Chapter Five: The Man from the Depths
310 Words
Five years.
Five years since the wedding that never was.
Five years since the sun last touched Ermic Valois’ skin.
The Bastille had swallowed him whole.
The Routine of Misery
Each morning, the scrape of rusted iron against stone as the warden, Gaspard Le Roux, dragged his whip along the damp walls. Each evening, the same question:
"Who gave you the letter?"
Ermic’s answer never changed. Silence.
And so the whip cracked. Again. And again.
His back was a map of scars now, ridges of flesh where skin had split and healed wrong. His hands, once calloused from ship ropes, were skeletal, trembling things.
But his mind—his mind was sharp.
Every night, he scratched Sophie’s name into the stone with a shard of broken mortar. Sophie. Sophie. Sophie.
He didn’t know she had married Lucien.
He didn’t know Lucien was now the Merchant King of Maréville, his father dead, his empire vast.
He didn’t know anything but the dark.
The Digging
At first, he thought it was rats. The Bastille was full of them—fat, fearless creatures that gnawed on the toes of the dead.
But the scraping didn’t stop.
Night after night. A slow, methodical *c***k c***k c***k of metal on stone.
Then, one evening, as Ermic lay in the filth of his cell, a chunk of the wall near the floor crumbled away.
A hand emerged.
Gnarled. Dirt-caked.
Ermic didn’t move. He barely breathed.
The hand retreated. Then, a whisper, hoarse with disuse:
"You’re the one they call the Count, aren’t you?"
Ermic lunged forward, grabbing the wrist before it could vanish. "Who are you?"
A pause. Then, a low chuckle from the other side of the wall.
"Someone who’s been here longer than you’ve been alive."
The hand twisted, gripping Ermic’s forearm with shocking strength.
"And someone who knows how to get out."
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- Writer
