My Femboy System
Chapter 58: Chambers of Wrath

Chapter 58: Chambers of Wrath

The elevator to the fifth floor groaned open like a creature exhaling for the first time in centuries—wet, labored, and loud in all the wrong frequencies.

The nobles huddled close behind me, their anxious chatter silenced by something older than fear. Even Willow stopped flirting with her own reflection long enough to fall still. The metal doors parted, and instead of light, we were met with a long stretch of nothing—just shadow, stone, and the floor below us slick with ankle-deep water that refused to ripple.

I stepped out first, of course. Because who else would? I had the smirk. The stupid boots. The reputation. The supposed divinity. But the second my foot touched that floor—cold, black, whisper-slick—I felt it.

Not pain. Not dread. Not even magic. Rot.

It crawled up my leg, a stink so thick and sour it chewed at the back of my throat. Decay, rage, something scorched and long-fermented. I gagged once. Twice. Swallowed the third. My lungs recoiled. My body wanted to run. My pride told it to shut the fuck up.

"We’re running out of time," I whispered to myself, hand pressed over my mouth. "Vincent’s already ahead and I’m stuck sniffing demon piss and reeking mistakes."

The elevator hissed shut behind us.

I hated how I lingered on that man—on the warmth of Captain Kane’s skin, the taste of wine and ruin still clinging to my lips like a broken promise. This wasn’t a time for lovers, drinks, or glittering orgasms. I had a mission. I had an enemy. I had a bitch of a Tower breathing down my neck and I was still soaked in afterglow.

Focus. Re-center. Bury the softness.

I took a slow breath—almost gagged again on the air—and realigned my mind with the one truth that cut through the filth like a blade:

Find the Red Mistress. Do it before he does. Before it’s too late.

A splash from behind made me turn. Miko was crouched low, examining the walls with a grimace. Aria stood near him, eyes narrowed as Willow—gods bless her priorities—was trying to light a match on the hem of his dress to spark a cigarette she’d smuggled from the ship. Leo was quiet. Almost...small. I didn’t like that. Leo was never small. His silence was louder than the rest of us combined.

"This place is wrong," Miko muttered, his voice barely louder than a breath.

"I noticed," I answered, trying for levity. "Could be the stench of hell’s asshole wafting up from the tile, but y’know—subtle cues."

I took a step forward.

Then I felt it.

Pressure. A dense, invisible wall that shoved itself into the chamber with sudden, ravenous force. The water didn’t ripple. It recoiled. I stumbled, something sharp blooming in my chest like a spear made of grief, iron, and panic. I felt it slither around my ribs and pull.

"Cecil—!" Miko caught me by the shoulder before I hit the floor, his grip steady, grounding.

I pushed back upright, panting.

"Proceed carefully," I rasped. "Something here wants us gone."

I took another step. Then another. The nobles behind us—trembling and soaked—moved in clumsy, jerking little huddles. The hallway stretched on like a dream built on cruelty. No doors. No light. Just black water and blacker silence.

Then something moved—

Too fast for the eye, too sharp for the world it broke through.

A shadow tore through the corridor like a scream made solid, a line of absence so clean and violent it left the air gasping behind it. I didn’t see it. I felt it—felt the way the pressure warped, how the weight of the moment cracked like glass under heat, how the sound it made didn’t echo so much as burrow. It crawled into my ears, into my bones, into the places no light had touched in years. Then came the vanishing.

One noble disappeared, then another. Then three more. Not with a scream, not with a struggle—just erased, like bad dreams in morning light. Their presence—gone. As if they’d never been. The water didn’t even ripple where they had stood.

I turned, instinct screaming, hands reaching, breath caught halfway between a command and a sob. "NO—!" I shouted, throat shredding itself against the silence. But there was no answer. Only the rising weight of stillness. A silence that wasn’t hollow, but full. Screaming.

The shadow circled me now. Not a figure or any kind of monster from what I could see, just presence. Cold, wet, and hungry. I couldn’t see it completely but I felt it peeling at my skin like old wallpaper, pulling at my muscles, tugging at my mind with invisible, prying hands. My body tried to stand but failed. My legs buckled beneath me, the world tilting like a sinking boat. And then—

Black.

Complete. Consuming. No pain. No fall. Just nothing.

A long moment passed before I came to with my face pressed against stone. Wet, frigid, slick as if the Tower itself had been sweating through its pores. My wrists ached behind me—bound tight, unforgiving. My tongue was thick with the copper sting of blood and regret. My legs were sluggish, nerves screaming their protests in pulses of cold fire. My eyes opened. The world didn’t.

Darkness met me—not absolute, but heavy, shot through with a dim red glow. I was in a cell. No, not just a cell. A prison. A cathedral of cruelty, an underground citadel carved not by hands but by malice. The ceiling outside of my cell vanished into shadow; the walls, a black stone so dark it swallowed light whole, were streaked with vertical columns of flickering crimson.

The glow wasn’t warm. It was surgical. Red lamps pulsed like heartbeats carved into steel, bleeding illumination that made the water shimmer at my feet. Shallow. Cloudy. Full of flakes I couldn’t identify. Bone? Ash? Dreams, maybe.

I didn’t scream. Not yet. Screaming was a thing for people who still believed someone might come to save them. I slammed into the bars instead, rage-first, chest-second, the clang of metal meeting bone loud enough to cut into the air like a blade.

"ARIA?! LEO?! MIKO?! WILLOW?!" My voice cracked, wild and desperate, skidding through the cavern of echoes like a bat made of fire.

And then—a yawn sounded behind me. Lazy. Lingering. Almost flirtatious in its casual defiance.

Willow.

Cross-legged on a cot, arms behind her head, expression a picture of debauched calm, like she’d just woken from a dream involving silk sheets and a lover named something exotic and inconvenient.

