The darkness was thick. Heavy. A suffocating blanket that clung to every corner of her body... until a faint, flickering light pierced her closed eyelids.
Yoshi's eyes shot open.
A shiver ran down his spine as he felt something cold behind his body. He was in what felt like a basement: stone walls, dampness in the air, and a single magic lamp swinging above his head, casting crooked shadows across the walls. He tried to move... but his wrists and ankles were held tightly, stretched against the wall as if he were a condemned prisoner.
He tried to speak. He wanted to ask, to beg, to explain. But he could barely utter a muffled murmur.
His mouth was covered with a thick cloth. He coughed. He spluttered. Nothing coherent came out.
Then he saw them.
In front of him, standing firmly, were the three of them.
Liz. Charlotte. Haruka.
Their gazes were a weight in themselves. Full of anger, contempt... and worse.
Haruka trembled. Not from fear, but from the pent-up fury that burned in her eyes. Her tears fell noiselessly, but her expression was marked by a blind rage. A rage born only of unforgiven betrayal.
Liz, on the other hand, was ice. Her light blue eyes did not twinkle. They looked at him as if he were something to be eliminated, not a person. As if she no longer recognised any humanity in him.
And Charlotte...
She was the one who spoke first. She looked away for a moment with a grimace of disgust, but when she looked back at Yoshi, she did so with a crooked smile, almost amused by the grotesqueness of the situation.
-Well," he said with disturbing softness, "Who will be first?
The silence was long. Haruka did not respond immediately. She was breathing heavily, her fists clenched, nails buried in her palms.
Liz was the one who broke the silence, her voice so cold that the temperature seemed to drop several degrees.
-Do what you like," he replied without moving a muscle in his face. As long as I make him pay this debt. I don't mind waiting. But don't kill him... before then.
Yoshi blanched. He tried to speak again. He tried to move his arms, to shake his feet. It was an immovable spell. He was completely immobilised.
Haruka, without looking directly at him, muttered between her teeth. A voice laden with something dark... that Yoshi hadn't heard from her before.
-I'll wait too," he said in a trembling voice, "I want him to suffer first.....
Charlotte then turned fully towards him. In her hands, a black whip appeared, shining like tempered steel. With a light gesture, she channelled a small magical flame that enveloped the handle. And it spread like fiery lava along the length of it. It was a declaration.
-So..." he said with a sadistic smile. Let us begin.
Yoshi felt the air disappear from his lungs.
The silence that followed was absolute.
No one else spoke.
Only the echo of the whip, the tension in his muscles, and the bitter cold of betrayal remained.
It was the worst hours he had ever spent in his life.
He could not bear the pain. Charlotte punished him with the flames and used various strange ways to implement them.
Lizes not only stabbed him several times with ice blades, but also used them to skin his skin as a butcher would do in the slaughterhouse.
And haruka... she was the worst. Not only did she ask for help from the others to do the same as the two of them, but she also used every way she could imagine until she was satisfied.
To them... he was no longer a person. He was just an inhuman who had to be punished.
A symbol of the devil.
And that hurt as much as the many wounds that had been inflicted on him.