TW! This chapter is a walking trigger. I'm going to write a synopsis at the end for those of you who cannot stand extreme violence. For those of you who can, I salute you, my brethren. If you like gore, it's probably not that bad (IMO at least). If you don't like gore... you were warned lol.

Footsteps echoed on the cold, damp floor. Thump... thump... thump. The slow, deep sound reverberated throughout the dungeon, broken up only by the sound of a steady drip of a crimson liquid that had spilled all too quickly. Power shook the walls with each pace. The dungeon recognized the presence of its master: a sinister force of pure evil that fed it what it so desired.

Blood.

He smirked. Perhaps it needed feeding again.

"Please!" the man chained to the wall sobbed. He had been crying for three days pathetically ever since he killed that useless partner of his. The body still lay on the floor of the dungeon, rats feeding on the carcass periodically. They scurried when he walked by; they, too, were afraid of the killer. "Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Just let me live!"

Out from the shadows, the man stepped out. The dim moonlight illuminated only one of Tom Riddle's eyes. Even it couldn't bring the light out of the pits of pure darkness. There was no light, not in him.

A sadistic grin rested on his face. He was composed even as he stepped over the dead woman. Her skull was broken, blonde hair matted red with caked blood. She died too quickly for his tastes. He liked making them suffer.

"Please, sir! W-we were only trying..."

But he trailed off when he saw the knife in Tom's hand. It was a black dagger caked with dried blood. The woman's blood. As Tom held it, he swore he could still hear her screams. The echoed through the dungeon for two days like music to his ears. He twirled it in his fingers, reveling in the way it called to the hungry power within him. It, like everything else in this world, recognized who its superior was.

Everything else but these two pathetic idiots.

The man had been in the dungeons for two weeks. At first, Tom left them alone. He allowed them to sit in that empty room, chained to the wall. There, their fear of what he might do to them ate them up almost as much as their hunger did. He didn't feed them for five days, only allowed them to drink the water dripping off of the wet stones from the rain. Their wands had long been broken, their magic destroyed. He waited until they were starving, thirsty, and completely desperate. Only then were they easily broken.

The woman broke first, begging for mercy the moment Tom walked into the room. Her blue eyes were wide with fear. She easily sold out whatever secrets she knew, which wasn't much. Useless, Tom thought as she told him all about a plan to test his powers before he ascended to his rightful position. But he already knew that much. How else would he have found their little "safe house" in the Welsh countryside? It was almost too easy. Shame. He would have to play with the others more later.

Tom began to kill her then. Slowly, of course. He reveled in the way the man's eyes widened as he watched his partner lose more and more blood each day. A cut one day, a larger one another, surviving on moldy bread and limited water. Tom enjoyed hearing the way her screams changed as he carved into her like she was the butter for her sad excuse of a piece of toast.

She died after six days. A damn shame, too, because he wasn't nearly done. Her fear when he entered the room with the knife was almost as entertaining as the look in the man's eyes as glistening beads of red flowed down her body. Desperate. Good. Desperate meant that he was still useful.

Not that Tom needed them for anything. He read their minds the moment he saw them huddling in the corner of the stupid excuse of a safe house. Nothing was safe from him. If they were intelligent, they would have known that. Then again, if they were intelligent, they would have left him alone. If they had, the man wouldn't be in chains and the blonde girl would be alive.

Then again, she was a redhead now, wasn't she?

No, they weren't very useful. But he didn't hold them there for information. He didn't starve them for questions he already knew the answer to. He was sending a message. Two cold, decaying bodies at a time.

"You were what?" Tom drawled with a severe lack of enthusiasm. He was afraid that his time with the man was almost to an end. He was bored, tired of staying above in the safe house as he wracked fear into the hearts of the two people below. He wanted his bed at Hogwarts. He wanted the castle's food. He wanted to still keep an eye on the black-haired girl. Mattheo was doing a piss-poor job of watching her; Malfoy had told him as much. The blond boy was cowardly, all too willing to rat out his younger brother for a degree of protection. Still, Mattheo reported that Evelyn was safe. For now, until he could figure out why he cared, that would have to be enough.

