Chapter 10 #3
“He’s never taken the trials,” Orin added. “But he’s seen what happens to those who do. Says he’s watched every man who enters that gate vanish one by one. Says he knows what waits beyond it.”
Rian’s voice dropped, barely more than a whisper. “Some say he’s mad. Some say the Dreadhold lets him live because he already belongs to it.”
The three men fell silent, their eyes turning toward the darkness.
Their eyes stayed fixed on the far end of the cave, where the light thinned and the shadows gathered like smoke.
I followed their gaze.
At first, I saw nothing—only darkness pressing against the rough-cut stone. Then, slowly, my eyes began to adjust.
A figure sat against the wall. Still.
So still, I thought he might already be dead.
He was shackled, like the rest of us, but the chains looked older—corroded green with age, the bronze links fused into the rock itself. His head was bowed, long hair hanging in tangled ropes across his face. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t even seem to breathe.
“That’s him,” Rian whispered. “The one who’s been here the longest.”
“How long?” I asked.
Orin’s jaw worked. “Long enough that even the guards don’t remember when he came.”
Rian shifted uncomfortably, his chains scraping stone. “They call him Navir. Used to be a scholar, they say. Before he took the brand.”
Navir.
The name hung in the air like a prayer that no one believed in anymore.
“Has he ever spoken?” I asked.
Tarek nodded once, as slow as a man remembering a dream. “To some,” he said. “Not to most.”
I hesitated, then stepped forward. The chain between my ankles rattled, the sound echoing through the chamber like a death rattle.
The man’s head lifted. Just slightly.
Even through the gloom, I saw his eyes—clouded, unfocused, but alive. Alive in a way that felt wrong.
“You shouldn’t have come,” he said. His voice was low and mangled, but it carried easily over the mutter of the cave. “Curiosity dies faster here than the body does.”
“I needed to know,” I said. “About the Shadow Lord Trials.”
He tilted his head. The movement was small, calculated. His lips curved into something that might once have been a smile, but there was no warmth in it—only pity.
“The Shadow Lord Trials,” he murmured, tasting the words like poison. “They don’t just test you. They dismantle you. Piece by piece. First the body, then the mind. It isn’t sudden. It’s premeditated. A slow unmaking.”
He shifted, the chain around his neck scraping against stone. “They know exactly how much to take, how much to leave, how far a soul can stretch before it breaks. They strip you until you no longer know what pain is—only that you’d do anything to make it stop.”
He leaned forward, voice dropping to a whisper as rough as sand. “And when you’ve bled enough, they offer you a choice. One so vile, so corrupt, it twists you until you can’t remember who you were before it. You take it—or you die wishing you had.”
The air in the cave thickened. Every breath felt heavier. The walls seemed closer, closing in, sweating under the horror of his words.
“And if I survive?” I asked, my throat dry, heart pounding.
The old man’s gaze met mine, calm and grave. “Then you become untouchable,” he said. “A force even the Dreadhold fears to chain.”
I swallowed hard. “And if I fail?”
His voice turned to dust. “Then you forget who you are,” he said. “And what’s left of you… begs to forget the rest.”
A chill moved through the cave—colder than any winter wind, colder than stone or saltwater.
And in that breath, I understood—death was not the worst fate the Dreadhold had to offer.
I looked down the corridor.
Salvatore stood there—half-swallowed in shadow, glowering. His arms hung stiff at his sides, fists clenched, jaw locked tight.
He looked like a storm waiting for permission.
Or maybe one barely contained by flesh.
I looked away.
I’d thought giving him distance would help. That silence might cool what still burned between us. But silence here didn’t soothe—it festered.
Still, I had other things to think about.
Bigger things.
The trials.
Survival.
Finding a way out of this place before it devoured what little of us was left.
And beneath all of it, beneath every breath and bruise, was the same truth—I had to get back to Amara.
Somehow. Some way.
Back to her hands, her voice, her life.
Every step I endured here was a step toward her.
Whether he wanted to stand beside me or not.
That night, we sat slumped against opposite walls of the cell, our backs to the same stone but worlds apart. The air was thick with the smell of sweat, blood, and something sourer—hopelessness. The kind that seeped into the fissures of your bones and stayed there.
The silence stretched so long it became a sound of its own.
Then Salvatore broke it.
“Who are your new little friends?”
His voice was low, but there was an edge beneath it—a blade hiding in soft cloth.
I didn’t look at him. “Why does it matter?”
“It matters,” he said, “because you’re talking to them. And not to me.”
I shifted on the cold floor, scraping my shackles across the grit, putting a little more distance between us.
“I was giving us space, Salvatore.”
“I didn’t want space,” he said quickly. The words stumbled out as if they’d been waiting too long to breathe. “I need my best friend.”
He swallowed, voice cracking. “Please… don’t turn away from me. Not like everyone else has.”
And that… broke something in me.
I turned. His face was burdened with exhaustion, his eyes raw with the kind of desperation that lived beneath anger.
Despite everything, he was still Salvatore.
Still, the boy who once stood between me and a blade.
I exhaled, the tension in my chest loosening just enough to let the words out.
“Have you heard the whispers?” I asked quietly. “About the Shadow Lord Trials?”
“Of course I’ve heard them,” he said. “It’s all anyone talks about. But it’s bullshit, Lazarus. A tale for dying men.”
“What if it’s not?”
He gave a short, bitter laugh. “You really believe that? That there’s some secret trial where you fight your way to freedom and walk out untouchable? It’s a lie. Something men tell themselves, so they don’t go mad.”
I frowned, but the small, stubborn flame in me wouldn’t go out. “What if it’s real? What if it’s our way out?”
“Our way out?” His voice rose, rough with disbelief. “Look around you. This place doesn’t give second chances. It gives death or nothing. Let it go.”
I stared at him—the chains, the filth, the walls closing around us like a tomb.
But the fire inside my chest burned hotter.
“I can’t let it go,” I said. “We survived war. We survived beatings, betrayals, and gods-damned branding. This isn’t just escape—it’s truth. Someone put us here, and I need to know who.”
Salvatore’s shoulders slumped. His eyes went hollow again, that light retreating into the dark.
“Forget the trials, Lazarus,” he whispered. “We’re not getting out. The Dreadhold doesn’t release its dead.”
“You can’t think like that,” I snapped, the chains between us rattling. “What’s the alternative? Rot here until the stone swallows us? No. I’d rather die fighting than fade into nothing.”
I leaned forward, close enough to see the hollow in his eyes, the ghost of the man I used to know. My pulse hammered in my throat, my voice low but steady.
“Tell me the truth, Salvatore.”
The air between us trembled.
“Are you going to sit here and let this place eat you alive—or are you going to fight beside me?”