The prison Valisera had been placed in was not built from stone, iron, or even familiar magical energy. It was "nothingness."
An absolute void that absorbed sound, light, body heat, and even thoughts.
There were no walls to lean against, no ground to fall upon, and no ceiling to lift her gaze toward.
She was suspended at the center of nothingness, stripped of all pride, torn apart, and pierced.
The restraints binding her within this impossible space were not ordinary chains.
They resembled black veins, pulsing with a slimy and sickly life, burrowing deep into her pores and piercing through her flesh to coil around her bones, directly connected to her magical core.
Every pulse of those chains siphoned away a tiny fragment of her essence, not to kill her, but to slowly empty her, the way a cup of tainted water is drained in preparation to be filled with fine wine.
