The smell of boiled grain and something sour wafted into the cell. Lucanis moved faster than the boy’s eyes could register—snapping the tray aside, seizing his throat with both hands. Bones cracked beneath his grip as he slammed the man against the wall. The muffled snap of vertebrae ended the struggle before the body slid boneless to the floor.

The second came with a spear and a steadier step, muttering wards under his breath. Lucanis let him approach, feigning weakness. Then he lashed out with his legs, hooking them around the Venatori’s neck. A twist, a violent pull, and the man’s air was cut off. He thrashed, his staff clattering uselessly against the glass, until Lucanis dragged him to the ground and held him there with merciless pressure. The body convulsed, then stilled.

The Ossuary grew cautious.

The next pair arrived armed, flanking each other like wolves. They shoved a bowl into the cell with a hooked pole, never breaking formation. Lucanis kicked it across the floor, spilling the contents, his glare promising the same death as the others if they dared to step inside. The glass hissed shut, and they retreated with muttered curses.

Then came three. A squad this time—one holding staves, two with spears bristling. They didn’t even pretend it was food for a man; they shoved a bucket across the floor like slop for an animal. Lucanis stared at it, unmoving, every line of his body rigid with defiance. The ward flickered blue around the entrance as they sealed him in again, their footsteps fading down the corridor.

The bucket sat untouched.

They feared him—he saw it in the way they kept their distance, in the way their hands always hovered near staves and blades. But fear bred mockery, and mockery was easier than admitting they trembled.

They would gather outside his glass cage in pairs or trios, voices carrying in the hollow chamber.

Days blurred. They tried again and again, sometimes with one, sometimes with many, never daring to enter after the first two corpses were dragged from his cell. Every attempt ended the same: with Lucanis silent, seated in the shadows, watching them with a predator’s stare.

Sleep, later, became his enemy. He tried to fight it—counting the slow arcs of sharks above, focusing on the low hum of the glass wards—but exhaustion clawed at him with every passing hour. And when his eyes betrayed him, when his body sagged and drifted toward unconsciousness, they were ready.

The hiss of the cell opening. A sudden rush of icy water crashing over him, searing like knives into his skin. He would jolt awake, shivering, choking as laughter echoed outside.

“Rise and shine, Crow!” they jeered. “Wouldn’t want you too comfortable.”

Other nights, it was smoke—thick and acrid, pumped through a vent, one that seemed to have appeared from nowhere, until his lungs burned and his vision blurred. When the coughing wracked his body, they stood outside and clapped as though it were a performance.

Sometimes it was silence. Hours, days maybe, with no sound but his own heartbeat, until a scream would erupt suddenly in the hallways, timed perfectly to make him flinch. They would laugh at that too, pointing like children who’d found a crack in the mask.

One night, they shoved a carcass of a half-rotted fish through the slot in the barrier, its dead eyes staring, its stench filling the cell. “A meal fit for a rat,” they sang.

Lucanis kicked it back, blood and scales smearing across the glass.

Every act was meant to strip him of dignity, to remind him he was a prisoner, less than human, a toy for their hands.

But through it all, his eyes never wavered from theirs. Cold. Hunting. A promise of violence in every glance.

They made bets on how long before he begged for food. Wagered on whether he’d scream when Zara cut him open. Called him “pet,” “thing,” “it.” Always   it .

Lucanis did not answer. His silence was his shield, though every word scraped against the inside of his skull.

He would not eat.

Not their food. Not their terms.

If they meant to break him, they would have to try harder.

---

A bucket lay in the corner of the cell, its contents rotting. The smell of mildew and curdled broth soured the already damp air. Lucanis sat cross-legged opposite it, his eyes closed, his face as still as carved stone.

The chamber door opened with a snap. He didn’t have to look to know it was her.

Zara Renata’s heels clicked like daggers on stone as she descended the platform, her robes whispering across the floor. She brought her scent with her—rose oil masking iron, sweet perfume smothering the copper stench of blood magic.

