Monsters Aren't Born Chapter 2 - Necromancy

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Cold.

Wet.

Pain.

Fragmentary sensations pierced through the darkness of Dreama's consciousness like daggers, forcing her reluctantly back to a reality she desperately wished to never return to. Her eyelids fluttered open, crusted with dried tears and grime, to reveal nothing but shadows dancing across damp stone walls. The stench hit her next – a thick, foul miasma of mold, piss, and her own unwashed body. She tried to move, but every muscle screamed in protest, her groin still raw and torn from having been violated, and she barely felt like she could move. How long had she been lying here? Hours? Days? There were no windows to the outside to tell. A thin shaft of gray light filtered through a small barred gap set in the cell’s door was her only view outside of this tiny cell.

Her pain was also no guide to how long it had been. The throbbing between her legs felt eternal, as if her rape had both just happened and been going on forever. Dreama's hand trembled as she reached between her thighs, wincing as her fingers touched crusted blood mixed with the necromancer's dried seed. The mixture had leaked out of her and dried on her inner thighs, creating a sticky, disgusting film that pulled at her skin when she tried to move her legs. A sob escaped her throat as the memory of Rastin forcing himself inside her flooded back. His cold eyes staring into her.

The cell she was trapped in was barely larger than a grave. When she tried to sit up, her head struck against rough-hewn stone faster than she thought it would, scraping her scalp and sending fresh pain radiating through her skull. She slumped back, her bare skin pressing against the filthy floor. Something wet seeped beneath her, and the acrid sting of urine burned against her raw skin where it had pooled beneath her during unconsciousness. The humiliation of lying in her own waste was just one more indignity heaped upon the mountain of violations she'd endured.

Beyond the barred door of her cell, she heard movement. Heavy footfalls. The scrape of something being dragged across stone. There was something wrong about that sound, like the walker was dragging his feet, and something about it made her skin crawl. The footsteps grew louder, approaching her cell. Dreama's heart hammered against her ribs. She tried to press herself into the corner of her cell, to make herself smaller, invisible. The effort sent fresh spikes of agony through her abused body. Her breathing came in rapid, shallow bursts that scraped her dry throat raw.

A clanking sound outside her door. Metal on metal. Keys.

The door swung open with a screech of rusted hinges that pierced her eardrums like needles. Flickering torchlight spilled into the cell, momentarily blinding her. When her vision cleared, Dreama's scream died in her throat, strangled by horror.

Two men she knew from the village stood in the doorway.

No—not men.

Braden was a young, fit man from the farm just a few miles down the road from hers… he had always fancied her, she knew, but he had never been gross about it. He had just always found an excuse to walk beside her when they were both leaving town with supplies, or help her when she was loading bales of wheat into the wagon. Kevaan was the opposite… a trouble-making youth who was the son of the butcher. His father was a kindly man, and well loved… which was the only reason his menace of a son was tolerated. Even so, last summer the mayor had made the boy and his father pay for the most recent damages to the town square. Both had been large men. One of them she had liked, the other she had been afraid of.

Both were gone now, and something else was in their place.

What entered her cell were walking corpses. Their skin hung loosely on their muscular frames, and both bore gruesomely fatal wounds—Kevaan’s throat was slashed open, revealing the white gleam of his spine, while Braden had a gaping hole in his chest where his heart should have been. Their eyes were bottomless pits of blackness, devoid of life or consciousness. Both were naked, their dead tools hanging flaccid between their legs. They were obviously dead.

It didn’t stop them from walking around.

Horror gripped Dreama, and she suddenly wanted to vomit. "No," she cried out, scrambling backward until her spine pressed against the cold stone wall. "Stay away from me!"

The corpses didn't speak. She wasn’t sure they could speak. Instead, they moved with jerky, puppet-like motions, reaching for her with hands that felt like cold, wet leather against her skin. One grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back with enough force to make her neck crack painfully. The other seized her arm, its grip bruising as it dragged her forward.

