The dungeons were beneath the palace. Beneath the crypts. Beneath the dragon pits. So far below the surface that the air changed—from warm to cool to cold to something that wasn't temperature at all but absence. The absence of light. Of sound. Of hope.
The guards let her through. Three checkpoints. Three sets of black iron gates. Three men with devoted eyes who stepped aside without a word and locked the gates behind her.
The final corridor was narrow. Stone on every side. No torches—just a pale, sickly luminescence that leaked from symbols carved into the walls. Dhaelon's symbols. The ones he'd been scratching in blood since he was eight years old.
He built this cell the way they built his. He made it identical. Same dimensions. Same darkness. Same silence. Because Dhaelon doesn't punish people. He mirrors them.
She stopped at the last door.
Black iron. No window. No slot. Just a door and a lock and the sound of breathing on the other side.
