First Draft of Future Prologue from the Bloom & Ruin series. Enjoy!
JULY 23, 2025
The dungeon is built to break men.
The air is thick with sulfur, sweat, and rot. Stone walls sweat with damp, the occasional drip echoing like a death knell. Chains rattle in the distance. Somewhere, someone sobs. Somewhere else, someone laughs—mind long gone.
The demons like it that way.
Screams bleed through the stone, a constant reminder to all who hear them: Obedience or ruin.
Layne Drost understands power.
He’s wielded it. Killed with it. Reigned by it.
And now?
The Vampire King of Brinthia sits shackled in filth, wrists raw and bloodless, strength bleeding out with every hour that passes without a vein to feed from.
And worse?
He’s not alone.
A shallow breath stirs beside him.
He turns his head. Hessa Nohr lies curled on the stone, unconscious, bruised, too still. The last nymph warrior. The woman who nearly destroyed him. The woman he swore he’d kill.
She’s also the reason he’s in this godsdamned pit.
She froze when she saw him—the demon with the vipercoil inked across his chest.
The one who killed her father.
His enemy.
His mistake.
His ruin.
Layne’s jaw tightens.
She only matters because if she dies, he’s trapped here alone. That’s it.
And yet—his pulse had stuttered when she collapsed.
He shoves the thought away.
A clash of steel rings out, sharp and sudden. Layne lifts his gaze.
Two demons fight in the arena carved into the dungeon floor. One massive—sword jagged and black, moving with brutal efficiency. The other, smaller and weaponless, stumbles, breath ragged. Outmatched.
Layne knows the look of someone losing. Someone who knows they’re losing.
The sword swings.
It halts midair. A deliberate stop. Inches from splitting the boy open.
A show of power.
A show of control.
“Again,” the younger demon gasps, wiping blood from his mouth.
A voice answers from the shadows. Low. Icy.
“I am tired of training you.”
Layne’s eyes narrow.
The sword clatters to stone. The trainer turns, stepping toward a raised slab of black rock at the far end of the chamber—not a throne, but close. Close enough to matter.
The figure sprawled across it is massive, heavily scarred. His skin is near-charred, stitched with old wounds and ritual ink. But one mark glows faintly beneath the torchlight—a serpent coiled around an open eye, its fangs buried in the pupil.
Layne stiffens.
That symbol. The one that broke Hessa. The one burned into the man who killed her father.
The demon doesn’t rise. He doesn’t have to.
“I am tired of training you,” he says again, voice soaked in contempt.
Layne shifts, a flicker of unease crawling beneath his skin.
The boy sags. “I’ll get stronger. I swear. I just need time.”
The demon exhales. Disgust curls his mouth.
“I have given you years.”
His fingers tap the armrest—steel and stone runed with power.
“And still,” he says, slow and seething, “you are weak.”
The words land like blades.
“You are a stain upon my legacy.”
The boy flinches. Yellow eyes flicker—not with defiance, but something quieter. Grief.
“I just need—”
“Enough.”
The word cracks through the dungeon like a weapon.
“You are not my son,” the demon snaps, rising to full height. Power radiates off him like heat. “A true heir would have proven himself by now. Instead, you waste my time. My resources. My patience.”
The boy stands frozen. Grief held behind a trained, rigid mask.
“Leave me.”
A beat of silence. Then the boy bows and retreats—stiff, humiliated.
Layne watches.
This is his opportunity.
He calls his gift.
And the loser’s shadow moves—not with its master, but toward Layne. Discreet. Quiet. Like a creature summoned from deep water.
At full strength, the gift obeyed without resistance.
When his blood ran full and hot, when the hunger was quiet—then the shadow moved like silk. Precise. Lethal.
But now? The gift was weakened. Fractured. Starved.
The shadow didn’t care about birth order or blood purity. Male, female, firstborn or not.
No—the shadow chose power.
His father had wielded it with fury. His grandmother—Queen Seryth the Broken—had wielded it through madness.
Layne? He wielded it through control.
At least… he used to.
He glances down.
Hessa lies beside him, unconscious. Her pulse faint but steady. His gaze lingers on her throat. He feels something shift in his chest.
He crushes it.
He could feed on her. Just enough to stir the gift to life. To act.
But she’s too weak—and he needs her alive. As well as she can be, when she wakes to the face of the demon who slaughtered her father.
He shifts, barely. Eyes narrowing toward the corridor beyond the arena.
Ideally, he could control the victor’s shadow. Send it crawling for the prison keys. Knock something over. Create a diversion.
He’s done it before.
But not like this. Not when the gift is flickering like a dying flame.
Still—he can listen.
Whispers stir in his mind. Soft. Like breath behind his ear.
Come.
He doesn’t speak. The gift has never needed words. The shadow responds to intention. To will.
And one comes.
The weakest. The loser. The boy just dismissed. His shadow slinks across the floor, dragging behind him like shame.
Layne doesn’t move. But he feels it settle near him. Not a voice, but a presence.
He reaches with his mind—not touching, but commanding. Show me who you are.
A pulse.
Determination.
Ambition.
Desperation.
A life lived in almosts.
Almost strong enough.
Almost fast enough.
Almost worthy.
Always reaching. Never chosen.
Layne exhales slowly, absorbing it. Not just the feelings—but the shape of the boy’s life. His hunger. His obsession with approval. His terror of being seen for what he truly is: a failure pretending not to be.
Layne opens his eyes.
The boy is broken, but useful. Easy to read. Easy to bend.
The shadow lingers—ready, but not yet obedient.
That will have to be enough.
The silence that follows is heavier than any scream.
The demon on the dais exhales through his nose, irritation rolling off him in waves. His gaze flicks to the horned man now standing beside him.
“Telephus.”
The advisor bows.
“Kaedros,” he murmurs.
Layne notes the name.
“It’s time we consider other prospects,” the demon says. “My bloodline is proving… disappointing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I need to find the one with the gift,” he growls. “And I do not have much time left.”
His fingers clench against the armrest.
Layne watches, intrigued.
Even tyrants fear time.
He glances at Hessa.
She’s still. Pale. Unmoving.
He shouldn’t care.
He doesn’t.
She’s a liability. A thread unraveling.
And yet—
Something ugly claws behind his ribs. Something sharp and silent and uninvited.
He grits his teeth.
She’s about to wake up to something far bigger than she’s ready for.
He almost feels bad for her.
Almost.