"Let me go!" Dreama kicked out, her bare foot connecting with the first undead's thigh. It was like kicking a side of beef—unyielding and lifeless. Her efforts were completely ignored by the corpses holding her body as they hauled her to her feet. The stone floor scraped against her bare feet, opening fresh cuts that left bloody smears behind her as they took her out into the corridor.

"This the special one?" A living voice came from further down the hall.

The dead things couldn't answer, but they turned her body toward the voice, displaying her like merchandise.

"Fuck me, she is a pretty little thing." Heavy footsteps approached, and a bearded man in leather armor came into view. He circled her, eyes roving over her naked body with undisguised lust. "Young, too. Shame for her."

Dreama tried to spit at him, but her mouth was too dry… the little spit she gathered just dribbled out her lips. The man laughed. "Got some fight left, does she? Won't last long." He reached out, squeezing her breast roughly. “Hold her still.”

The undead guards slammed Dreama against the wall, her head cracking against stone hard enough that she saw stars. While the monsters held her immobile, the man shoved a filthy rag into her mouth, gagging her so forcefully she thought her jaw would pop. The taste of sweat, blood, and worse filled her mouth, triggering her gag reflex. She retched helplessly around the cloth, unable to expel it or draw a proper breath.

"Take her to the master," the living guard commanded the corpses holding her. “He awaits her in the study."

The undead yanked her away from the wall and resumed dragging her down the corridor. Her bare feet slipped in the filth coating the floor, unable to find purchase. Through tear-blurred eyes, she glimpsed other cells lining the passage. Emaciated arms reached through the bars. Hollow eyes stared out from gaunt faces. One woman pressed herself against her cell door, lips moving in what might have been a prayer.

They dragged her around a corner and up the stairs, and then through several other turns that Dreama was too out of it to follow. Here the walls were wood and plaster, this was a real home compared to the dank dungeon below it. Unlike the prison section, this passage was clean, the air scented with herbs and incense, the walls covered with art. Daylight shone through windows to one side that revealed a forest… her forest?

The hallway ended with an ornate door. One of the undead reached for the handle, pulling the heavy door open. Light spilled out—the warm glow of dozens of black candles arranged in concentric circles around a metal table. Robed figures sat in a ring around the chamber, faces hidden in shadow. From the way the robes clung to their bodies, they were men and women both.

And at the head of the table stood Rastin, his pale eyes lighting with interest as they fell upon Dreama. He smiled, the expression never reaching those cold eyes. "Ah," he said, his cultured voice carrying easily across the chamber. "Our special subject has arrived. Bring her in."

The undead guards dragged her forward across the threshold. The door swung shut behind her with a sound like a tomb being sealed, and they hauled Dreama toward the metal table in the center of the chamber. Dreama tugged, trying to get away from the cruel man who had slaughtered and enslaved her village, but it just meant the corpses’ cold hands bruised her body more as they lifted her and forced her down to the metal table, slamming her down on it hard enough to knock what little breath she had left from her lungs. Iron manacles waited at each corner, and the guards wrenched her limbs outward, securing her wrists and ankles with brutal efficiency. The position left her completely vulnerable, spread-eagled on her back with her butt just barely hanging over the edge of the table, her sore pussy displayed like a sacrifice before the circle of watching men and women in dark robes. Panic flooded her mind as she realized she couldn't move, couldn't close her legs, couldn't shield any part of herself from what was coming.

Rastin circled the table slowly, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor. The black candles surrounding them cast his shadow in multiple directions, creating the illusion of several predators stalking her at once. His pale eyes gleamed in the flickering light, drinking in her exposed form with interest as the figures watched her from behind. They were the apprentices that Rastin had spoken of, she realized… the ones he was teaching.

"Today's lesson," he announced to the watching apprentices, "concerns the practical application of blood harvesting through ritualized suffering." His cultured voice carried effortlessly through the chamber. Rastin gestured down at Dreama. “This woman possesses significant magical potential—untapped, untrained, but potent nonetheless. Her blood contains far more energy than most… and that allows us a few options.”