She stopped just beyond the red glass, lips curling when her eyes fell on the untouched bucket. “How ungrateful,” she murmured, her voice like velvet stretched thin over glass. “The Ossuary is not known for its hospitality, yet here I am, ensuring you are… fed.”

Lucanis opened his eyes, meeting her gaze with a predator’s calm. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

Zara’s smile tightened. “Do you imagine this makes you strong? That starving yourself will win you freedom?” She flicked a hand, the motion sharp. The bucket erupted in flame, hissing as the rancid slop turned to black smoke. “It makes you   ugly , Dellamorte. Hollow cheeks, sunken eyes. And I loathe ugly things.”

Her fingers trailed across the barrier, nails clicking like claws. “You killed many of mine..” Her voice dropped into a hiss, sharp as the crack of a whip. “That   insolence   was supposed to be punished with death. Do you know why you’re still breathing?”

Lucanis’s voice was hoarse but steady, low enough that she had to lean forward to hear. “Because you’re afraid to waste me.”

For a moment, silence. Then Zara laughed—a brittle, high-pitched sound that echoed against the stone and made the water outside ripple with its pitch. She turned sharply, addressing the shadows behind her where her acolytes lingered. “Afraid?   Afraid?   Do you hear him?” She spun back, her flawless face inches from the glass, her smile stretched too wide. “No, my crow. I simply enjoy watching you squirm.”

Her eyes glittered, and she drew a knife from her belt. The blade shone with runes etched in fresh blood. She pressed it gently to her palm, opening the skin with the care of a sculptor. The cut wept red, and with a single motion she dragged her hand across the barrier. The blood hissed, spreading like veins across the glass. He felt a foreign force pulling him down with his face a few inches from the plate, as if his own muscles weren’t responding to him anymore. The smell of the food and blood magic, however, were able to get him out of the control Zara was putting on him. 

He creawled to the other side of the cell, as the Venatori witch looked at him disappointed.

“You will eat,” she whispered, her voice sharp, wicked. “W hat I give you.   And you will savor it, as every vein, every drop, winds its way into your bones.”

The blood pulsed against the barrier, glowing faintly. The air itself seemed to thicken, heavy with iron and salt.

Lucanis’s stomach turned, but his gaze never left hers.

“I’ll starve before I touch your filth.”

Zara’s smile faltered, just enough to show the twitch of anger beneath. She withdrew her hand, crimson dripping to the stone. “We’ll see,” she hissed, turning sharply, her robes snapping behind her as she swept back toward the platform.

The blood she’d left on the barrier stayed glowing, a reminder, a promise.

Lucanis leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. His heart pounded, but his lips curved in the faintest ghost of a smile.

For now, he’d won.

---

Lucanis did not remember being taken from the cell. One moment he had been crouched in the corner, tracing with his eyes the slow drift of a whale’s shadow across the prison’s ceiling; the next, the hiss of wards filled his ears, chains bound his wrists and ankles, and the red glass receded behind him.

They dragged him through corridors that smelled of salt and blood, the walls slick with condensation, torches guttering against the damp. The Ossuary was alive with whispers—chanting of Venatori acolytes, the wet sobs of other captives, the echo of water dripping from cracks above. Somewhere deeper, the sea roared like a beast waiting to devour them all.

He was thrown down against a cold stone slab, rough chains forcing him face-first against it. The air stank of old iron and charred flesh. Lucanis lifted his head enough to see Calivan approach, robes whispering along the floor.

If Zara was a creature of vanity, Calivan was the opposite. No ornamentation, no jewels, no gilding. His robe was plain, his hair tied back with a leather cord, his face pale and lined. Yet his presence was suffocating. Authority bled from him in every movement, every pause between words.

He stopped behind Lucanis, fingers brushing over his spine as though inspecting a canvas. “The mage killer,” he said softly, his voice cultured but cold. “The terror of Antiva, the scourge of my brothers. Became nothing.”

Lucanis bit back a snarl. “Come closer. I’ll show you nothing.”

Calivan chuckled, a low, humorless sound. “You think sharp words will protect you.” A dagger was drawn out, cutting his clothes leaving his back free. His hand pressed flat against Lucanis’s back. It was warm at first, deceptively so—like the touch of sun-warmed stone. Then the warmth deepened, grew unbearable, until it burned.

