Chapter 13 #2
Because somewhere beyond these walls, midnight crept closer—and with it, the next fucking trial.
* * *
The bell tolled.
Once. Twice.
Each strike rolled through the Dreadhold like thunder crawling through the bones of the earth. Dust drifted from the ceiling, catching the torchlight like falling ash.
No one moved. Every prisoner froze mid-motion, as if the sound alone could drag their souls from their bodies. Fifty-five of us remained in the Shadow Lord Trials.
Lazarus stood a few paces away, wrists bound, his face half-lost in the glow of a torch. I hadn’t spoken to him since this morning.
Now, when I looked at him, all I saw was distance—like I was losing him piece by piece to this cursed place.
“Form the line!” a guard barked.
Chains clinked as men staggered into formation. The corridor reeked of pitch and rust; smoke curled as thick as fog. The torches hissed, painting the damp walls with trembling light.
Another guard slammed the butt of his spear against the stone. “Kneel.”
We obeyed. The sound of metal on stone rippled down the line. The air hung heavy, pressed between heartbeat and silence.
And then came a voice.
Not a whisper this time, but something deeper—low, deliberate, unholy. It didn’t echo; it vibrated through the walls, through every man kneeling there.
“This night,” the voice said, as calm as still water, “marks the Trial of Reflection.”
The guards stiffened, heads bowing like reeds in the wind. I knew that voice. Everyone did.
Severen.
“Each of you,” he continued, “will stand before me, and I will see what festers beneath your flesh. Your sins. Your cravings. Your fears. The truths you hide even from yourselves.”
The bronze door at the end of the corridor groaned open. Cold air spilled out—dense with incense and the stink of flowers left too long on a grave. Symbols carved into the door glowed, pulsing like veins beneath skin.
“Your bodies have endured,” Severen said. “Now your minds will kneel.”
A guard lifted his torch. “Salvatore Lorian,” he called.
Oh, fuck me.
Of course, they’d pick me first.
The chain on my wrists jerked tight. I didn’t look at Lazarus. Couldn’t.
If I did, I’d remember what it felt like to still have a brother in this hell.
The bronze door groaned open. The air that bled from within shimmered—thick with shadow and gold, the scent of incense rotted sweet. As they dragged me forward, Severen’s laughter followed—soft, knowing, merciless.
“Salvatore Lorian,” he drawled, his voice slithering from the dark. “I must say, I have waited a long time to have you to myself. To… converse.”
“Get on with your fucking trial, Severen,” I spat.
A chuckle echoed—low, indulgent, like a serpent exhaling smoke. “So eager for me to crawl inside your head. I see you and Lazarus have drifted apart today. Your so-called brother.”
“It’s all because of you.”
“Me?” The voice circled me, encompassing and lethal. “How so?”
“I don’t trust you,” I hissed. “I feel it in my bones—you want to destroy us. Our brotherhood. Our bond with Amara. You’re poisoning our minds, turning us against each other.
My soul knows we’ve crossed paths before.
But hear me, Severen—Lazarus and I will win these trials, and when we do, we’ll destroy you. ”
“Such bold words, Salvatore.”
The chamber flickered—torches bending as if the air itself bowed to him. Then he stepped from the smoke, robed in black and bronze, eyes gleaming like molten coin. His smile was patient, ancient, cruel.
Severen circled me slowly, each step a scratch of sandal against stone, each breath a cut across my spine.
“I know everything about you,” he said softly.
“I’ve watched you since you were a broken little prince… spoiled by gold, starved by silence. Surrounded by servants who bowed and scraped—but a father who never looked at you unless it was to hurt you.”
His grin split his face like a wound reopening.
“You begged for his love like a beggar at a feast. Crawling across the stone floor, skin split from his whip, throat raw from prayers to a man who only saw shame in your eyes.”
The air thickened with his words until it filled my lungs like smoke.
He leaned closer, his grin no longer human—just malice stretched thin across bone.
“Your father locked you in a palace of silence. He never held you. Never praised you. Only touched you to hurt you. And you,” his voice coiled tighter, “still begged for his approval. Like a dog. Broken and bleeding and desperate for a pat that never came.”
My hands twitched. My jaw clenched. But his voice slid deeper—past flesh, past thought—seeping into the cracks of my mind like poison.
“He never paraded you. Never claimed you. You were his shame. His disappointment. His secret disgrace.”
He stopped in front of me, raised a single finger, and pressed it to my chest.
“And you’ve spent every breath since trying to prove him wrong. Trying to turn pain into purpose.”
