Chapter 15
Salvatore
Sleep had become a fever dream. I drifted in and out of it, my stomach twisting with the weight of what I’d swallowed—the taste of human flesh still sour on my tongue.
The crash of iron tore me out of half-consciousness.
The prison door screamed under the strain of its chains. Each strike echoed through my skull, as sharp as a bone splintering.
I jolted upright, breath catching in my throat. My hands were still caked with dried blood—the blood of men I had torn and devoured. My face had hardened beneath it, the gore stiff and cracking when I moved.
And I felt nothing.
Not guilt.
Not horror.
Nothing.
Lazarus had raged. He’d prayed, wept, gagged until his throat bled.
That was the difference between us.
The guards slammed the door again. The sound rattled the walls, shaking dust from the stone.
“On your feet, you useless bastards,” one barked. “Unless you’d rather waste away where you sit. Your chores await.”
Their voices were the same as always—cruel, detached, filled with the tired amusement of men who had forgotten mercy long ago. I wondered if they still saw us as human, or if we were already part of the Dreadhold’s rot.
The air was thick—sour, damp, unmoving. Every breath carried the stink of iron and decay.
Across the cell, Lazarus sat hunched in the corner, his face half-hidden, shoulders drawn as tight as rope. When he rose, he didn’t look at me. Didn’t even twitch in my direction. His gaze stayed low, fixed on the floor.
“Hey,” I said, my voice too loud in the suffocating quiet. “I wonder what kind of hell they’ll feed us today.”
I tried to make it sound like a joke.
But he didn’t answer.
Didn’t move.
Just stood there, as silent as the stone around us.
Something in his stillness unsettled me. The space between us wasn’t just silence anymore. It was distance—a gulf carved by what we’d done.
I swallowed hard, but the taste of ash lingered.
“Can you believe it?” I pressed, a bitter laugh scraping its way out. “Three trials down. Three more to go. We’re halfway through.”
Still nothing.
Not even a glance.
It was like speaking to the corpse of my friend rather than the man himself.
I clenched my jaw and looked away, blood buzzing in my ears. Fine. If he wanted to drown in silence, let him.
I had no time for ghosts.
I wasn’t going to let Lazarus—or his broken silence—stand in the way of what I wanted. Of what I would take.
I would become a Shadow Lord.
And when I did, this pit, these guards, even Lazarus’ hollow stare—none of it would matter.
They dragged us back to the cannibal’s pit—the same place where we had fed.
The stench hit harder than before, rancid decay mingling with iron and smoke so thick it choked the air. My knees buckled. I gagged, throat convulsing, but nothing came up.
Corpses lay everywhere—more than I remembered. Bloated, green, split open by heat and gas. Bellies swelled like drums, ready to burst. Tongues jutted from split lips. Clouds of flies hung so heavy they dimmed the air, a shifting black veil that crawled over skin and hair.
My feet stuck with every step, sucking free from the blood-soaked earth with a wet pull. I stumbled as the guards shoved me forward.
“What are we supposed to do today?” I rasped, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
A guard sneered, his teeth yellow, his eyes glittering with cruelty. He jerked his chin toward the mound of the dead.
“Clean up the mess, unless you’d rather join them. Dig a pit. Burn what’s left.”
The words sank like stones in my chest. I looked at the corpses—the twisted faces, the gnawed ribs, the remains of men I’d eaten—and all I could think was how close I’d come to lying beside them.
That was when I heard it.
A whisper.
Faint at first, sliding through the corners of my mind.
You’ve already buried your fear, Salvatore.
I froze.
You did what the weak could not. You lived. You fed. You became.
Severen.
The sound wasn’t real, but it didn’t need to be. It breathed inside my skull, slick and certain.
He’ll hold you back, the voice whispered. Lazarus—the boy clutching pity and shame. He’ll die with ghosts in his hands. You… you were meant for more.
Something cold threaded through my veins. My breath caught.
In the corner lay the tools—rusted blades of iron, bent spades with split handles, crude picks whose metal had been hammered thin. Not weapons, only scraps made useful by hunger.
Lazarus and I grabbed what we could. Shadows moved like specters behind us, other men fumbled at the ruined tools, silent in the hum of flies.
The work was a burden of bone. The earth was packed as hard as a skull; every strike of the spade jarred up my arm. Sweat cut through the grime on my skin; flies ate at open wounds as readily as at the dead.
But it wasn’t the heat, or the stench, or the bodies that gnawed at me.
