His Private Hell - Chapter 104: Chapter 104

She didn’t sleep anymore.
Not because she was afraid, but because dreams had become irrelevant.
What Eella carried now wasn’t fear—it was prophecy. Her skin tingled with a tension that made no sense. The kind of knowing that something unseen was already moving. Something ancient. Something Lazarus.
“You feel it too?” Garrison asked as he stood in the doorway of the vault they had built together.
Eella turned slowly. Her eyes were tired, yes, but in them was the wild glow of someone preparing for war without knowing when or where the bomb would fall.
“He’s not dead,” she said simply.
“No. But his empire is. We bled it out.”
“And men like Lazarus don’t bleed out. They evolve.” Her tone was sharper now. “He’ll come back twisted, worse. This isn’t over.”
Garrison moved toward her. “Then we don’t wait for him to make the next move.”
Eella’s smile was slow and cruel. “I’ve already started.”
—
Darcie had vanished.
The moment Lazarus’s network fell, she slipped off the grid like a ghost granted parole.
But Eella knew better.
Darcie wasn’t running. She was rebuilding.
The woman thrived in chaos—fed on it, seduced it. And she wouldn’t sit still while someone else took Lazarus’s throne.
“She’s building her own empire,” Eella muttered, pacing their war room, blueprints scattered like ash.
Garrison studied the monitors. “Or she’s helping him.”
“She won’t,” Eella snapped. “She wants his crown. Not to wear it. To burn it into his skull.”
A ping blinked on the screen.
An encrypted message.
No sender.
Just one line: Meet me where you lost yourself.
Eella froze.
“That’s his voice,” she whispered. “I’d know it anywhere.”
Garrison stepped closer. “Where you lost yourself…?”
She turned. “The house.”
His eyes darkened. “You mean the house where he kept you for six months, starved, drugged, taught you to kill and kiss in the same breath?”
She nodded.
Garrison’s jaw flexed. “Then I’m going with you.”
“No.” Her voice was steel. “This is mine.”
—
The house hadn’t aged a day.
It stood on the cliff like a shrine to trauma—its windows blind, its silence absolute.
Eella stepped through the door like a woman returning to her own grave.
The halls smelled like bleach and decay.
Every inch of the wallpaper still remembered her skin.
The mirrors still remembered her screams.
She walked to the center of the rot, where the piano still stood.
The same keys she’d played blindfolded. The ones that shocked her when she missed a note.
The ones he used to test her endurance.
Lazarus’s voice came from nowhere—and everywhere.
“You never forgot the tune, did you?”
She spun. “Show yourself.”
A projector lit the far wall.
His face emerged from shadow—bloodless, thinner, crueler.
“No,” she whispered. “You’re not real.”
“Oh, but I am. Just not here. This house is a vessel, Eella. Like you.”
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to see if you remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
“What it felt like… to belong to me.”
She lifted her gun without hesitation.
But the screen flickered again.
And this time, it wasn’t Lazarus.
It was her.
Sixteen. Bound. Bruised.
Begging.
And behind her—Darcie.
Smiling.
Garrison’s voice crackled through her earpiece. “Eella—he’s playing with your signal. It’s a loop.”
She steadied her breath. “He’s not playing. He’s confessing.”
Because behind Darcie, in the video, was something else. A figure with a scarred jaw and no eyes.
“Who the hell is that?” Garrison whispered.
Eella’s blood chilled. “That’s not Lazarus.”
Then the screen went black.
And the walls began to breathe.
—
She ran.
Back through the house, back to the room with the red walls.
The one with the chair still bolted to the ground.
But someone was already there.
Waiting.
“Darcie.”
The blonde woman turned slowly, eyes blackened with eyeliner and war.
“Hello, sister.”
Eella didn’t flinch. “You knew he was alive.”
Darcie shrugged. “He was never alive. He’s something else now.”
“Why are you here?”
“To warn you.”
“Liar.”
“To warn you,” Darcie repeated, stepping closer. “The Lazarus you knew died the day you escaped. What’s coming—what’s becoming—isn’t him anymore.”
Eella blinked. “Then what is it?”
“A god,” Darcie said softly.
“And gods bleed.”
Darcie’s grin was wide. “Not this one.”
She handed Eella a vial.
Black liquid. Pulsing.
“What is this?”
“A key. A test. A curse. Drink it, and you’ll understand.”
Eella stared at it.
“You want me to become like him.”
“No,” Darcie whispered. “I want you to become worse.”
—
She didn’t drink it.
Not then.
Not when Garrison begged her not to. Not even when Darcie disappeared again into the shadows with a final, “You’ll thank me.”
But she kept it.
Because something inside her ached to know what it would feel like.
What it would mean to abandon the last flicker of humanity she’d fought to keep.
What it would mean to fight Lazarus on his level.
She stood in the vault that night, staring at the vial.
Garrison came up behind her, voice low.
“Do you want to win… or survive?”
She didn’t answer.
Because she didn’t know the difference anymore.
—
In a coastal city miles away, Lazarus stood in a cathedral with no God.
Hooked up to wires.
Breathing through machines.
A scarred priest injected something into his spine.
“She found the vial.”
Lazarus smiled without lips. “Then it begins.”
The priest bowed. “Shall I activate the others?”
“Yes. Release them all.”
Outside, in the city’s underground—
Cells opened.
One by one.
Girls. Boys. Soldiers. Failed projects.
Children who looked just like Eella.
Eyes hollow.
Teeth sharp.
He called them the Choir.
And they had only one song: Eella.
—
In the dark, her phone buzzed.
A single message.
Your reflection is knocking. Will you let her in?
She dropped the phone.
Because the mirror was already bleeding.
And the girl in it smiled.
Like a twin.
Like a monster.
Like home.