The sky above Vordros was painted not by sunset but by the orange hue of burning bodies.
Emperor Aurelian's decree spread like venom through the veins of the empire: Each city will triple its executions. No mercy. No exceptions. The empire's heartbeat was now fed by fire and screams.
In the heart of the empire, cruelty was no longer hidden—it was worshipped.
The Plaza of Chains, once a gathering ground for merchants and minstrels, had become a cathedral of death. A scaffold loomed over the square like a monstrous altar, its wood soaked in weeks of gore. Blood pooled in the gutters, thick and black, crawling with flies fat from feasting.
Three bodies were hung every hour. Not merely hanged—but flayed alive, then strung up by their Achilles tendons, left to twitch like butchered pigs. Their skin peeled from neck to waist in front of their families, who were forced to watch on splintered benches. If they screamed or looked away, they were dragged up next.
A man accused of uttering the words "may the gods forgive us" was nailed to a wheel and rotated over open flame—slowly, so the skin on his back blistered and peeled before his face ever met the heat.
Children were not spared. One boy, no older than ten, was boiled in tar, his screams echoing for nearly four minutes. His mother clawed at the soldiers until her fingernails ripped off. They fed her his remains in a bowl.
The Dreadlion Guard patrolled with laughter in their throats and blood on their boots.
In Drakenshield, execution was performance art. Spectacle. Entertainment.
A grand stage was erected in the Barracks Yard, where thousands of soldiers stood in formation—not to drill, but to watch death.
Civilians were strapped to the front of ballistae—and launched, still conscious, against stone walls. The force cracked their skulls open like ripe fruit. A woman's spine split mid-air and scattered across the courtyard like snapped twigs.
Others were trussed to scorch wheels, rotating metal discs heated from below. The condemned screamed as skin fused to iron, then peeled off in smoking strips.
Marshal Kaedric Dorne personally executed a suspected rebel leader—stripping the man naked, slicing off his eyelids, and pouring vinegar into his eyes. Then came the knives: first through the palms, then through the soft underbelly of the jaw, inch by inch. The execution took over an hour. The crowd cheered when the man finally gurgled his last breath.
New recruits were forced to eat charred remains of those accused of treason—or be declared sympathizers and killed on the spot.
Gold bought everything in Varenthis. Even death.
The city's Market Square, once teeming with spices and silks, now reeked of feces and scorched fat. Executions were scheduled like auctions—noon, dusk, midnight.
A noblewoman was fed to starved mastiffs, piece by piece, as merchants took bets on which limb would be torn off first. The dogs gnawed on her while she begged for the Emperor's mercy—only to have her tongue cut out and nailed to a tree as a "receipt."
Artisans who carved anti-royal symbols were lined up with chisels jammed into their eye sockets, twisted until the orbs popped like eggs.
Vendors who were late with taxes had their fingers snapped backward, one by one, then roasted alive inside their own stalls—flames licking up through wooden slats, boiling their flesh in front of their customers.
The Crimson Fangs, Aurelian's elite killers, liked to play their game: Whispered Mercy. A blade from ear to ear—but slow, letting the victim choke on blood while being forced to repeat phrases like "Praise the Emperor's Mercy."
Temples became charnel houses. No place was sacred.
The statue of Silgia, goddess of love and healing, was toppled and used as a crucifix. A priestess was nailed to it by her wrists and knees, and disemboweled publicly—her intestines coiled like garlands around the idol's broken arms.
In the Sanctum of Light, the faithful were dragged into confession chambers, stripped, and given choices: worship Aurelian or lose a limb. Most lost both hands before submitting.
One young monk was flayed alive, his skin peeled off in thin, deliberate ribbons, and pinned across the temple walls like holy relics.
High Inquisitor Veyron Saldor oversaw the purification ceremonies. He ordered molten gold to be poured down a traitor's throat, laughing as the man's belly burst from within.
Prayer hour was replaced with scream hour. Every man, woman, and child was forced to chant "Aurelian is divine" while watching live executions. Anyone who stuttered or cried was dragged to the altar and had their tongues carved into the shape of the imperial sigil.
In the docks of Kaldoros, the executions were... slow.
The tide chambers beneath the Harbormaster's Bastion became drowning cells. Prisoners were shackled to iron rings embedded in the floor as water levels slowly rose. They screamed and struggled until it covered their mouths, noses, and finally eyes. Each death took hours. The gurgling never stopped.
Others were lashed to the undersides of ships, half-submerged, left to drown or be torn apart by barnacles and crustaceans. By the time the boats returned, the bodies were nothing but hanging torsos, flesh shredded, teeth gone.
The sea dogs were starved before being loosed into execution pits. Limbs were hacked off and thrown in first—to rile the beasts. Then came the bodies, still twitching, eyes wide. The screams echoed into the waves, where foreign traders listened in horror.
Lord Treasurer Severian Vos made sure every foreign merchant saw it.
One merchant captain vomited at the sight of a woman having her breasts carved off and boiled, her eyes sewn open with fishhooks.
Severian only smiled. "Tell your king," he said, "This is how we keep order."
Each execution site, in every city, bore the same symbol:
A roaring lion, crowned with thorns, carved into stone and branded into flesh.
Justice no longer lived in Vordania. Only vengeance. Only fear.
Only the Dreadlion.
By the third week of bloodshed, Vordania was not an empire—it was a corpse twitching in a pool of its own bile.
