Chapter 14 #2
My breath came shallow and ragged, the air thick enough to chew. The hunger clawed inside me, whispering now in Severen’s voice, blending with my own thoughts until I couldn’t tell them apart.
And somewhere deep down, beneath the noise and the fear, a single thought surfaced—cold and trembling.
What if he really would?
“Did you know he fucked your precious Amara too?” Severen’s voice oozed through the dark, slower now, savoring every word. “While you slept. While you dreamed of marrying her.”
“No—”
“She moaned for him,” Severen purred. “Begged for him. Loved every breath, every touch.”
“SHUT UP!” I screamed, my throat shredding raw. “Shut your fucking mouth!”
The air shifted—thick, humid, alive. Shadows rippled against the stone, writhing like smoke from a torch.
And then she was there.
Amara.
She stepped out of the dark, her face soft and pale beneath the light of a single torch wedged into the wall. Long brown hair clung to her bare shoulders, damp with sweat. Her eyes—deep-brown and unblinking—found mine, empty, glistening, unreal.
She came closer. Her feet made no sound against the grit.
“He made me feel things you never could, Lazarus,” she whispered. Her voice barely carried, yet it filled the pit, echoing inside my skull.
Another shadow rose behind her.
Salvatore.
He emerged from the darkness like he’d been born from it—bare-chested, skin sheened with sweat and grime.
His eyes caught the torchlight—blue, cold, and as still as winter.
Short stubble shadowed his jaw, giving his face the edge of something half-wild.
His hands slid around her waist, possessive and sure.
His fingers traced her ribs, her throat, her jaw.
He bent to her. Their lips met—slow, lingering. The torch sputtered, light flaring over their faces.
When she gasped, he smiled against her mouth.
Then he looked at me.
His eyes glimmered in the half-light, as cold and jagged as obsidian.
“I had her,” he said. “And you never knew.”
Something inside me snapped.
The pit blurred red. I slammed my fists against the wall—again, and again—until my knuckles split and blood spattered the stone. The sound was sickening and wet. My scream filled the cavern, scraping the air raw.
Then the vision shattered, and the pit was stone again.
Salvatore turned toward me, confusion furrowing his brow. “You all right, Lazarus?”
The sound of his voice broke me open.
I lunged, roaring, slamming into him. We hit the ground hard, the impact cracking through my spine.
“You fucking animal!” I howled, driving my fist into his chest. “You fucked Amara—and my mother!”
His eyes went wide, a flash of disbelief before anger took hold. “What in the fucking hell are you talking about?”
He rolled us, pinning me, his knee pressing into my ribs. My fists flailed, wild, useless.
“You always take!” I spat. “Everything that isn’t yours. You took Amara! You took my mother from me! You fucked them both!”
I bared my teeth and sank them into his arm. Flesh tore; hot blood filled my mouth—iron, salt, and fury.
He roared, the sound raw enough to shake dust from the walls.
But I didn’t let go.
Because somewhere beneath the pain, beneath the madness, beneath the hollow ache in my chest…
A seed had been planted.
And it was growing into something monstrous.
Salvatore wrenched free, stumbling back. Blood streamed in thick ribbons down his forearm, my teeth still imprinted in his flesh like a curse carved into skin. He staggered upright, chest heaving, crimson dripping to his wrist.
“You’re fucking insane,” he snarled, shaking his head as if to dislodge the sight of me.
I crawled up on my hands and knees, sweat slicking my spine, the stone biting cold into my palms. I lifted my head slowly, like something half-dead dragging itself from the earth.
“You can’t stand being alone,” I rasped, voice scraping the air. “That’s why you fucked your brother’s wife. Helena. My Amara. And my mother.”
The words hung heavy in the air, as thick as smoke from a funeral pyre.
Salvatore went still. His face didn’t twist or harden—he just froze.
He looked at me like I’d struck him with something heavier than stone.
“Lazarus,” he said at last, his voice strange now—quiet, almost human. “I never fucked your mother. Or Amara. I swear it.”
“Liar!” I hissed, venom catching in my throat. I spat at his feet—saliva flecked with blood.
Salvatore moved before I could blink. His fingers tangled in my hair, jerking my head back so hard my neck cracked. I grunted, fists curling, but I didn’t fight. I glared up at him, breathing like an animal cornered.
“Listen to yourself,” he growled, face inches from mine.
“You think I’d ever do that to you? You think I’d touch Amara?
” His voice trembled, not with anger, but with something that sounded almost like hurt.
“You think I’d ever dishonor your mother like that?