Dreama twisted her head, struggling to see through tear-blurred vision. A dozen black-robed figures stood in a circle around the table, their faces partially hidden within deep hoods. She could make out enough to see they were mostly young men, some barely older than herself, all watching with undisguised fascination. One, a woman, licked her lips as her gaze traveled over Dreama’s exposed breasts.

Rastin placed his palm flat against Dreama’s stomach, then up to cup one of her breasts. “She’s a little bruised up, but still healthy. That’s important… we are looking to harvest life energy here. A sickly host will not have much of it to give.” Dreama whimpered around the filthy gag as his fingers pinched her nipple hard enough to make her arch against the restraints. She could taste the foulness of the cloth in her mouth, feel it pressing against her tongue, absorbing her saliva until her mouth felt parched and raw.

"Master," one of the apprentices spoke up, a young man with a pockmarked face, "does previous sexual use diminish the quality of the harvest?"

Rastin's lips curled into a thin smile. "An excellent question. No. While virginal blood contains unique properties… and I have harvested hers already… her suffering can actually enhance certain aspects of the energy harvested. Pain remembered amplifies pain experienced."

He produced that ornate, bone-handled dagger from his belt. The blade gleamed in the candlelight and runes etched into the metal seemed to absorb the light around them. "The skin is a boundary," Rastin continued, tracing the tip of the dagger along her collarbone, applying just enough pressure to raise a thin line of red without breaking the skin completely. "Between self and other, between life and death. When we breach it..."

The dagger tip pressed harder, parting her flesh in a shallow cut that stung like fire. Dreama jerked against her restraints, a muffled cry escaping around the gag.

"As I’ve demonstrated for you in the past, blood is the medium of life energy," Rastin explained, watching as crimson beads welled up along the cut. "It carries within it the essence of existence itself. For the necromancer, it is both tool and weapon, ink and canvas."

He continued making small, precise cuts across her torso—across the swell of her breasts, down the curve of her ribs, along her hip bones. Each slice burned like a line of fire, bringing fresh tears to Dreama's eyes. Blood trickled from the wounds, running in thin rivulets across her skin to the edges of the table where it collected in narrow channels carved into the metal. "For us, blood is the most readily available medium through which we work necromancy… the easiest way to contain the life energy we need. You’ve all practiced that plenty by now. But it also poses a problem, does it not? Bringing fresh blood sacrifices with you when you want to work powerful sorcery can be a rather large inconvenience, yes?” The assembled watchers laughed softly, and their amusement felt positively discordant in Dreama’s terror. “Thankfully, there is a way around that. Allow me to demonstrate.”

Without warning, he plunged the dagger deep into her abdomen, just below her ribs.

Dreama was so shocked at first that she didn’t even feel the pain to begin with. Her eyes widened with shock, and her muscles all tensed against the bonds. Then the agony hit, far worse than anything Dreama had ever experienced. The blade tore through muscle and tissue, scraping against organs, sending waves of white-hot pain radiating outward from the point of entry. Her scream was trapped in her throat by the gag, emerging as a strangled, animal sound that barely made it to the chamber walls. Her body convulsed against the restraints, back arching off the table as blood gushed from the wound, pouring into the channels with alarming speed.

Rastin twisted the blade with methodical precision, his expression unchanged as he watched her writhe in torment. "When the body suffers trauma, its own life energy seeks to stem the tide of the injury. For this reason, the suffering experienced by the subject directly influences the potency of the harvested energy," he lectured calmly, as if discussing crop rotation rather than torture. Through the haze of agony, Dreama heard one of the apprentices ask a question about the depth of the wound. Rastin's answer came as if from a great distance, clinical terms mixing with crude descriptions as black spots danced at the edges of her vision.

