The Dragon King's Hated Bride
Chapter 38: The Horrifying Thing

Chapter 38: The Horrifying Thing

>>Aelin

Ruoxy’s laughter rang through the dungeon, echoing off the stone walls. She stood in the center of it all—of the blood, the bodies, the horror—her skin falling from her face in grotesque sloughs. She didn’t care, not even as the flesh peeled away and dropped to the floor, slick and wet.

The sight was disgusting as it was horrifying

Then she finally looked in our direction, her expression suddenly going serious, "I didn’t think you’d break out of it," she said to Draegon. Her blackened gaze flickered toward him with unsettling intensity. "There was no way you could break out of it."

Her eyes snapped to me without warning, and I stiffened, the breath catching in my throat.

"Someone did something," she hissed.

Those black eyes—completely black, as if the irises, the whites, everything had been swallowed whole—pinned me in place. For a second, I felt like she was looking through me.

She didn’t wait for answers. She didn’t care.

Her body jerked violently.

It happened so fast—her limbs spasming, her torso convulsing as though something was breaking inside her. The sounds that followed were the worst of it—cracks and pops, the gut-wrenching sound of bone snapping and rearranging.

"No..." I whispered, instinctively stepping back.

Her bones elongated first, grotesquely stretching as though her body was clay being pulled by unseen hands. Her skin—what little of it remained—tore apart under the strain, splitting open with a sickening rip, black blood spewing out in heavy splashes onto the floor.

!!!???

She grew. Her limbs lengthened unnaturally, thin and gnarled, her arms hanging far longer than they ever should have. Her spine contorted, forcing her to hunch, her elongated neck snapping forward into an unnatural, jagged angle. It should have been upright, but instead, it faced straight ahead, her head lurching toward us like a grotesque predator.

All of us who were watching stepped back except the dragon princes and Ariston.

Her nails lengthened into sharp, black talons. Her face—I shook my head in disbelief, her face—was unrecognizable. Those black, hollow eyes stared forward, devoid of humanity, and yet aware.

My mind reeled as I took it all in, my stomach turning violently.

That thing. That monster.

It wasn’t Ruoxy. There was no way it was a person.

It was something else—something wearing her skin like a disguise-

That’s when I recalled it. I remembered what I had seen in her room when I was hiding in the closet: her skin peeling from her arm.. I hadn’t understood it then, but now... now I understood what had happened that.

Or at least I think I got the gist of it.

I think the skin was never hers to begin with. I gulped. She was wearing the skin of some beautiful demon, disguising herself. Black blood oozed from the wounds splitting open along its grotesque form. The blood coming out of her was black. Pitch black, the color of rot and poison, and it smelt the same.

The room fell deathly silent as the thing finished its transformation, its elongated form looming above us like a shadow given life.

"We have to kill that thing," Draegon’s voice broke through the stillness. He didn’t hesitate—he charged, claws unsheathed, a snarl of fury ripping from his throat.

Ruoxy—or whatever it was—threw her head back and laughed.

It was a horrible sound, shrill and otherworldly, layered with something unnatural.

"Too late," she said, her voice deeper now, distorted, as if a dozen voices spoke in unison.

The moment she spoke, the dungeon shifted.

The blood circles beneath the victims began to glow. I hadn’t noticed it before—not the way the circles were connected, thin rivulets of blood joining them in a meticulous, sickening pattern. It was almost... deliberate.

"What’s happening?" I gasped, looking at Ariston.

But he had no answer, his gaze fixed on the glowing circles.

Draegon’s charge faltered as the symbols on the ground flared to life, bright red light illuminating the room in an eerie, pulsing glow.

"Oh ho," Drakkar’s voice cut through the chaos, realization dawning in his expression, "This can’t be good."

It was too late.

The blood patterns shimmered, and in a horrifying instant, the victims—what was left of them—erupted into flames.

!?!?

I stumbled back, choking on the smoke and the sudden heat as fire consumed their rotting bodies. Screams—whether real or imagined—I couldn’t tell—filled the air, mingling with the crackling of burning flesh and the flickering, hellish light.