I had respect for her, Lazarus. For both of them. I would never fucking do that.”
His grip eased, but his eyes stayed locked on mine—furious, pleading.
“It’s Severen,” he said, voice rough. “He’s in your head. He’s twisting you. That’s what he does.”
But I couldn’t hear him. I didn’t want to hear him.
The words spilling from me weren’t mine anymore—they belonged to the rage that had taken root. “We took care of you,” I spat. “We were your friends, your family—and you betrayed us.”
Salvatore shook his head slowly, disbelief and exhaustion hollowing his face. “Gods, you’ve lost it,” he whispered. “I never hurt you. I never hurt her. Amara has your heart—I know that. She’s always been yours.”
His voice cracked at the edge, like something breaking behind his ribs.
I stared up at him, breathing hard, chest trembling. “You fucked her,” I said again, but quieter now—like I needed to hear it, even if it wasn’t true.
Salvatore’s jaw tightened. “You’re not hearing me,” he said softly. “This is Severen. This is what he wants—us tearing each other apart.”
He released me, shoving me back just enough to put space between us. Blood from the bite on his arm dripped down his wrist, shining dark in the flickering torchlight. He turned away, shaking his head like he could shake off what had just happened—like the madness in me had rubbed off on him.
He didn’t yell again. Didn’t storm off. Just walked to the far wall and sank his back against the stone.
His shoulders slumped. His breathing steadied. But his eyes—his eyes stayed on the ground, distant, locked on something I couldn’t see.
Then the iron door groaned open—slow, low, and long, like metal weeping.
The sound pulled both of us upright.
I turned toward it, pulse hammering, breath caught halfway.
Waiting for the next horror to crawl through and finish what Severen had started.
“Look out!” I shouted, my voice cracking as it echoed into the dark.
Something massive struck the ground behind me.
I threw myself sideways, palms scraping against stone, just as a corpse crashed into the pit with a wet, heavy thud. The sound split the silence—thick and deadened, like the end of a heartbeat.
The body landed twisted, its spine bent the wrong way, its head turned toward the ceiling as if it were still searching for mercy. The eyes stared wide and glassy, the mouth frozen mid-prayer.
My breath hitched. My stomach tied itself into knots.
Then more came.
Bodies fell like offerings cast into a sacrificial pit—slamming into the ground one after another with bone-shattering weight. They didn’t land clean. They split open. Flesh tore, organs spilled, limbs tangled together until the center of the chamber became a heap of blood and bone.
They were half-rotted already.
Men who had failed the trials.
One had no arms—just stumps, bones jutting white through blackened flesh. Another’s jaw hung by a few tendons, slack and broken against what remained of his throat. A third had no eyes, only hollow sockets crawling with maggots.
The air turned solid with stench.
Rot. Piss. Iron. Decay.
It filled my lungs, coated my tongue. The torchlight flickered, fighting to stay alive in the suffocating dark.
Flies came instantly—buzzing, writhing, feeding. They crawled across the faces of the dead, dipped into open mouths, disappeared into wounds. The pit belonged to them now.
I stumbled back until my shoulders struck stone. My hands trembled against the wall. A scream tried to tear its way out of me—but nothing came. The sound died in my throat.
Then a shadow appeared at the rim of the pit—a guard.
He stood above us, torchlight catching the edges of his grin.
“Eat or starve,” he called down, voice flat and almost amused. “Doesn’t matter to me. The faster you eat, the quicker you leave.”
And then he was gone.
The door slammed shut.
Salvatore and I sat across from each other in the filth, corpses piled around us, the remaining trial men huddled at the edges—breathing, wounded, barely upright.
We didn’t speak.
We didn’t move.
We only stared at the heap between us, waiting for it to twitch. Waiting for it to whisper.
After what felt like an hour—or a lifetime—Salvatore finally spoke. His voice was rough, barely human.
“It’s only a matter of time,” he said. “Until we give in.”
He looked at me, eyes hollow.
“May as well end it now.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
I tilted my head back, staring at the vaulted stone ceiling, searching for something above the rot—a slit of sky, a god, a single sign of mercy.
There was nothing.
Only stone.
Only the smell of death.
Salvatore crouched beside the mangled corpse, its jaw hanging by a strip of sinew, its head lolling sideways like it still wanted to scream. Without hesitation, he pressed two fingers into the hollow where an eye had once been and dug.
The eyeball came loose with a wet pop—slick, veined, wiggling on a thread of nerve. He held it up toward the torchlight, studying it like a man appraising a coin.
My body recoiled. Bile scorched the back of my throat.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I rasped.