Chapter 75 Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter 75 Chapter Twenty Two
Lucian's POV
“You slaughter like beasts,” he said, voice steady, heavy as a coffin lid. “As you were made to. Nothing more.”
Ezra didn’t flinch, though his knuckles whitened against the sword he held. “You've crawled from the grave only to die twice, Harrow.”
“Talk,” Enoch rumbled, flexing his fists until his skin cracked. “Always talk. I am sending this bastard back to where he should be”
We moved as one.
While the others clash hard with Harrow, Benedict barely moves. He’s leaning against a pillar, eyes heavy, almost dozing. Soldiers try to rush him, thinking he’s an easy target. He doesn’t even rise — just lifts a finger.
The ground beneath the soldiers suddenly drags them down, as if gravity itself had turned cruel. Their steps slow, bodies pulled heavy until they collapse, unable to stand. Benedict exhales like it cost him effort just to do that much, muttering, “Too much noise…”
Chains burst from my back with a scream of steel, whipping toward Harrow. Ezra’s palm lit, a golden arc carving the air like a sword. Ciel vanished in a ripple, shadows blurring her outline, while Malachi’s stolen axe blazed red with strength. Reuben snarled and lunged low, jaws wide, hunger pulling him into a blur.
The ground itself broke under the weight of our combined charge.
But Harrow moved.
He ducked beneath my chains, his cloak snapping like smoke. Ezra’s light hissed past his cheek, close enough to sear hair. He caught Ciel’s dagger on the edge of his sleeve and twisted, disarming her before she blinked back into view. Malachi swung—the axe should have cut a man in half—but Harrow slid aside, the blade cutting through the ground and creating a long deep hole.
Then he struck. A palm to Reuben’s chest. Reuben flew back, his chest hitting a column, stone.
“Faster,” Harrow said, voice calm, like he was teaching children. “If this is all you’ve become—”
“Shut your mouth!” Enoch roared, fist smashing into the ground where Harrow had stood. The ruins shook. Stones broke apart and dust flew up. Harrow flashed to Enoch’s side, hand raised—then Ezra’s golden light slashed across his ribs.
This time, he bled.
The scent hit sharp and sweet. Real, human blood.
I tore my chains free and struck again—one wrapped his shoulder, another tore his thigh. Sparks burst as metal met flesh. Ciel slipped in behind him, blade aimed for his throat. Harrow twisted, but too late. Her dagger cut his cheek, red running down his jaw.
For the first time, Harrow staggered.
The seven pressed in, tighter. Reuben came back with a howl, slamming a claw into Harrow’s arm. Enoch caught him with a glancing blow that sent him reeling sideways. My chains wrapped his ankle and yanked, dragging him down into the dirt.
He was on his knees. Our maker, bleeding, dragged down by his own creations. And gods, the rush. Victory hot in the chest.
But Harrow’s mouth curved. From inside his cloak, he drew a shard. A jagged piece of stone, dark and pulsing faintly, like it had veins.
The world shifted.
I felt it before he even raised it. The pull—deep, marrow-deep—like the earth itself wanted to drag me apart. My chains writhed, bucking, turning inward. They wrapped around my arms, my ribs, my throat.
Ezra froze, light flickering, his breath stolen. His knees bent against his will, golden power shaking in his palms.
Enoch’s fist locked mid-air, veins bulging, rage burning his skin raw as it turned against him.
Reuben gagged, biting at nothing, jaws snapping so hard his teeth cracked. He tore at his own arm, laughing through the scream, unable to stop himself.
Ciel staggered, her blade dropping with a clatter. Her eyes glazed, chasing illusions, hands clutching at shadows only she could see.
Malachi’s axe withered to dust. He cursed, clawing at the air, his hands blackening with every attempt to steal back power.
And me? My chains coiled tighter, pulling me to the dirt. Blood dripped warm across my collarbone as steel carved skin.
Harrow rose, steady, breathing slow. His voice didn’t shake, not once.
“You think yourselves gods because you broke free?” He lifted the shard, and it pulsed once, twice, like a heartbeat. “But every beat of your existence belongs to me. I built you. I end you.”
The ground cracked. White arms of bone tore upward from the soil, fingers wrapping, dragging us down.