He had other things to worry about. Like how he would kill the young man hanging from the wall.

"W-we were just following o-orders!"

Tom slowly walked over to the man. He visibly shook with fear when he saw the Dark Heir get closer. The son of Voldemort's face was cold and unforgiving. He didn't allow mercy; mercy was a weakness he had no use for. The man knew he would die. Tom would determine how gruesome it was.

"And what about my orders?" Tom whispered, staring deeply into the hazel eyes in front of him. The cell began to smell like urine. He wanted to sigh and pinch his forehead. Why were they all so cowardly? Everyone was afraid of him, even his own brother. Everyone but Evelyn. "What about listening to what I say?"

The man sobbed as Tom turned away, still holding the knife in his hand. "We should have. I apologize, My Lord. T-they told us—"

"Told you what?" Tom seethed sharply, turning quickly to face the prisoner. "Told you that I was weak? That I was to be played with? Tell me, Dorian, do you still believe that to be true? Do you still find me weak?"

"No," he sobbed. Tom could feel the fear radiating off of him. "No, My Lord. I can see that you are even stronger than your father."

Tom pinched the bridge of his nose. "You are wasting my time. If you are no longer being useful, then I will have to dispose of you."

He gripped his knife, ready to plunge it into the man's hollow stomach. But before he thrusted, the man cried out, "WAIT!"

"What?" Tom growled, already annoyed he had been away from school for over a month. The time it took to find these fuckers coupled with strategizing to take them with minimal effort plus the time he tortured them in the basement of their own safe house had been much longer than he wanted.

"I remember something they said. Something I wasn't supposed to hear one night at a meeting on the summer solstice." That got Tom's attention. If the man had forgotten it, it wouldn't have been in his mind when he searched it.

"If I deem your statement to be useful, your death will be swift. If not, you will pray to your god that you might die as quickly as she did." He wasn't going to promise life. Dorian knew that. He could only promise the quick release of death.

The man nodded eagerly, a spark of hope shining in his eyes. A normally useless emotion but one that has finally proved its worth. "They found a Seer, a woman from Sri Lanka. She—She told them something."

"What, Dorian?" he snarled. His patience was wearing off very quickly.

"She said that the one who came to power—y-you, sir—would find a piece of your soul in another. One who was both a weakness and a strength." Tom tried to search the man's mind to hasten the process but the memory was fuzzy. He almost groaned in annoyance.

"And?"

"And they believe that to be worth of your father, you must rid yourself all of your weaknesses, including the one she spoke of. You must destroy the one who holds your soul. They are searching for them now. T-that is your test. To kill the very human who contains the missing piece."

As soon as Dorian finished speaking, Tom felt himself be overcome by a white-hot anger he had never felt before. Darkness overtook his finish and he found himself thrusting the dagger deeply into the stomach of the man chained to the wall. Blood spilled instantly from the room, coating the floors of the dungeon as if his wound were a waterfall. Tom didn't even care that his shoes were getting ruined, his suit soiled with crimson gore. He didn't listen to the man as he screamed for help before quickly becoming silent. He didn't watch as his eyes lightened until Dorian's soul moved on to the next plane.

All Tom could think about was her. The one who held a piece of his soul he hadn't even known he was missing. The one who was the answer to the question. The one whose soul he could feel even now, hundreds of kilometers from where she rested. The one whose very eyes had been a beacon in his dreams, whose face had caressed his every thought. The one they sought to destroy.

Evelyn.

. . .

Hours later, Tom had cleaned the blood off of his clothes. There were still splatters of it on his face, though he ignored it. They sat there like little freckles dotting his face. It was no matter. He would clean himself up better when he got back to Hogwarts.

After writing a letter to the other ridiculous members of the extremist faction, one that detailed exactly what happened in the safe house and warned others of going against him in the future, Tom would apparate back to the castle. Apparating to Hogwarts was impossible for anyone but him. For him, it was as easy as apparating anywhere else. Dumbledore's useless defense charms meant nothing to someone whose magic could evolve into shadows that fit the very locks they tried to use.

