CHAPTER 11: MARRIAGE


    The moment Eriel spoke, the guards descended.


    Eve was still kneeling, her hands clutched around Evie’s lifeless form, rocking her back and forth. She didn’t even react when cold, gloved hands grabbed her by the arms and wrenched her away.


    Her throat was raw from screaming. Her vision blurred, a dizzying mix of rage, grief, and the dark haze of exhaustion.


    Victor, his face pale from blood loss, staggered to his feet. He barely had time to react before two guards slammed him against the stone floor. His sabre was kicked away, clattering out of reach.


    He managed a breathless laugh, spitting blood. “So much for family loyalty.”


    Eriel stepped forward, his shadow stretching long across the bloodstained floor. He barely spared Victor a glance. “Take them to the dungeons.”


    Victor snarled, struggling against the guards. “You think this will last? You think she’ll submit?” His voice was sharp, laced with defiance even through the pain.


    Eriel only smiled. “I don’t need her to submit.”


    Then he turned to Elizabeth.


    She had been silent this entire time.


    Too silent.


    Her eyes burned. Her entire body tensed like a coiled wire.


    The guards moved for her, but the moment they touched her arm, the air trembled.


    The floor beneath them groaned as dust and loose stone levitated ever so slightly.


    For a moment, they hesitated.


    Then—


    Eriel lifted a single finger.


    A pulse of invisible force slammed into Elizabeth.


    She choked, her knees buckling.


    It wasn’t just pain—it was something deeper, heavier, like hands pressing down on her very soul. The pressure was unbearable, forcing her to kneel before him, her body paralyzed.


    Eriel looked down at her, his golden eyes gleaming. “You will marry me, Elizabeth.”


    Elizabeth gasped, her body refusing to obey her.


    “And when the ceremony is complete, you will belong to me. Your power will be mine.”


    His hand reached out—gently—lifting her chin.


    She wanted to rip his arm off. She wanted to burn him to ash.


    But she couldn’t move.


    Her body was betraying her.


    Her own power was betraying her.


    Eriel smiled. “Take her to the wedding hall.”


    The Ravenholm family descended upon her.


    Hands grabbed her arms, her shoulders, dragging her away.


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    She thrashed, but her limbs felt weighted down, useless.


    Victor roared in protest, fighting back even as the guards pinned him down.


    “Elizabeth! Don’t—!”


    Eve had stopped screaming.


    She was just staring, her eyes empty as the guards hauled her away, her twin’s blood still on her hands.


    And Elizabeth—


    Elizabeth fought.


    But she was dragged through the great halls of Ravenholm, past towering stone walls and flickering candlelight, toward the grand chamber where her fate was waiting.


    Toward the wedding hall.


    Where Eriel Ravenholm would finally claim what he had always wanted.


    Her.


    The wedding hall stretched before her, a cavernous cathedral of ruin and reverence, its vaulted ceiling so high it vanished into darkness. Massive pillars lined the aisle, carved with grotesque figures—serpents entwined with suffering saints, weeping cherubs twisted into gaping-mouthed ghouls. Each face was frozen in agony, as if the stone itself had once known torment and would never forget.


    A thousand black candles burned in jagged sconces, their wax pooling like spilled marrow along the twisted metal frames. The flames flickered unnaturally, casting writhing shadows along the walls, their dance feverish, unholy. The air was thick with the stench of old incense and dried blood, a perfume of decay that clung to the lungs like a second skin.


    At the far end of the hall, upon a raised dais of obsidian and bone, stood the altar.


    It was not a place of sanctity but of conquest.


    The altar itself was made of carved ribs, fused together like a grotesque throne, polished to an ivory sheen. Above it, suspended by rusted chains, hung an ancient crucifix, but the figure upon it was no savior—it was an effigy of a woman, her face obscured by a heavy iron mask, her hands severed at the wrists. Blood, old and new, streaked the effigy’s chest, congealed in the deep grooves of the iron.


    And before this monument of suffering, Eriel Ravenholm stood, waiting.


    He was robed in deep crimson, the fabric as fine as any noble’s, but embroidered with symbols that twisted in upon themselves—ancient sigils of power, of binding, of eternal servitude. He held a chalice of black gold in one hand, and in the other, a knife as thin as a whisper, its blade pulsing like a living thing.


    The Ravenholm family lined the pews, their faces obscured by silver-veiled masks. No words passed between them, but they watched hungrily, like wolves waiting for the final cry of the dying.


    A low, inhuman chanting rose from the edges of the hall.


    The monks of the old faith, shrouded figures draped in midnight-blue vestments, stood in a wide circle, their faces unseen. They rocked back and forth, whispering in a language that had not been spoken by mortal tongues for centuries. Their voices layered, harmonized, became a dirge—a lament for the living, a summons for the damned.


    At the center of the circle, drawn in blood and salt, was the wedding sigil.


    It was no mere symbol. It was a wound carved into reality itself.


    The lines bled, pulsing like veins, stretching across the floor like the grasping hands of the forsaken. Within its boundaries, the world was thinner, weaker. The air warped, shimmered, as if something beyond was watching. Waiting.


    And it was into this abyss of ritual and ruin that Elizabeth was dragged.


    Her wrists were bound in silver chains, each link inscribed with the names of the lost—psychics who had come before, taken, broken, consumed. The metal seared her skin, burning not with fire, but with memory, with the echoes of those who had failed to escape.


    The moment she was forced to her knees before the altar, Eriel stepped forward.


    He reached down, and took her chin in his hand, tilting her face up toward him.


    His ever-changing eyes, so bright they seemed to burn, bore into her. He did not smile.


    “It is time.”


    The monks'' voices rose, their chant becoming a single, long note, a terrible sound that did not belong in this world.


    Eriel raised the knife.


    Not to kill.


    To carve.


    To bind.


    To make her his.


    Forever.