We fought. Ezra’s light burst one last time, glorious. Enoch bellowed, smashing bone into dust. I ripped at my chains, blood and fire mixing in my throat. Reuben fought against the curse. Ciel vanished, reappeared, and stabbed shadows that weren’t there. Malachi clawed like a starving man, reaching for anything that would hold.
But the shard pulsed again.
And as the Orchard swallowed us whole, we could still hear his voice, cold and emotionless.
“You turned your strength against your maker. You believed yourselves untouchable, free, beyond my reach. That arrogance has brought you here.” His fingers tightened on the shard, and the soil beneath him shivered as if listening.
“The Orchard will take you piece by piece. It will drink your blood, grind your bones, and root your marrow into its soil. Your chains will not obey you. Your power will not answer. You will hear each other’s screams and never find death’s release. You will remain—aware, bound, stripped—until the last trace of you is nothing but soil feeding my garden.”
His gaze lingered on the earth, calm as stone.
“Such is the fate of children who mistake rebellion for freedom.”
THE BONE ORCHARD
They didn’t fall onto bare ground. They hit bone. It was jagged, full of holes, and slick with marrow. Ribs curved above like cages. Skulls stuck out of the walls, their empty eyes glowing faintly, watching. The air was thick with rot—sour blood, burnt marrow, cartilage turned to ash.
The Orchard was alive. The walls pulsed. Chains twitched. Every surface stank of hunger.
Chains burst from the walls and floor. They were not steel, but bone streaked with black veins. They wrapped around wrists, throats, ribs, and ankles, cutting deep as they dragged the seven down. Flesh split, blood ran, and the Orchard drank it eagerly.
Ezra’s light burst out, golden at first. Then it turned black like oil and threw sparks. He fell to his knees, choking, his eyes wide as his own light betrayed him.
Enoch smashed his fists into the ground, roaring. Bones shattered beneath his blows, but ribs curved upward instantly, clasping around his chest, crushing until the roar broke into a strained gasp. His veins bulged, his eyes reddened, and his fury twisted into helplessness.
Reuben bit his own shackles, tearing one apart — but the pieces crawled into his flesh like worms, burrowing under the skin. He ripped at his own body in panic, laughing madly and screaming between gasps as blood poured from the wounds.
Ciel and Malachi were going through the same fate.
Lucian’s chains writhed like serpents. They pierced his skin, slid under his ribs, tightened until his lungs burned. Blood filled his throat, hot and bitter, choking every gasp. He tried to command them, but they twisted cruelly, obeying not him but Doctor Harrow and the Orchard.
They screamed together — seven voices, torn and ragged, echoing in the hollow cathedral of bone. Yet death never came. The Orchard would not allow it.
It rebuilt what it destroyed. Flesh sewed itself back, only to split again under the next strike. Bones snapped, then slid back into place, only to crack once more.
Every breath was torment. Every second stretched into eternity. Pain did not end—it rolled over them like a tide, crushing, drowning, relentless. They were not living, not dying. Just trapped. Bodies remade only to be broken again.
And the Orchard fed, drinking every cry, every drop, every shred of their suffering.
And then Harrow came.
He stepped from the shadows between rib-pillars, calm, unhurried. His cloak dragged across the bone floor. Blood stained his ribs, but he carried himself like he’d never been touched. In his hand, the shard glowed faintly, and with every pulse, their chains tightened.
“This will not be swift. The Orchard will strip you. It will drain your marrow, grind your bones, root your flesh into its soil. You will not die. Not yet. Every second of agony, every drop of blood, you will feel. Until the Orchard decides it has had its fill.”
The seven writhed. Benedict cursed, Ezra’s eyes dimmed, Enoch’s roar failed, Reuben laughed through clenched teeth, Ciel begged shadows that weren’t there, Malachi’s skin peeled like bark. Lucian gasped blood, staring upward through the haze of agony.
Harrow’s gaze moved over them, clinical, measuring. Then he said the words that tore the pit deeper than any chain.
“When you are gone, you will be replaced. I have already chosen the vessels who will inherit what you could not uphold. This time, I will not repeat my mistakes. This time, obedience will be absolute.”
He paused, his eyes lingering on Lucian. His mouth curved faintly, almost cruelly.
“One of them is Salem Voss.”
The name cut through the pain sharper than any chain. Lucian froze, his body convulsing not from the Orchard but from the sound of it. Salem. His Salem.