"While death yields the greatest power at once," Rastin was saying, withdrawing the blade with a sickening sound of suction. Blood fountained from the wound, hot against her cold skin. “…it is not always the most efficient. A living, suffering subject, especially one with potential, can be repeatedly harvested and provide far greater returns over time."

The dagger clattered onto the table beside her. Through tear-blurred eyes, Dreama watched Rastin disrobe from the waist down. His cock stood erect, the sight of it sending a fresh wave of terror through her already overwhelmed system. Memory of her rape at the Mayor's table flashed through her mind as he positioned himself between her thighs, but lower.

"Suffering can come in many forms," Rastin explained, dipping his fingers into her flowing blood and wiping it across the head of his erection, lubricating it with the crimson fluid. “Degradation. Hopelessness. Emotional agony. Physical torture. All of it can do a part to heighten the suffering of the subject and increase the yield of the ritual. And by far the easiest way I’ve found to get all of them at once…”

The necromancer pressed the head of his cock against her asshole, an entrance never meant for such invasion. Dreama's eyes widened in renewed panic, her body tensing involuntarily.

“…Is like this.”

Rastin pushed forward inexorably. Dreama felt the blunt, blood-slicked head of his cock press against her tight, virgin entrance and her muscles clenched instinctively, a futile attempt at self-preservation as her body recognized the imminent invasion.

The pressure increased gradually, relentlessly. The ring of muscle fought against the intrusion, but Rastin was determined. Dreama felt the exact moment her body began to surrender—a microscopic yielding that sent lightning bolts of pain radiating through her pelvis. The tight ring of muscle stretched beyond its natural limit, burning as if someone had pressed a hot coal against her most intimate flesh.

Then it slid into her. The burning stretch as he forced his way inside was unbearable. She stared down at where their bodies met, watching him slide into her with eyes nearly bugging out of her head. One inch was inside of her. Just one terrible inch, and already Dreama felt as though she were being torn in half. The necromancer paused, allowing his apprentices to observe the way her body spasmed around the intrusion. Her abdominal muscles contracted involuntarily, squeezing the stab wound and sending fresh rivulets of blood cascading down her sides.

Rastin pushed forward again, another cruel inch disappearing inside her. The stretch was worse now, a burning, tearing sensation that made Dreama's vision blur. She could feel every vein, every ridge of his cock as it forced its way deeper, scraping against the delicate tissues never meant to accommodate such an invasion. Her body tried desperately to expel him, muscles clenching and unclenching in protest, but this only seemed to heighten Rastin's pleasure. A soft groan escaped his lips, the only sign that he was affected at all by what he was doing.

"Note the way she spasms," he said to his students, his voice only slightly thicker than before. "Each time she tries to push me out, her internal muscles grip and massage the penetrating object. The more she resists, the more it hurts her… and the more energy we will get out of her blood."

Another inch. Then another. The penetration seemed endless, each fraction of movement bringing new dimensions of pain. Dreama's world narrowed to the point where her body was being split open, everything else fading to a distant blur. The cold metal table beneath her. The watching eyes of the apprentices. All secondary to the unbearable violation happening between her legs and the throbbing, bleeding stab wound in her abdomen.

She felt him reach some internal barrier, some point where her body simply could not accommodate more. Rather than retreating, Rastin shifted his angle slightly, one hand pressing down on her lower abdomen—directly on the stab wound. The explosion of pain from the knife wound momentarily overshadowed the anal violation, causing her entire body to seize. In that moment of distraction, he drove forward with brutal force, burying himself to the hilt inside her. Dreama's back arched off the table as far as her restraints would allow. The sensation of being completely filled, of having her insides rearranged to accommodate his invasion, was beyond description. She felt as though she was being impaled on a sword, split from below and hollowed out. Her guttural scream couldn't find proper voice through the filthy gag, emerging instead as a primal, animal sound of pure agony.