The first rune was drawn with invisible fire. It seared into him, not through the skin but beneath it, like molten wire coiling along his nerves. His muscles seized, every tendon taut. The air filled with the smell of his own flesh cooking.

He gritted his teeth until they creaked. No sound escaped.

“Impressive,” Calivan murmured. “Most scream before the first line is finished.”

Another rune. Another line of fire. The Venatori magister carved slowly, with the precision of a calligrapher. Each symbol was deliberate, intricate, written in a language Lucanis did not know but his body understood all too well. The magic forced itself into him, crawling like hot insects beneath his skin, binding itself to muscle and marrow.

Lucanis shut his eyes against the sparks dancing at the edges of his vision. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face, stinging his eyes, pooling at his jaw. He would not give them what they wanted.

The voices of the assistants—two young Venatori scribes holding the ritual bowls—wavered as they watched. One whispered, “How does he not scream?” The other muttered, “He’s not human.”

Lucanis heard them. He   wanted   them to think that.

Calivan ignored the commentary. “Discipline,” he mused aloud. “The Crows breed it into their little hatchlings, don’t they? Silence, control, restraint. Admirable… but also fragile.”

The next rune was drawn. Fire shot through his ribs, a cage of pain that made his body convulse against the chains. His vision went white. Still, he did not break.

Another line. Another symbol. Each one carved slower than the last, as though Calivan savored the artistry. Lucanis could feel the patterns scoring into him, foreign and invasive, twisting his body into a living script.

His jaw clenched until his teeth ached. Sweat ran into his eyes, blinding him. He breathed in silence, each exhale controlled, measured.

When it was done, Calivan raised a hand. A pale wash of magic flowed over the raw marks. The skin knitted, the scent of char receding. The pain dulled—but the runes remained, etched into him invisibly, pulsing faintly with their own life. His body was whole again, but not his own.

The Venatori around them watched in silence, some with hunger, others with unease. Only Calivan’s voice broke the air, smooth and deliberate.

“Still no sound. No plea. No surrender..” The symbols lingered beneath the skin, hidden but alive, pulsing faintly with magic. Calivan stepped back, his lips curving in faint displeasure. “Disappointing.”

His face darkened, his eyes narrowing. He had expected screams, pleas, perhaps even madness. Instead, Lucanis gave him defiance. For the first time, something in the magister’s mask cracked. Displeasure, faint but visible.

“Stubbornness is not strength,” Calivan said coldly. “It is merely another form of weakness.”

He did not know how long he had been here. He did not know how much longer he could last.

But he had not screamed.

And that was something Calivan would never forgive.

Then, the Ossuary went quiet when she came. Too quiet. The screams had ebbed away, as though the walls themselves were holding their breath for her entrance.

The sound reached him first—the echo of heeled shoes striking stone, deliberate and sharp. Then her shadow fell across the floor, tall and graceful, and Zara Renata stepped into the dim glow of the ruins.

She carried a golden plate, balanced with casual elegance on one palm. Upon it rested a single cut of meat—rich, red, glistening. Perfectly carved, as if served at a magister’s banquet. The metal gleamed with candlelight as she tilted it, admiring her own reflection in its polished surface.

Her lips curled into a smile as she extended the plate toward one of the Venatori guards. “Our guest has been stubborn,” she said lightly, her voice like velvet drawn across glass. “Perhaps he only needs… a proper meal.”

The man obeyed, though his eyes flickered with unease. He approached the barrier, the plate trembling faintly in his grip.

The moment the meat drew near, Lucanis’s instincts flared. His nostrils filled with the stench—not the savory aroma of roasted flesh, but something sour, fetid, wrong. Under the Ossuary’s pale light, strands within the meat pulsed faintly, glowing like veins of sickly purple fire. For one disorienting second, it seemed to   breathe .

Lucanis recoiled, his gut twisting.   Not food.

The guard smirked and shoved the plate closer, close enough that the stink made bile rise in Lucanis’s throat. “Eat,” he sneered.