"Gods, you’re loud," she drawled, not even opening her eyes. "And I was just getting to the part where I kissed the pirate captain and the ship. Which, let me tell you, was getting very hot."

"We’re in a prison," I snapped, half in disbelief, half in reverence for her ability to remain so...her, no matter the circumstances.

She cracked one eye open, shrugged. "Darling, I’ve woken up in worse. At least this one has ambiance. Fifth floor, Wrath, right? Bit more gulag than I’d imagined. Though honestly, I’m loving the commitment to mood lighting."

I stared at her, too grateful to see her face to argue. But the panic clung to my ribs like wet cloth. "We got separated. The nobles are—fuck, they’re just gone. The others—"

Willow waved a lazy hand, examining a chip in her nail. "Still alive. I think. Heard yelling earlier. The angry kind. Not the ’I’m dying horribly’ kind. Though, knowing this floor, those two may be bedfellows with benefits."

I turned toward the corridor, ready to scream again—but then I heard it. Footsteps. Massive, sloppy, and undeniably wrong. The sound wasn’t human. Not even close. It was the kind of step that sounded like bones grinding against soaked meat, like something half-rotted dragging its bulk through blood and time.

The guards.

They appeared like nightmares made flesh—too tall, too wide, their limbs shaped by violence, not biology. Their bodies were wrapped in rusted plating and tar-black armor, etched with sigils that pulsed beneath the grime like veins full of molten hate.

Their heads were helmet-like, but not crafted. Grown, maybe. Misshapen and eyeless, their faces were voids, expressions carved in absence.

They whispered to each other. Thick, cruel syllables rattling through the stone like a prayer made of broken glass and bile, in a tongue I didn’t understand—and hoped I never would.

Willow leaned toward the bars, chin in hand, completely unbothered. "Well, someone’s been overfeeding the dungeon trolls again. Hopefully these one brought snacks."

One of the things stopped at our cell. Different from the others. Bigger. Its armor glistened with filth and rune-scorched glow, each etched symbol faintly shimmering with that same crimson hatred. It smelled of hot oil and burnt sugar—like a feast made for devils.

Then it smiled.

"You’ve arrived," it said, its voice not coming from its mouth but from the walls themselves, echoing throughout the cell, vibrating the iron in our bones. "Soon...your judgement shall begin."

I stepped forward, fists clenched, rage knotting in my throat before looking back at Willow. "If you harm her—"

But the thing raised a hand, gentle and slightly mocking. "Oh, no. We won’t be harming anybody." A pause. Then, almost gleeful: "That’s not how this floor works."

He turned. Shoulders shifting like a continent preparing for war. His voice followed in its wake.

"All of you will face wrath," he said, each word landing like a hammer between my ribs. He tilted his head, and the glow beneath his helm pulsed with soft red light. "But not ours. No, not the wrath of jailers or executioners. That’s too simple. Too clean."

He stepped closer to the bars, and I felt the heat of him—like a furnace with teeth.

"You’ll face the only kind of wrath that matters. The one that lives in your marrow. The one you pretend you’ve conquered when you smile at your friends and say you’re fine. The kind that wears your memories like a mask and waits for just the right moment to crack your spine from the inside."

He leaned down, and I caught a glimpse of his mouth—black lips curling into something too wide to be human.

"Your wrath. Your hate. That’s the one that punishes best. Because it knows where it hurts."

And then he turned and walked away, chains jingling somewhere far behind him like a violent punctuation.

Silence flooded back in like a returning tide. But it wasn’t empty. It was waiting.

Just then, a scream tore its way through the prison—jagged and raw, slicing through the humid silence like a blade honed on bone. It echoed down the endless stone corridors, bouncing off wet iron and the trembling air.

But it wasn’t a cry of terror. There was no desperation in it, no plea for mercy. It wasn’t agony either, not the helpless kind.

It was rage.

Pure, blistering, animal fury—the kind that shatters throats and sanity alike.

"What the fuck is this place?" I asked, turning back to face Willow.

Her voice came softer this time, stripped of mischief if only for a second. "Beats me. But if I had to guess—judging by that sound—I’d say they’re not necessarily hurting them." She paused. "Not directly."

"Then what are they—?"

"Maybe they’re provoking them," she finished, gaze still fixed on the red shadows shifting at the far end of the corridor. "Drawing out their passions and peeling them like fruit until there’s nothing left but hatred."

And that’s when it clicked.

This wasn’t just a dungeon. It was a crucible. This floor wasn’t about survival. It was about awakening something. They weren’t trying to kill us.

They were trying to make us burn.

And just then—

"LEO!" I screamed as I saw him being dragged past our cell by one of the creatures. Wrists bound in barbed steel, his arms slack, his face carved from memories I knew he didn’t want me to see. He looked younger somehow. Smaller. His mouth was open, but no sound came out. Just breath and broken dignity.

His eyes met mine for just a split second.

Something inside me broke.

"LEO!" I screamed again, hands reaching through the bars, rage blooming behind my ribs like a bomb with teeth. But the guards didn’t care. They pulled him along, back down the tunnel, and the screams started again. Sharp, short, and furious.

He came back.

Eventually.

His wrists were bleeding now. His face was empty. And when he passed the cell, he didn’t just look at me.

He looked through me.

"Leo—Leo, please—" I whispered, voice cracking.

He vanished into the dark again. Willow caught me before I fell, her hand steady against my shoulder. I didn’t pull away.

Then came Miko.

Then Aria.

One by one, they were dragged into the mouth of something I couldn’t name, each of them returning with something missing. Not a limb. Not a wound. Something deeper.

I pressed my face to the bars.

Waiting.

Breathing.

Until the voice came again.

"Cecil Valen."

The door creaked open.

And this time, it was my turn to face judgement.