The necromancer remained still for several long seconds, seemingly enjoying just the sensation of being buried deep in her ass. Dreama could feel him pulsing inside her, each throb of his cock sending fresh waves of agony through her violated passage. Then, without warning, he withdrew almost completely—leaving just the head of his cock stretching her entrance. The momentary relief was shattered as he slammed forward again with enough force to shake the entire metal table. The chains of her restraints rattled as her body was jolted upward, only to be yanked back down by the manacles around her wrists and ankles.

Rastin established a brutal pace that made Dreama slide back and forth along the few inches of the table she had to work with. Each thrust drove the air from the blonde girl’s lungs, forcing her to take shallow, desperate breaths around the gag. The table groaned beneath her, metal legs scraping against stone with each powerful thrust. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh echoed obscenely through the chamber, punctuated by the wet, sucking noises as her asshole gripped onto his cruel rod. She could feel her consciousness drifting and wondered idly how much of it was from the pain and how much was from the blood loss… which one was more responsible for her reality breaking apart at the edges. The faces of the watching apprentices seemed to distort, stretching and twisting in the flickering candlelight. Some leaned forward, entranced by the display. Others took notes on parchment with quills that scratched in rhythm with Rastin's thrusts. One young woman had slipped a hand beneath her robes, her breathing visibly quickening as she watched Dreama's violation.

"For those with the sensitivity to perceive it," Rastin continued, his voice finally beginning to strain with exertion, "you can actually see the energy flowing from the subject's body into the collection channels. It manifests as a faint luminescence in the blood." He punctuated this statement with a series of brutal, jackhammer thrusts that made the entire table shudder and groan. The manacles bit into Dreama's wrists and ankles as her body was repeatedly jolted upward, only to be yanked back down to meet the next punishing invasion. Her head lolled from side to side, consciousness flickering as the dual agonies of the stab wound and anal violation competed for dominance.

Through tear-blurred eyes, Dreama noticed something horrifying—that he was right. In the blood flowing through the channels in the table, she could see a faint glow from inside it… a sickly blue light. Her very life force was being harvested, drained away with each brutal thrust. The realization brought a fresh wave of despair crashing over her, more devastating than any physical pain. She wasn't just being violated; she was being consumed.

"Don’t shy away from letting the subject know what is happening to them, either," Rastin said, as if reading her thoughts. His pace had become erratic now, his own pleasure building toward its inevitable conclusion. "The subject's awareness can only help. The hopelessness, the understanding that they are being drained: This psychological suffering amplifies the energy you will drain." Rastin's thrusts reached a fever pitch. The sound of the table groaning filled the chamber, a mechanical counterpoint to Dreama's muffled screams and the wet, obscene slapping of violated flesh. Blood from her stab wound splashed with each impact, spattering across Rastin's stomach and thighs in a grotesque painting.

As Rastin approached his climax, the light in the blood channels grew brighter, pulsing in rhythm with his thrusts and Dreama's fading heartbeat. The apprentices had fallen silent, transfixed by the display of power and cruelty before them. Some had moved closer, eager to witness the culmination of the ritual.

Dreama felt herself sliding away, consciousness receding like the tide until, with a final brutal thrust, he buried himself to the hilt in her torn passage, his body stiffening as he pumped his seed deep inside her. The sensation of his hot release filling her violated body made Dreama's stomach heave, but the gag prevented her from vomiting. She could only choke and struggle for breath as darkness crept into the edges of her vision, feeling the sensation of his seed, hot and burning, flooding her torn and bleeding insides.

Rastin withdrew from her with a wet, obscene sound, leaving her bleeding from both her stab wounds and trembling uncontrollably on the cold table. Her consciousness faded in and out, the voices of Rastin and his apprentices becoming distant, distorted echoes as shock overtook her system. Darkness came in waves, washing over Dreama's consciousness like a tide. One moment she was drowning in agony, the next floating in a gray haze where pain became distant, almost theoretical. Her eyelids fluttered, giving her fragmented glimpses of the horror show continuing around her.