Lucanis struck. He surged forward with the speed of a coiled predator and slammed his forehead into the guard’s face. Cartilage cracked. Blood spurted from the man’s nose as he stumbled backward, crying out.

Shouts filled the chamber. Three more Venatori stormed a around him, their hands clamping onto Lucanis’s arms, shoulders, hair. He twisted, thrashed, his muscles straining like iron cables. For a moment he almost broke free—until one hooked an arm around his throat, choking, dragging him back against the red glass. His vision swam.

Pinned, teeth bared, he spat blood on the floor between them.

Zara only sighed, as though watching children squabble. With unhurried grace, she took the golden plate back into her own hands. She turned the meat delicately with her fingers, studying the faint glow that pulsed from its fibers. Then she looked at him, her eyes glittering like sharpened gems.

“Really, Lucanis,” she crooned. “Is this how you thank me? I offer you nourishment, strength… and you repay me with violence? Tsk.” Her smile widened. “You will eat. Whether you like it or not.”

She tilted the plate in a mock toast, as though the two of them were dinner guests at her table, not prisoner and captor in a drowning tomb.

Zara stepped closer, golden plate in hand, her robes sweeping the wet stone as though it were a red carpet laid for her own amusement. The Venatori holding Lucanis back grunted and strained, but even together they could not suppress the wild surge in his eyes.

“You’ll learn manners soon enough,” she said softly, tilting the plate just so. The glowing meat seemed almost alive, writhing faintly under her gaze. “And respect.”

Lucanis snarled, twisting against their grip, trying to wrench free. He spat toward her, but Zara only smiled, unmoved.

“You are   mine , Dellamorte,” she whispered, the words curling around the cage like smoke. Then, with deliberate slowness, she pressed the meat to his lips.

He spat. She chuckled, sharp, brittle, almost musical. “Oh, no, no, no. Such behavior is unbecoming. You must eat.”

The glowing filaments of the meat pulsed as though sensing his refusal. He tried to jerk his head back, tried to twist sideways, but her hands—white, firm, unyielding—clamped over his jaw, tilting it open.

“Now,” she said, almost kindly. Then she pulled his hair, and as his mouth opens, she shoved the piece of meat into his mouth.

Lucanis gagged, choked. His stomach rebelled. His throat burned. But she did not relent. She pressed, forcing the glowing meat down, her grip unshakable. Each swallow scraped against him like sandpaper. The filaments pulsed faintly in his mouth, writhing, alive. He felt them coil, forcing him, their rancid magic crawling along his tongue and into his throat.

He thrashed violently, but the Venatori held him fast, pinning arms, shoulders, legs. The red glass reflected the chaos—his rage, his blood, the dark amusement on her face.

“ Good, ” she whispered, when the first piece had gone down. She paused, tilting the plate again, studying him like an artist inspecting a canvas. “Oh, you resist beautifully. But resistance is futile. You   will   eat.”

She pressed another morsel into his mouth. Lucanis’s muscles locked, body tensing, jaw clamping. He choked, gasping, blood streaking the corners of his lips. And still she held him, fingers firm, eyes glinting with the thrill of control.

By the third piece, his vision swam, dizziness and fury mixing into a dangerous cocktail. But even then, he did not scream. Not out loud. Only the low growl in his throat betrayed his defiance.

Zara finally withdrew the plate, her lips curling into a satisfied smile. “There,” she said, as if concluding a pleasant meal. “I think you’ll find the nourishment… enlightening.”

The last bite went down, and for a fleeting moment, the world seemed normal again.

Then it began.

A ripple, deep in his stomach, like ice crawling along fire. His gut clenched, a cold pressure that climbed his spine in jagged waves. The glow from the meat’s filaments pulsed beneath his skin as though resonating with some hidden part of him. Lucanis staggered, clutching his chest, muscles trembling uncontrollably.

“Release him,” Zara’s voice commanded, sharp and crisp. The Venatori obeyed immediately, sliding their hands from his shoulders and arms, but keeping a wary distance. Even they recoiled as the first convulsions wracked him.