It was the talk. The petty cruelties that crawled like lice.
“I heard he snapped and killed his last lover,” one guard spat, voice as flat as flint.
“That one?” another sneered, tilting his head toward me. “They say she took two men at once—had to have both to feel whole.”
My palms tightened on the wood until splinters bit my skin.
And then the final blow—a low laugh, the sort that left a bruise. “Heard his cock’s too small to please any bitch. Maybe that’s why she spread her legs for two.”
Red burst in my vision.
The spade clattered from my hand. I moved before the bastard could blink—as fast as a struck animal. My fist closed on his tunic, and he hit the stone with a crack that rang in my teeth.
Then I was on him. Fists pummeled like iron on iron—each blow tore flesh and sprayed spit and blood. He groaned under me; I could not stop.
Hands grabbed my arms. Voices rose—shouts like breaking rope—but rage drowned them all. I swung at anything that felt in my way, flinging bodies aside as if they were dead wood. Pain screamed in my shoulder where the branding rod had once burned me, but the raw hurt only fed the frenzy.
I wanted his face smashed until nothing human remained.
“Salvatore! Stop!” Lazarus barreled into me, his shout cutting the haze. He shoved at my chest; his eyes were wide, a bright thing between terror and pity.
Guards closed in like wolves, clubs lifted. The blows came fast—ribs, shoulder, skull—each one dropping me further into the dark.
They ringed me where I knelt, breath sawing, blood warm on my tongue.
“Take him to the healer,” one said, voice bored as if giving an order about a broken cart wheel. “Severen wants the trial men alive—not dead. Get him to the infirmary.”
* * *
The moment I saw Amara, something inside me broke.
“Salvatore!”
She ran to me, her arms looping around my neck with the same urgency she’d had as a child—when her touch was the only proof that I wasn’t alone in the world.
Her warmth, her scent—it dragged me backward through time. To nights when she pressed crushed herbs against my bruises, when her hands stitched me back together with nothing but patience. For one breath, I almost believed I hadn’t become what I am.
“What happened?” she asked, already reaching for a clay jar of salve, fingers steady, eyes tight with worry.
“I got into a fight,” I croaked, voice frayed. “The guards mocked me.”
“You can’t let them get to you,” she said firmly, smoothing the balm across my cheek, then my shoulder. The sting cut deep, but her presence dulled it. “They live to provoke—to see if they can make you break.”
I looked away, jaw tightening. “You don’t know what I did, Amara.”
She dipped a cloth into water, wrung it out, and pressed it to the broken skin on my shoulder. Her hands didn’t flinch. “I remember the boy who slipped food out of noble hands just so Lazarus could eat. That’s who I know.”
A low groan scraped from my throat. “Why do you have to bring him up? Every gods-damned time—someone always brings him up.”
Her eyes softened, though her mouth stayed firm. “Because I love Lazarus. He’s the love of my life and your best friend.”
The words tore through me. Something inside me came apart—ragged and violent.
“Why him?” The words scraped my throat as they left it. “Why didn’t you choose me? Why choose a poor boy over me? I could’ve given you the world.”
I leaned closer, close enough to see the flicker of her breath. “If you’d chosen me,” I said, my voice low, trembling between anger and want, “you’d never have to stitch another wound or wash blood from your hands again. No more healing. No more tending to the broken.”
I could almost see it—the life I could’ve given her. “You’d have gold, Amara. An estate of your own. Servants. Safety. Everything you’ve ever deserved.”
My jaw tightened. “You could’ve lived easy,” I said, my voice breaking into something rougher, smaller. “If only you’d chosen me.”
“You and I,” she said softly, her hands still working the cloth against my wounds, “were born to different worlds. And you… You don’t love, Salvatore. You try to possess. Lazarus saw me. He never wanted to own me—only to stand beside me.”
Her words were knives. Her touch was fire.
“I always cared for you, Amara,” I confessed. My hand moved before I could stop it, fingers brushing her wrist and lingering too long. “I love you—more than he ever could. And I can give you what he never will.”
Her eyes flickered, the look caught between pity and disgust. Yet her hands kept tending my wounds with that same unbearable tenderness, the same care that once saved me. That only made it worse.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she whispered. “You’re hurt. You’re angry. You’re not yourself.”
But I was myself.
For the first time, I saw exactly what I was becoming—something formed from want, from pain, from everything she would never return.
The room went still. Even the slow drip from the ceiling seemed to hold its breath. The air narrowed until it was only the space between her pulse and mine.