Blood—her blood—still poured from the wound in her abdomen, collecting in the table's channels like water in irrigation ditches. So much blood. Too much. The rational part of her mind, the part not consumed by pain, knew she was dying. She wanted to be dead. Death would be a mercy compared to this endless violation, this systematic dismantling of her body and spirit.

Rastin moved in and out of her field of vision, his lower half still naked, his flaccid cock and abdomen stained red with her blood. He hadn't bothered to clean himself or redress, apparently unconcerned with modesty before his students. The sight of him, casually displaying the instrument of her violation while lecturing, made Dreama oddly furious. Couldn’t he allow her the slightest bit of respect or dignity?

"So, the collection phase is complete," Rastin announced, gesturing toward the table where her blood had pooled into a central depression. "But as I said, if we don’t want to work a powerful spell right now, all of this would go to waste. To prevent that, we begin the crystallization process."

He positioned himself at the head of the table, spreading his arms wide as he began to whisper arcane words of power in a language Dreama didn't recognize. The syllables seemed to cut the air like knives, each word leaving a distinct impression against the nascent sorcerous sense that had appeared in Dreama after she sparked… And the blood began to move.

At first, Dreama thought she was hallucinating from blood loss. But no—her blood was actually rising from the collection channels, defying gravity to hover in the air above her ravaged body. It coalesced into a rotating sphere, spinning faster as Rastin's chanting intensified. The crimson orb began to glow with an eerie light, pulsing in rhythm with her own failing heartbeat.

"Witness the transformation," Rastin instructed his apprentices. "Life force separated from its vessel and condensed into pure power."

The hovering blood contracted suddenly, the sphere shrinking as if crushed by invisible hands. The glow intensified, shifting from red to a deeper, more sinister crimson-black. Dreama felt each contraction as a corresponding squeeze around her heart, as if something was being torn from her very essence. Each pulse left her feeling more hollow, more depleted. With a final word from Rastin, the blood solidified, transforming from liquid to solid in an instant. What remained floating in the air was a roughly pyramid-shaped crystal about the size of a walnut, black and pulsing with a crimson inner light that mimicked a heartbeat.

Dreama recognized it immediately. It was just like the gems embedded in Rastin's flesh. The same sort of gem, made from people like her. People he had violated, cut open, bled dry. Each one represented a life harvested, a victim tortured for power.

Rastin plucked the hovering crystal from the air, holding it up for his students to observe. The gem caught the candlelight, sending crimson reflections dancing across the chamber walls. "This is called a blood crystal," he proclaimed with evident satisfaction. "This is what becomes possible when harvesting from a subject with innate magical potential. The sorcerous energy contained here is stable. You can carry this around, and use it to fuel your necromancy whenever you need it."

Through her haze of pain and approaching unconsciousness, Dreama watched as the apprentices crowded closer, eyes fixed on the bloodcrystal with naked hunger.

"Master," one of them spoke up—a young man with a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth. "The subject's breathing is becoming irregular. I believe she's approaching death."

Rastin glanced down at Dreama's pale face, her blue-tinged lips visible around the filthy gag. His expression showed no concern, only mild annoyance at having his lecture interrupted.

"An observant but unnecessary comment," he replied coldly. "I am well aware of the subject's condition. Death comes for all things eventually—but not yet for this one. She has many more harvests to provide." He tucked the bloodcrystal into a small velvet pouch, then approached Dreama's side. The hole in her abdomen still oozed blood, though the flow had slowed to a trickle as her body ran dry. Rastin placed his palm directly over the wound, his skin coming into contact with her exposed internal tissues.

The touch sent a jolt of revulsion through Dreama, stronger even than her pain. His hand felt wrong against her wound—cold and somehow greasy, like the skin of a corpse dipped in oil. He began another incantation, and a few moments later green fire bloomed beneath his palm, seeping between his fingers and flowing into Dreama's wound like liquid.