Lucanis fell to the stone floor, knees and elbows scrabbling for purchase as his body twisted against itself. Fire and ice tangled in his veins, and every breath felt like inhaling shards of glass. His head throbbed, vision flickering with phantom lights—shapes twisting in the shadows, whispering voices he could not locate.

It was not just pain. Not just magic. Something alive had taken root inside him. It pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, writhing through his chest, coiling along his spine, clawing toward his mind. He could feel it probing, testing, merging, tasting.   Something foreign, intelligent, and hungry .

He dropped to the floor, head whipping side to side as his body shuddered. Spasms tore through him, violent, involuntary, muscle against muscle. His fingers dug into the stone as he tried to ground himself, tried to hold   something   of himself intact, but the presence inside him was no ordinary magic. It throbbed and whispered, a wet, hungry voice curling in his skull.

Lucanis arched back, pain slicing through his body like knives, and then felt it—a pulse of raw, unbridled energy erupting from his chest, running down his limbs. Sparks of magic flashed beneath his skin, curling into black tendrils visible only in the faint red light of the glass.

The Venatori hesitated, hands trembling as they watched him convulse on the floor, their earlier bravado dissolved into fear. Zara’s eyes glittered with fascination, as she stepped closer, observing him like a scientist would a specimen under a bell jar.

His vision swam with flashes: the ruins of the Ossuary bending, water above swirling like storm clouds, faint whispers in the language of spirits and demons curling at the edges of his hearing. He could feel a creature inside, alive, wriggling, trying to claim space in his body, seeking control.

Lucanis’s mouth opened in a silent scream, throat raw, and he convulsed again, every limb spasming, until finally, on Zara’s command, the Venatori got near him again, dragging him upright. Lucanis’s legs barely held him; his body swayed with exhaustion, blood dripping down his side from reopened cuts.

He felt Zara’s voice as he was dragged away. “Keep him under observation in the next few days. Let me know immediately if there are any developments. I want to be there when the demon hatch.”

Demon?

They hurled him back into the glass cell, the barrier sealing with a hiss. He collapsed onto the floor, chest heaving, the phantom burn of the runes seared into his memory. His skin looked whole, smooth as ever, but beneath it he could feel the shapes thrumming like a second heartbeat.

Time lost meaning again. Minutes, hours, days—it all bled into the press of the sea and the glow of the ruins. The screams in the Ossuary faded to echoes. The whales drifted above like silent judges.

Lucanis lay in the shadows of his cage, eyes open, his chest aching with phantom fire.

He would not forget this. Not her. Not the control.

And he promised: one day, he would repay it.

Chapter 3: A fair trade

Summary:

In shadowed halls where whispers cling,
A stranger waits, and fates take wing.
Eyes meet eyes, a silent thread,
Words unspoken, the pact is said.

It is formed with trembling breath,
A binding whispered, not of death.
Fear and fire, a trembling hand,
Two souls entwined at fate’s command.

Notes:

Just a quick note on formatting for this chapter: whenever Spite is speaking through Lucanis, his words will appear in bold.
When he’s diving into Lucanis’ mind, the text will be both bold and italicized.
I hope this makes it easier to follow their perspectives — enjoy the chapter! 🖤

Lucanis lay on the stone floor, chest heaving, muscles trembling. His skin burning where Calivan carved into his back. His stomach roared.

A demon. They fed him a demon.

He looked at his hands. They seamed normal under the dirt and filth of the Ossuary.

Maybe the ritual got wrong and he didn’t became an abomination because of that. Maybe there wasn’t a demon in him.

Then a voice, jagged and disjointed, curling through his mind like smoke in a storm.

Awake. Finally.

Lucanis froze.

The shadows before him stirred. At first, he thought it was the flicker of the enchanted glass, a trick of the dim red glow. But then it took shape.

A figure stepped forward out of nothing, standing in the center of his cell as though the magic meant to contain him simply did not apply. It was   him —and yet not him.