Tom would have taken more time to relax before returning to the castle but after Dorian's revelation, he was restless to return. They have somehow figured out that I have a connection to Evelyn, possibly even before I figured it out myself. But how? And does she know about it? No, he knew she didn't. She seemed to know even less than he did and perhaps that was best.

But one thing was clear: he needed to guard her. She held a piece of his soul. She—she who was meant to strengthen him—could become the very weakness he did not need. They meant to destroy her. Perhaps he should destroy her himself and regain the part of his soul back to where it rightfully belonged. But...

But he couldn't. Just the thought of a single hair being touched on Evelyn's head, even by him, brought on a sense of dark rage that he had never felt before. He felt protective over the beautiful girl. So much so that, in fact, as he cut up the idiot woman, he pretended it was her grandmother. One day, it would be. But not today. Not until Evelyn could inherit their estate.

She called to his darkness. He realized that now. His soul was bonded to hers in a way that perhaps no one had ever seen before. And while the logical part of him felt that a potential weakness should be ended immediately, a larger part of him could never do that. Evelyn was his. His strength. His darkness. His soul. His Little Dove. His.

She belonged to him. Whether she knew it or not.

Tom would be returning to the castle tonight. While he previously trusted Mattheo to look after her, Mattheo would be no match for deranged Death Eaters, nor did he want his brother to have to face them anyway. This was Tom's fight and only Tom trusted himself with her protection.

She stirred up feelings that he didn't understand. She brought emotions that he didn't recognize to the surface. She made him feel something. And right now, that something was screaming at him to get back to Hogwarts where he could keep an eye on her until the threat was eliminated. Because the threat would be eliminated. He was sure of it. He just needed more time to gather information and strategize. Since he now needed to keep an eye on her, it would take longer than he originally planned. But it was no matter; Evelyn would be safe with him and the threat would be gone before she ever knew she was in danger.

Tom slipped on his black cloak and tucked it over his head before apparating back to the castle. As he reached the familiar edges of the Forbidden Forest—a forest that feared him with every fiber of its being—he stared up at the stone fortress in front of him. It should have been impenetrable but he knew firsthand that there were cracks in the safeguards. The charms were useless, the professors too busy to be competent. No, her protection would only befall him. He was the only one he trusted with it anyway.

He could see the floating orange pumpkins from the bottom of the hill. All Hallow's Eve. A dark holiday, accentuated by the ominous, distant storms that surrounded the lake. Tom tightened his hood so he didn't get hit by the oncoming rain.

The cords of their bond pulsed the closer Tom got to the castle. He wondered if Evelyn could feel it or if she was blissfully unaware, sitting in the library reading one of her little horror books. He would find her later and make sure that Mattheo did an adequate job of caring for her. His brother was one of the only ones he didn't find completely useless, though he could be annoying at times. Mattheo reported daily on Evelyn, even saying a few days ago that the two had started speaking and formed a sort of connection, though no connection could ever compete with the one between them.

Tom felt an unfamiliar ache in his chest when he thought of her, like every part of his being wanted to be there. He frowned and just walked to his chambers, picturing her long, loose curls and startling grey eyes.

Soon, my darling, he thought, unknowingly projecting it into her head, where the vaguely familiar voice startled her and made her drop her book.

For those who found the chapter too gory (or for those who want to make sure that they understand everything lol): Tom found two rebels and tortured them in the basement of a safe house where one revealed that the extremist faction found out (through a prophecy) that a piece of Tom's soul resided in another and they want to destroy it to prove Tom's worth as the next Dark Lord, essentially seeing whether it would strengthen or weaken him. Tom deduced that it was Evelyn and apparated to the castle where he resolved to protect her himself. It's Halloween night and he promised to see her soon.

What do you think? Sorry, it was a little dark but this is what I typically write so it came so naturally to me. I'm currently pursuing traditional publishing with a YA dark romance with a main character very similar to Tom in this chapter so writing it felt like an old friend, though I tried to keep it a little lighter.

Hope you all like this story! If so, maybe I should write more dark romance haha.

Thanks to all the reviews and follows I've gotten so far 3