The agony was immediate. If anything, it hurt worse than being stabbed. The green fire burned through her insides, not consuming but transforming. She could feel her torn flesh crawling, writhing, knitting back together under the influence of this cruel form of healing magic as it violated her just as proudly as his cock had. Dreama screamed into her gag again, her back arching until only her head and heels maintained contact with the metal surface. "The necromantic healing process is considerably more painful than Vitalistic healing," Rastin lectured casually as Dreama convulsed beneath his hand. "This is because we are not merely encouraging the body's natural restoration processes… instead, we are commanding dead tissue to live again, forcing a reversal of entropy itself. It is easy enough to do, however."

Through tear-blurred eyes, Dreama watched in horror as the gaping wound in her stomach began to close. She could feel her internal organs squirming back into place, could feel torn blood vessels reconnecting, severed nerves firing with white-hot pain as they reestablished connections. The sensation was like having thousands of insects crawling inside her, burrowing through her tissues, laying eggs beneath her skin. Dreama's vision dimmed as the final stage of healing began. The edges of her wound crawled toward each other like separate living things, flesh reaching for flesh across the diminishing gap. When they met, the sensation was like a thousand needles being driven into her skin simultaneously. A strangled sob escaped her as the last of the visible damage disappeared, leaving only a faint, puckered scar where the knife had entered.

The green fire faded, but its effects lingered in her body—a cold, slithering sensation that made her feel freezing cold on the inside.

"Perfect," Rastin murmured, running his fingers over the fresh scar. "The subject will now be allowed to recover before we harvest her again.”

One of the female apprentice necromancers raised her hand. "Master, how frequently can a single subject be harvested?"

"An excellent question," Rastin replied, finally reaching for his discarded robes. "With proper maintenance, a high-quality subject like this one can be harvested every few days for several months before diminishing returns set in. This one, with her untapped magical potential, may yield prime crystals for perhaps half a year."

Six months. Six months of torture. The words penetrated Dreama's fog of pain and exhaustion. Half a year of this. A year of being cut open, violated, bled, healed, and cut open again. The thought was more devastating than any physical pain could ever be.

"Remember," Rastin continued, gesturing toward Dreama's trembling form, "Weaklings like her are resources, not people. Their suffering is irrelevant except as a catalyst for power. Their only value lies in what we can extract from them."

The apprentices nodded in understanding, some making notes on small parchments they produced from their robes. Several looked at Dreama with calculating eyes, clearly imagining acquiring subjects of their own to harvest.

He turned toward the doorway where the undead guards waited silently. "Return her to her cell. Provide the minimum sustenance required for recovery. No additional damage is permitted until the next scheduled session."

The undead guards unshackled Dreama from the ritual table with rough, jerking movements that sent fresh waves of pain through her newly healed body. The wound had closed, but the memory of it remained etched in her mind, a phantom agony that felt more real than the cold hands gripping her arms. Her body hung limp between them as they dragged her from the chamber, her bare legs trailing uselessly behind her, too weak to support even a fraction of her weight. The stone floor scraped against her skin, leaving raw patches on her knees and the tops of her feet, adding trivial new hurts to her catalog of suffering.

Behind her, Rastin's voice continued to echo from the chamber, lecturing his apprentices on the finer points of necromancy. His words drifted after her like poisonous smoke, seeping into her semiconscious mind despite her desire to block them out.

"The true mastery of death requires understanding that the boundary between living and dead is far more permeable than most believe," he was saying, his cultured voice carrying effortlessly through the stone corridors. "With sufficient power and knowledge, a necromancer can extract life force from subjects miles distant, creating a harvest field that drains entire villages in minutes." The undead guards dragged her around a corner, the necromancer's voice growing fainter but still audible. "Eventually, with enough bloodcrystals and proper ritual preparation, one can even reach across the veil itself to reclaim souls already passed beyond..."