People no longer walked the streets—they crawled, head low, eyes to the dust. The smell of burnt skin clung to every wall, soaked into every robe.
In the slum sectors, mothers begged the Dreadlion Guard to kill their children quickly, not by fire. One guard laughed, dropped a torch into a hay hut, and locked the door with the family inside. The screams lasted until dawn.
In schools, children were taught new alphabets—each letter representing a way to die.
A is for Ashes, when traitors are burned.
B is for Blades, for the wicked who turn.
C is for Chains, that bind you for life...
A little girl forgot verse "D." Her teacher reported her. The next morning, the girl's tongue was nailed to a bell, and her body left dangling like a wind chime.
Men no longer prayed for deliverance—they prayed for silence. Some sliced off their own ears, so they wouldn't hear the next scream.
Soldiers became animals.
Drill fields were turned into killing games. Recruits were drugged with blackroot and made to fight unarmed prisoners. The losers died. The winners were forced to finish the job with their teeth.
Veterans who showed mercy were branded "bloodless cowards." Their punishment: buried alive in coffin pits, packed so tightly they couldn't move a finger. Rats were dumped inside. One survivor was dug up six days later—he was blind, hairless, and chewing on his own fingers.
The Whisper Corps, the Emperor's secret police, made soldiers torture their own families to prove loyalty. A lieutenant was given a blade and told: "Your wife plotted against the Dreadlion. Choose—kill her, or die beside her." He killed her. Then they killed him anyway. Their child was made to watch.
Courage was dead. Obedience reeked like piss in the barracks.
The smell of wealth had turned to rot.
Once a city of trade and gold, now Varenthis was a market of madness. Executions were no longer punishments—they were distractions. Something to fill the void where joy once lived.
Brothels were turned into confession houses. Men went in seeking flesh and left without skin. One nobleman was caught bribing a guard for mercy. He was peeled open like an orange, his innards used to decorate his home. "A statement," the warden called it.
Thieves were poured with boiling silver, still breathing, until their organs baked from inside. Onlookers said the smell was sweeter than meat.
The city's fountains now ran red—not from metaphor, but from the daily throat-cutting ceremonies, where rebel suspects were beheaded like cattle, blood drained into the water as a message: "Drink the Emperor's will."
Those who refused to drink were gutted and turned into marionettes, paraded by guards, puppets made of real flesh.
There was no more prayer.
Temples were hollow now—turned into theatres of torment.
Every morning, the Sermon of Silence began: ten accused rebels were brought in, stripped, and tied to the altar. One by one, they were flogged with barbed whips, their backs torn open like fruit under claws. For each scream, a new family from the crowd was chosen to be executed.
After the fifth day, no one screamed. They bit off their own tongues first.
The sacred tapestries were burned and replaced with flayed human skin, still twitching in some places. Monks wept while sewing. One set himself on fire, and the crowd cheered, thinking it was another part of the ceremony.
A statue of Velmara was decapitated. Her head was replaced with the emperor's own face, sculpted in iron, fanged like a demon.
Confessions were mandatory. And they were public. Naked. If you confessed to nothing, you were torn in half by chained oxen—so they could "open you up and find the lies."
Even the ocean tasted fear.
The harbor was painted with blood. Execution barges lined the docks, each with its own method of death. One used iron cages dipped slowly into the sea, where sharks waited. Another chained traitors to weighted ropes and fed them to the deep. The water churned red.
Fishermen refused to fish. They said the sea had turned black—filled with corpses and demons. The emperor called it superstition. So he slit the throats of every village elder and had their bodies dumped into the bay.
Soon, the bay turned black indeed—not from demons, but from rot. The stench of a thousand bloated corpses floated in with the tide. Children screamed in their sleep, dreaming of arms reaching from the sea.
One child survived falling into the corpse-choked waters. He emerged with half his face gone, eaten by fish. When asked what happened, he whispered: "The sea is angry. The sea wants blood."
The next day, forty more were drowned, just to keep it fed.
The silence in Vordania grew heavier than war drums.
It wasn't rebellion.
It wasn't hope.
It was something worse—the stillness before a storm so ancient, even the gods forgot its name.
Men stopped speaking altogether. They communicated through glances, or the shifting of feet. Fear had taken a new shape—not of the emperor, not of the guards, but of what might come next.
In the eastern salt mines, a man laughed during a flogging. When questioned, he said he wasn't laughing at pain. He was laughing because he saw a shadow crawl backward into the earth. He died smiling, blood bubbling from his mouth.
In the western forest villages, animals began fleeing—foxes, deer, birds. Nothing lived there now. Hunters who entered never came back. One returned—but his face had been eaten off, and something had stitched a crown of thorns into his scalp.
The sky began to change. Not with storms, but with stillness. No clouds. No winds. No birds. Just a dead blue ocean above the dead brown world.
Temples began to collapse without touch. A shrine to the Old Father burned from the inside, even though no fire had been lit. The walls bled black sap. The priests vomited blood and blamed the earth itself for turning against them.
People began drawing symbols in ash on their doors—things older than gods, older than the emperor. They whispered phrases not in Vordanian, but in a tongue they didn't know they knew.
And from the cracks in the stone, from the dead wells, from the dried veins of the rivers…
something moved.
Not a rebellion.
Not justice.
Not hope.
But a reckoning older than vengeance.
The empire was not break
ing.
It was being unmade.