His eyes burned brighter. “Trying to be a man.”
He leaned close enough for his breath to ghost my skin.
“But you’ll never be anything, but what he made you.”
“You know nothing about me,” I growled, though my voice wavered.
Severen smiled. That wicked, split-lipped grin—made for tearing, made for fear. It widened beyond flesh, beyond human.
“Oh, Salvatore,” he murmured, almost tender.
“Your father hated you from the moment you drew breath. Your poor mother died bringing you into this world, and he never forgave you for it. Every time he looked at you, he saw her death staring back. So, he made it his mission to make your life as miserable as hers was brief.”
His tone was soft—almost compassionate—but the words stung.
“Shut up,” I snapped, voice cracking, but he didn’t stop.
“Oh no, Salvatore,” he whispered. “Let’s speak plainly now.”
He crouched until his shadow swallowed mine, the scent of him—ash, smoke, and the damp of graves—curling into my lungs.
“Your father beat you to remind himself he still had power. You cried not because of the pain but because you wanted him to stop. You wanted him to love you.”
He touched a finger beneath my jaw. “Tell me… did you ever imagine him softening? Calling you son?”
The torches dimmed to blue, the chamber contracting with each breath. From the shards of bronze, memories bled through once more—the courtyard in Ugarit, sandstone walls, the crack of a whip. Servants looking away. A boy’s voice begging.
“Stop it,” I breathed.
The images multiplied. My father’s hand. My mother’s portrait. My knees on the floor.
“Stop it.”
Severen’s eyes glowed like embers. “You begged him not to call you weak. But you feared he was right.”
The whip fell again, and I felt it—old flesh splitting open, blood that wasn’t there running down my back.
“STOP IT!” I roared.
He raised his hand, and the shards lifted, spinning in a slow, glittering storm. Each fragment showed my father again—eyes full of contempt, mouth shaping blame.
“You killed the love of my life,” the vision hissed. “You killed your mother. You took her away from me.”
My chest cracked open. “I never meant to,” I whispered. “She died giving birth to me. How was that my fault? If I’d known, I would’ve traded places. I wish I’d never been born. I wish I’d known her.”
The shards hung in the air around us, catching the torchlight like suspended drops of blood. My pulse pounded in my ears.
“What if I told you her name?” Severen asked, his tone as soft as silk.
My throat tightened. “And in exchange for what?”
His grin deepened, the corners of his mouth stretching in that inhuman way I’d come to hate.
“It’s for me to decide,” he said. “Whenever I wish to decide. But for now,” he stepped closer, his shadow folding over mine, “I feel kind enough to share her name.”
He raised his hand. The shards flared, each one glowing from within, and the air rippled like heat over stone. Slowly, the fragments turned until they faced me, their surfaces alive with movement.
A woman’s face formed out of the shifting bronze—dark hair braided with gold thread, eyes as blue as the deep sea, the same cursed color I carried in my own reflection. The sight of her struck through me like recognition and grief entwined.
“My mother…” The words broke from me like a prayer.
“Her name,” Severen murmured, almost reverent, “was Marianna.”
The sound of it split something inside me. I had never heard her name spoken aloud—not once in all my years.
“Marianna,” he continued, “was a woman of grace and fire. Beautiful. Unforgettable.”
“It sounds,” I said, my voice rough, “like you knew her personally.”
Severen’s smile didn’t falter. “Tell me, Salvatore—” he said, gliding past my accusation as if it were nothing, “you killed your mother… but what about your father?”
“My father is already dead,” I rasped. “I never killed him—no matter how much I wanted to. For all the pain and misery he gave me… someone else took that from me.”
Severen tilted his head, eyes narrowing like a predator’s in torchlight. “But doesn’t it please you, just a little? Knowing he’s gone? No more lash, no more failure, no more voice to remind that you were never enough.”
“What’s the point of being happy about it,” I snapped, “if I’m rotting in your damned prison until I pass your Shadow Lord Trials?”
He chuckled softly, the sound curling through the air like smoke.
“That’s right… my prison. My trials. You walked willingly into my jaws after all, didn’t you? But let’s speak of something sweeter. The reason you were sent here.”
The torches dimmed. The air chilled.
Severen’s hand drifted through the smoke, and the mirrors stirred to life again—bronze surfaces rippling like disturbed water.
“You came here,” he said, “because of Helena. Because of the lover you murdered, with her two fuck toys as well.”
The images in the mirrors sharpened.
A dagger shook in my hands—its edge wet, still pulsing like it remembered the heartbeats it had stolen.
Helena lay at my feet.