Dreama's head lolled forward, chin resting against her chest as consciousness ebbed and flowed like a tide. Her surroundings blurred past, the carpeted floor, the walls, the stairs. She heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Through swollen eyelids, Dreama glimpsed another group of undead servants of the necromancer approaching from a side passage. Between them they half-carried, half-dragged another prisoner.

Recognition hit her like a physical blow. The Mayor. The same man who had offered her shelter after the fire, whose family had been slaughtered by Rastin. His once-robust frame had been reduced to a gaunt shadow, his gray-streaked beard matted with blood and filth. His body was covered in ritual cuts similar to those Rastin had inflicted on her, some fresh and bleeding, others partially healed into puckered scars.

As their paths crossed, the Mayor's head lifted, and his sunken eyes met hers. A flash of recognition passed between them, a momentary connection in the midst of shared suffering. His cracked lips parted as if he might speak, but no sound emerged. Dreama tried to call out to him, to offer some word of comfort or solidarity, but the gag reduced her attempt to a muffled groan.

Then the moment passed as their respective guards dragged them in opposite directions. Dreama twisted her neck painfully, trying to keep sight of him as long as possible, this last connection to her former life. He disappeared around a corner, and she was alone again among the undead.

The guards resumed their mechanical march toward her cell, their grip on her arms bruising in its uncaring strength. Dreama's head dropped forward again, her momentary alertness fading as exhaustion reclaimed her.

Right before she reached her cell, it happened.

She felt a flare of power… the same kind of cold, frightening power that had woken her from her bed that horrible night. Her entire body convulsed… and she knew why. She could feel the necromancy. Could feel the incredible power flowing through the air. The Mayor was dying. Somehow, impossibly, she knew this with absolute certainty. Not just knew it, but felt it happening, as if she were experiencing it herself. She felt Rastin's magic as it fed off the Mayor’s life and consumed it utterly… tearing, ripping, extracting. The man who had protected her… his life flickered like a candle in a gale, desperately trying to cling to existence even as it was torn away.

Then nothing. Emptiness.

He was gone.

She cried as she was dragged away. The guards showed no reaction to her distress. They continued dragging her forward, turning down a narrower passage that she vaguely recognized from earlier. Her cell waited halfway down to the end, the small stone box that now represented the entirety of her world. When they reached the door, one guard released her arm to unlock it with a screech of rusted hinges. Without ceremony, the two threw her into the cell. Dreama's body hit the filthy floor hard and rolled until she fetched up against the far wall… it didn’t take long. The door slammed shut behind her, locks engaging with metallic finality. Footsteps retreated down the corridor until silence returned, broken only by the sound of her own labored breathing around the gag.

Alone in the darkness, Dreama curled into a fetal position, her body trembling with exhaustion, pain, and grief. The Mayor's death replayed in her mind, that terrible sensation of life being forcibly extracted. She had felt his soul being ripped away. Worse, some part of her had understood how it was done… had glimpsed the mechanism of Rastin's power, the way he manipulated the forces of life and death. The same sparking that had killed her parents and drawn Rastin’s attention meant that she could feel his power and how it was used. The realization should have terrified her further, but instead, a strange calm began to settle over her fractured mind.

If she could feel it, could she use it? If Rastin's violation had opened this door within her, could she turn that against him? The thoughts came unbidden, rising from some primitive part of her brain concerned only with survival and revenge.

Images flashed through her mind… and they were not horrific images of what was going on any longer but fantasies. Dreama imagined standing over Rastin's broken body. Her hands were wreathed in that same blue light she had seen in her blood as she destroyed the necromancer. His apprentices writhing on the floor as she tore their life force away, harvested them as they had intended to harvest her. The gag muffled the sound that escaped her throat, and this time it was not a sob but a laugh. Small, broken, but unmistakable. Her eyes rolled back as consciousness finally slipped away completely, but not before one final thought crystallized in her mind with perfect clarity: She would learn. She would survive. And one day, Rastin would discover exactly what kind of monster he had created.

And then she would bring the people she loved back.

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