The reflection was gaunt, his frame leaner than memory, with tangled hair hanging longer than Lucanis ever kept it. A beard darkened his jaw, unkempt and ragged, as though weeks of neglect had gnawed at his vanity. He looked weathered, beaten down, shabby in a way Lucanis had never allowed himself to be. The Crow was always sharp, always in control—never   this .

But what made his breath falter wasn’t the neglect. It was the corruption.

The figure’s skin was a muted violet, shadows crawling beneath the surface like veins of bruises. His hair, once the proud black of his Antivan lineage, had deepened into an unnatural shade— a darker shade of purple, that shimmered under the Ossuary’s cursed light. And the eyes—Maker, the   eyes —they glowed like molten gems, brighter and sharper than his own ever had. They burned through the gloom, hungry, unblinking.

The apparition tilted its head, movements sharp, almost feline.

Trapped. Chains. Blood. Pain. Anger. The voice hissed, fragmented, disjointed, like broken glass rearranged into words.

His stomach tightened.  Lucanis tried to get away from him – for what his little cell allowed him to. “Go away.” He said simply, trying to look stoic. He failed.

Can’t. We’re bound. Fate intertwined. Can’t go away. Won’t go away. Escape. Escape. Out.

“We can’t escape. There’s no way out of here.”

Need. Help. The demon made a few steps in his direction.

“I won’t accept the help of a demon.” Lucanis spat in the creature’s face.

But then something hit him on the nose. Hard. Luckily no blood came out, but as he raised his head again, the demon’s face was a few inches away from his. As if it hardly mattered that it’d hit him.

WE. NEED. OUT. The demon snarled at him.

“WE CAN’T GET OUT.” He shouted back.

The purple-skinned double stood in the wavering half-light, hair falling wild across its glowing eyes. Its chest rose and fell in time with Lucanis’s own, though its smile stretched far wider.

Heavy chains. Wrapped in silk. You wear them. Like their part of you.

Lucanis’s mouth tightened. “You talk too much for something that crawled into me like a rat.”

The echo chuckled, shoulders shaking as though the insult amused it.

Rat. Wolf. Crow. Monster. Names drip like wax. None matter. No hunger. No thirst. You’ll starve. Only the fire. Licks your bones. When you sleep.

Lucanis turned his head, as if ignoring it would make it fade. But the figure followed, step for step, a shadow refusing to be shaken.

You deny. Yet your eyes tell. Oceans drowning you. Every scream, carved in glass. Every cut, healed wrong. I lap them up. I savor. I am made. Of what you will. Not weep.

“I don’t break,” Lucanis growled, finally facing it. “And I don’t weep.”

The doppelganger leaned forward, voice slipping lower, intimate and venomous. Not yet. But you bend. Like a blade. Pulled too far. Bend until you sing. Until we snap. And in the song. Of that breaking. THEY will make us dance.

Lucanis’s fist clenched, trembling with the desire to strike at it—even knowing it was only inside his head.

The demon’s grin widened, showing teeth that were almost human, almost. Strike. Fight. Bleed. Every act. Won’t be yours. Won’t be mine. Every drop feeds. You are wine. Dark and waiting. And I am the thirst. That never ends. Then no more us. Only THEM. Only the blood. That controls.

“SHUT UP.” Lucanis spat on the stone at his feet. “I don’t care about your nonsense.”

The apparition tilted its head, soft laughter trailing like a lullaby gone wrong. Dust. ashes. What is left. When the fire dies. Determination. Buried deep. You won’t fight for your life. Only waiting. It pressed a clawed hand to its chest, eyes blazing.

Lucanis’s stomach knotted, bile rising in his throat. “I can’t fight in a prison of glass.”

Then OUT. The demon protested, as Lucanis head started to hurt. Go back. To the Jewel. Of Antiva. To endless nights. To family. Contracts. Caterina, Illario, Crows. Go back.

“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” He screamed in the demon’s face, while trying to push it away from himself. His hands passed through smoke.

The figure only whispered, almost tender. If we STAY. You won’t be Lucanis, anymore. I won’t be Spite. We will be THEIRS.

So the demon had a name, too. Lovely . “ It won’t matter. I’m already not me anymore!”