“You wonder how I know her name.” His gaze flicked down, not unkind, almost curious. “You think me ignorant, blind, crawling from death with no eyes for the world you built. But you are wrong. Do you know what a man learns when he is cast into silence, into shadow, left to rot in the grave?” His lips curled, just faintly. “He learns to watch.”
The shard flared once, and the bone tightened. Lucian gagged against his own chains.
“For months after my release, I watched you. All of you. I watched where you went, what you loved, what you feared. You thought me dead, gone for years, but I have been with you. Always.” His voice deepened, almost reverent. “And of all the sights I gathered, one caught me most. One, brighter than all else.”
Lucian’s stomach turned to stone even before Harrow said her name again.
“Salem Voss.”
The world narrowed. Lucian’s chains constricted, blood dripping down his arms as he fought against them, but it was useless.
Harrow’s smile thinned, becoming sharp as a scalpel. “Your lover. Your secret womb of weakness. The one you believed you could hide from everyone. But there is no hiding. Not from your maker.” His eyes gleamed as he said it, studying Lucian as if savoring his reaction.
“There is something dangerous in her,” Harrow went on, his voice steady, clinical. “I saw it when she walked among you. I saw it in the way she carried her hunger. The blood of envy runs in her, as surely as it runs in Ciel. The blood of Lust burns in her veins, as it does in you, Lucian. She has greed. She is more than flesh. She is potential. A perfect vessel. Unique.”
He paused, then leaned closer to the edge of the pit. “When my shadow touched her, I knew she would become more than any of you ever were.”
Lucian’s chest heaved. The chains cut his throat as he strained, every nerve screaming, but his voice tore free anyway. “You touch her and I’ll kill you. I’ll tear you apart!”
The words came out broken, strangled with blood, but they burned all the same.
Harrow did not flinch. His expression was calm, almost kind.
“You will not kill me, Lucian. You will watch. You will hear her cries in the Orchard, just as you once cried. You will watch as she bleeds, as she breaks, and as she rises again—stronger than you, stronger than any of you. She will be my masterpiece. My top student. And she will thank me for it when her bones are remade.”
Lucian’s vision blurred. The past rushed back—the girl on the stone table, her pleading eyes, her blood staining his chest. Now he saw Salem in her place. Salem bound. Salem screaming. Salem’s throat cut when she was no longer needed. Except Harrow wouldn’t end her quickly; he would keep her alive, stretch her torment until she believed herself remade.
His scream split the silence, raw and unearthly, a sound of rage and despair that shook even Ezra where he knelt. The earth shivered, the pale walls of the Orchard trembling as though they might loosen, as though they were listening. For a heartbeat, the pit threatened to yield to his fury.
Harrow’s eyes narrowed. His hand twitched on the shard, tightening until his knuckles whitened. The glow flared, and at once the Orchard stiffened again, its grip unyielding. Still, there had been that flicker—an instant where even Harrow felt the strain, the danger of something inside Lucian breaking free.
He masked it with a thin smile, his voice steady though his gaze burned sharper, “Scream all you want. The Orchard will not bend to your power—because you have none left. As long as this shard rests in my hand, every gift you boast of is nothing. You are no more than frail humans, stripped and helpless before me.”
Lucian thrashed, blood flying from torn skin as he dragged against his shackles. His chains cut deeper, slicing muscle, peeling him open till his organs hung out but he didn’t stop. His eyes burned red with rage, his teeth grinding until blood foamed at his lips.
“Touch her—” His eyes blazed, wild, unbroken. “—and I’ll fucking kill you. Do you hear me, Harrow? I’ll tear you apart so slow you’ll beg for death. And when you crawl back, I’ll kill you again. And again. I’ll grind your bones into dust, burn the dust, and piss on the ashes. I’ll make you wish you’d stayed in the grave the first time.”
“Such words,” he said, calm as glass as his mask slid back into place “And yet here you kneel.”
Lucian roared until his throat bled, his vision swimming. He fought, he tore, but the Orchard was stronger. His body broke and rebuilt, broke and rebuilt, the pain endless. Yet none of it compared to the image now burned into his mind—Salem bound in this place, screaming as he screamed, broken as he was broken.
And he realized then that this was worse than death.
This was despair.