Chapter 5
Lazarus
The war changed us.
Weeks of fighting bled into months, and months into a year, until I could no longer tell one season from the next.
Salvatore and I had marched into this furnace as boys, but the war beat us into men—stronger, harder, forged in a fire that didn’t relent.
We stood shoulder to shoulder, best friends in name and in blood, but the heat shaped us differently.
The war gave me endurance. It gave Salvatore something else—something darker.
Where I fought to endure, he fought to devour.
Where I clung to the promise of going home, he clung to the taste of blood.
The bond between us never broke, but I saw the shadow settle heavier on him with every passing battle.
The weeks stretched into an eternity of blood and noise. What had begun as a thunderous march toward glory dissolved into a crawl through filth and rot. Days blurred into nights, nights into nightmares, and then into something worse—empty spaces where time lost meaning.
The war dragged on like an unwelcome spirit clinging to our backs, whispering, clawing, feeding.
We fought in rain that stung like needles, in mud that swallowed sandals and bodies whole, in heat so blistering it cracked the ground beneath us.
We fought without food, without sleep, without warmth.
Every dawn was another step into a red sea, and every dusk was crawling out again—bruised, hollow, half-alive.
The living were little better than the dead. And the dead… There were too many to remember.
My bones ached with every movement. My joints cracked like dry wood. My hands trembled at night from the strain of never letting go of my weapon. I had forgotten what silence sounded like. My mind had grown calloused to screams—ours, theirs, it didn’t matter anymore. Even the gods felt far away.
Still, we kept fighting.
Not because there was a choice. There was no leaving, no vanishing into the hills. There was only forward, only blood, only survival. The only way home was through the enemy, through the war.
And I had a reason.
Amara.
Her face lived in the shattered corners of my mind—the softness of her voice, the curve of her smile, the warmth in her gaze.
She was my tether, my reason, the promise I carried into every battle.
I had sworn to bring her back gold, to give us a life beyond this mire of blood and mud.
That vow held me together when everything else threatened to unravel.
So, I kept fighting. For her. For home. For the promise of something beyond this endless war.
As twilight bled across the camp, bruising the sky gray and violet, we huddled around a fire that barely clung to life. Too exhausted to fear. Too stripped to hope. Its smoke spiraled thin, one breath away from vanishing—just like us.
Turtānu stood before us, arms folded, his face stoic. Behind him, thunder grumbled low, clouds swollen with storm light. He looked less like a man and more like the war-god himself—merciless, unbending.
But there would be no rain to cleanse this place.
No forgiveness.
Only blood.
Only survival.
And whatever hell came next.
“You two.”
His voice cracked across the yard like a whip, as rough as gravel. His finger stabbed the air like a spear, aimed squarely at Salvatore and me. “Step the fuck forward.”
My chest tightened. For a heartbeat, I thought we were being called out for punishment. But we had fought. We had bled. We had endured when others had fallen. That had to mean something.
“Us?” Salvatore’s voice was tight, his shoulders squared.
Turtānu’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t see any other sorry bastards standing beside you, do you?”
Salvatore’s jaw clenched. “No, sir. I do not.”
“Then move your asses before I decide I’ve wasted my breath.”
Lightning split the horizon, turning the camp silver. We stepped forward, sandals sinking into mud, each pace heavy with judgment.
Turtānu studied us, eyes dark and unreadable, like a butcher sizing up meat before the cut. Then—without warning—he nodded once.
“You’ve fought like wolves in a yard of sheep. You’ve bled. You’ve lasted. And for that—tonight, you rise.”
He stepped closer, his shadow spilling across us, his voice booming until the storm itself seemed to bow.
“You are now ?ābūm—generals of this host. You will command men. You will drive them, bleed with them, break them. Their lives will hang in the balance on your word. Fail me, and I’ll see your corpses tossed on the pyres, nameless and forgotten.”
The word hit like a blow to the head. ?ābūm.
General.
The camp erupted—shouts, howls, stamping feet—but not with joy. It was a noise edged with fear, the sound of men marking a shift they could not ignore.
The weight didn’t crush me—it reshaped me. War hadn’t broken us. It had carved us into weapons, sharp enough to cut, and too jagged ever to be made smooth again.
Beside me, Salvatore’s lips curved—not in gratitude, not in pride, but in something darker. Hungrier. The storm light caught his eyes, and I saw the shadow in him deepen.