You’re just. Not only you anymore. The demon clarified.

“Are you shitting me?”

Spite grinned.

A scraping from the cell door broke Lucanis’s staring match with the phantom. The distorted version of himself only grinned wider as four Venatori descended the steps, a tray in their hands. The stench hit him first—rot masked with herbs, meat slick with some film that glistened too much in the watery light.

One of the men banged the side of the cell with his boot, sneering.

“Dinner for the maggot.”

Another laughed. “Careful—he might choke on it. Fragile little crow.”

The third leaned close to the red glass, dragging his tongue across his teeth. “Maybe we should feed him like a dog. On his knees.”

The fourth shoved the plate under the slot in the glass. “Eat up. Keep your strength. The Mistress likes her toys alive.”

Lucanis moved with a suddenness that stunned them—he lunged, grabbed the wrist of the fourth Venatori, and yanked it through the slot with enough force to break bone. The man screamed, and before the others could react, Lucanis slammed the wrist against the jagged rim until the tray clattered to the floor. Then he twisted, pulled, and dragged the man’s face into the glass until it cracked wetly, blood smearing the glowing surface.

By the time the Venatori wrenched their comrade free, he was already dead.

The others stumbled back, faces pale, masks of cruelty slipping into real fear. Yet even as they retreated, one spat toward the cell. “Monster!.”

Another barked a brittle laugh. “Let him rot in his cage. His hunger will finish him.”

They left in a rush, boots echoing against the stone stairs, their jeers trailing behind them.

Lucanis pressed his bloody hand to the floor, chest heaving, the copper stench thick in the water-heavy air.

That was when the demon spoke again. Blood on your hands. Again. Again. Again. Each time easier. Each time sweeter. They give you scraps. You take lives. A fair trade. Kill them all. And we’ll be free.

Lucanis ground his teeth. “I can’t kill all of them bare-handed.”

The double tilted its head, glowing eyes boring into him with patient malice. Can’t alone. But not alone. Never alone. I am here. I can help. I can be a blade. When all others stolen.

It crouched before him, long fingers tapping the stone like a rhythm only it heard. Make the pact. Crow. Hunter. Killer. Let me inside your strike. We will break the Ossuary. Drown it in its own blood. Zara’s silken smile ripped away. Calivan’s calm eyes burned blind. Every Venatori screaming. Until only freedom remains.

Lucanis’s stomach twisted. The idea throbbed in his chest like a wound—poisonous, tempting, inevitable.

The apparition leaned closer, its breath a cold mist across his cheek. Say yes. And we fly from this cage. Say yes. And Vengeance will be the wind. Beneath our wings. Say yes. And every chain. Becomes a weapon in your hand.

Lucanis shut his eyes. For the first time, he wondered if freedom and damnation might be the same word.

You feel it. Don’t you? The hollow in your chest. The echo of chains in your marrow. They break you slowly. But I can make you sharp again. Sharper than any blade you ever carried.

Lucanis closed his eyes, jaw trembling. “And when you’re done with them? When Zara is dead, when Calivan is dust—what then? Will you eat me too?”

The creature’s smile faltered. Eat you? No. You would be my vessel. My crow. Without you I am smoke in the water. With you I can be the storm. We are not devourer and prey. We are chained together. Until we drown or we both fly.

The words slid through him like hooks. He wanted to deny them. He wanted to cling to the man he once was—controlled, precise, untouchable. But that man had died somewhere between the ship’s deck and this prison of glass and blood.

What stared back at him now was all he had left.

Lucanis’s throat felt raw when he finally whispered: “I accept.”

The distorted reflection unfurled, rising to its full height, its glowing eyes alight with triumph. It pressed its clawed hand against the glass of Lucanis’s mind, and he—gods help him—pressed back.

Yes. Now we wait. Next time they come. I will greet them.

Lucanis’s chest rose and fell in ragged rhythm, but a strange calm settled in the pit of his stomach. His pulse still thundered, yet he felt… steadier. As if a second heartbeat pulsed beneath his own.

From somewhere deep inside, Spite chuckled.

And oh. How they will scream.