Ruoxy watched it all from the center of the destruction. I couldn’t tear my gaze away, even as horror churned in my chest.

Draegon froze for a split second, his eyes widening as something shifted in the air—like the very fabric of the room was being torn apart. A pulse of energy rippled through the dungeon, an unnatural stillness descending as the air grew heavy and cold.

At first none of us had any idea what was happening but the next scene was impossible to miss.

I saw it then—a vertical eye, about the side of a person blinked into existence out of thin air. It hovered, suspended in the center of the room, right where the symbol of the eye was drawn.

It was pale yellow, with red rings in the form of irises while the pupil was pitch black, but the odd part about the pupil was that it melted endlessly downward, as if it was paint falling. The black liquid fell down the eye, onto the floor. And the sight of it made my skin crawl.

And then it moved.

The vertical eye split—slowly, sickeningly—down the middle, as though an unseen blade were slicing it apart. The flesh—was it flesh?—of the eye peeled open, and I realized with dawning horror that it wasn’t just an eye anymore.

It was a gate. And seeing that reminded me of what I had heard of the war. How a gate in the form of an eye had appeared and then from it came those strange monsters that Draegon had to fight a war against.

But why was this happening here? It didn’t make any sense...

Beyond the gate, shadows swirled. And then—it came.

A beast emerged, its grotesque form crawling out from the dark void beyond the gate. My breath caught as I tried to process what I was seeing—a chimera???

Deformed, its very existence an insult to nature itself. Its limbs were jagged and mismatched, far too many claws scraping across the stone. About two meters tall, its face—or what passed for one—was a nightmarish blend of twisted features: the maw of a wolf, gaping wide with rows of serrated teeth, the hollow, vacant eyes of a bird, and horns that curled back like those of a ram, jagged and splintering. Its back pulsed, unnatural limbs twitching and sprouting in spasms of unnatural movement.

It didn’t belong here. It didn’t belong anywhere.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.

But Draegon didn’t hesitate.

"Get ready to attack!" His voice rang out like a war cry, sharp and commanding, cutting through the suffocating dread that filled the room.

He turned, his purple eyes locking onto me as if he knew exactly what was coming next. Before I could react, he crossed the distance between us and pulled me into his arms, holding me tight against him.

"Stay close to me," he said, his voice low, almost a growl.

I couldn’t speak. My heart was pounding in my ears, my body trembling from the unnatural chill that poured out of the gate like a creeping fog. Over Draegon’s shoulder, I saw the beast lurch forward, its twisted limbs carrying it into the dungeon with terrifying speed.

It let out a sound—a screeching roar that reverberated through the walls, deep and jagged, as if it came from the throat of a thousand dying creatures.

At this point I had started to feel sick

"Draegon..." I whispered, my voice shaking.

He held me tighter for a moment before releasing me, turning to face the monster as it loomed over the room, its hulking form dripping with shadow and black blood.

His entire form tensed as he prepared to strike. The others were already moving behind him, weapons drawn, bracing for a battle none of us had been prepared for.

But the monster didn’t wait.

It lunged and Ariston was the first one to counter it with his sword.

The gate began to close, its splitting eye narrowing, the darkness within retreating, but just as the unnatural creaking of its edges drew in, two more monsters came crawling through, their twisted forms dragging themselves free of the abyss.

One had the skeletal build of a massive hound, its ribs grotesquely exposed. It moved unnaturally, bones creaking like grinding metal, its jaw hanging open as black saliva dripped onto the stone floor.

I didn’t even get to see what the third thing was that came out as the first two took all the attention. So much happened in the span of such a short time it was hard to accept it all in one go.

"You got out of the spell from the Abyss," Ruoxy—or what was left of her—spoke, her voice sharp and grating. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t anything natural. The monster that had worn her form now stood with her jagged limbs sprawled out, black blood dripping as her skin dangled in shreds.

"How?" she hissed at Draegon, her black, hollow eyes narrowing. The sound of her voice felt like needles scraping against glass, "How did you get out of it?"