I, too, bore the weight, but mine was different. Not hunger. Not shadow. Amara’s face burned in my mind, the promise I had made to her. I clenched my fists, not with desire for more blood, but with the vow to survive this war and return to her.
We had risen together, brothers in arms. Even so, in that moment, I felt our paths split—the same fire walking two different roads.
Twilight rolled across the camp like a bruise. I stood at Salvatore’s side—his smile glinting bronze in the half-light, mine tempered into silence. Two boys who had marched into war a year ago now stood as ?ābūm. But the rank didn’t mean we were the same.
Turtānu’s voice cut the air.
“Tomorrow,” he said, thunder in his words, “we end this—one last stand against the raiders from the western seas.”
The name hung there—the Sea Peoples—raiders of coasts and caravans, a storm of iron and flame. The camp shivered at it.
The firelight carved Turtānu’s features into iron and shadow as he paced. He looked less like an instrument of war—armor dented, scars mapped across him, the burden of every burial under his feet. The sky groaned; no rain came—only his voice, unwavering.
He swept his hand across the yard, taking in the gaunt-eyed, blood-streaked survivors—the last tatters of an army once called thunder. “You will each take ten thousand men,” he said. “All that remains.”
His gaze dropped to me. “Commander James,” he said, clipped, heavy with command. “You will lead the main assault. You hold. You measure. You steady men when the line cracks. Hold the center, and we hold the day.”
His words settled on me like iron rings. I nodded; there was no room for an answer.
Then Turtānu turned his head to Salvatore.
“And you—Commander Lorian.” His tone sliced the air. “You will strike the flank. Smash them. Burn their ships. Take their leaders. End this fight by blood or by fire.”
He cut the motion with his hand like a blade falling from a neck.
I looked at Salvatore, searching for the boy beneath those piercing blue eyes, for some steadiness I could read. I wanted him to hesitate. To temper the hunger. To remember the promise we’d both made—home, gold, a life to return to.
But his eyes were hungry. Cold, bright hunger that had been fed a year too long.
Don’t do it, I thought without voice. Just nod. Keep the men alive.
Salvatore stepped forward. The storm light stole across his cheek and revealed something unrecognizable. He lifted his chin, and his voice rang out—steel, unsparing.
“I will bring you their heads,” he said. “I will bring you their leaders’ heads, and this war will end in fire.”
The words landed in the yard and stayed. Men fell silent and measured us both anew.
It wasn’t boldness. It wasn’t courage. It was defiance—reckless, brazen, a challenge flung into the teeth of the gods themselves.
Silence crackled—thin and ready to snap, like the air before lightning tears the sky.
Turtānu did not blink or breathe. He held Salvatore in a stone-hard gaze, the storm mirrored in his eye. Then, slow and terrible, he nodded.
“Then go earn the right to say it.”
The quiet was ruptured. The camp went wild—howls like animals with nothing left to lose. Fists hammered shields; a single voice rose, and the chorus swallowed it. Men stamped the mud until the earth seemed to tremble.
They chanted our names—mine, his—lifting them like banners into the bruised air. For the first time in months, a ghost of fire flared among the ranks; ten thousand dying hopes sparked bright, if only for a breath.
Pride flared in my chest, and under it a cold, crawling fear. Salvatore might end this war tomorrow, or he might become the thing that finished us all.
Before dawn bled light, the camp lay under an indigo bruise. Smoke curled like a dying breath around broken spears. Wind hissed through the tents; everything smelled of iron and wet cloth.
We hauled ourselves up from mud and soaked blankets. I found Salvatore at the tent line, lacing his gear with steady hands, fire already kindled in his eyes.
“Salvatore,” I said, pulling him aside. “My unit leads. You follow my command—no deviations. Not today.”
He turned slowly. “You think I don’t know what’s at stake?” His voice was low. “You think I’d fuck this up? Now? Not after everything.”
“I think your pride might,” I said. “You want this so badly you’ll do anything to win. Even if it kills us.”
He closed the gap until the heat around him was dangerous. “You’re damn right I want it. I’ve lived in the shadow of dead men and colder fathers. This”—he nodded toward the black horizon—“is how I crawl out of that shadow. The only way I stop being the boy everyone spat on.”
“Then do it right,” I said, voice steady. “With me. Not against me.”
His jaw flexed. “You’ve always believed in me, Lazarus. But you’ve never had to carry what I carry. They doubt me the moment I speak. I don’t want pity. I want to be feared.”
The word landed like a thrown shard.