Chapter 17
Lazarus
The Dreadhold breathed.
Not with life, but with something far older—something that remembered cruelty. It stole the soul from every man who entered, leaving only husks that walked and whispered.
The walls exhaled in slow, uneven gasps, like a dying creature refusing to die. The stone beneath my feet rippled with each step, slick with sweat and blood. Murmurs trailed along the corridor where the guards dragged us—our names, our sins, spoken in voices that knew too much.
A thousand unseen eyes blinked from the dark. Watching. Waiting. Counting.
My body was nearly spent. Every nerve burned from the stings of hornets and the venomous bees that had swarmed us in the last trial.
Their poison throbbed beneath my skin, the welts pulsing like they had their own heartbeats.
Blood still seeped from the gashes carved by the tiger’s claws, tracing my arm in sticky red threads; the stone floor seemed eager to drink.
We moved like the condemned—our steps slow, unsteady, driven only by the jab of spears at our backs.
“Faster!” a guard barked. “Move!”
I wanted to obey, but my body was wrecked. My legs shook under me; my lungs rasped like torn parchment. I needed water, sleep, sunlight—anything clean. All I had was the stale breath of the Dreadhold and the iron chains biting my wrists.
They shoved us through a towering archway. Heat rolled out to meet us, as thick as breath from a furnace.
Severen’s throne room.
Authority did not reign here—it decayed.
Smoke coiled from the braziers, black ribbons rising from the pitch that burned in shallow iron bowls. The heat warped the air, licking low and hungry, and the smell—burned cloth and old blood—crawled down my throat until every breath tasted of ash.
Chains hung from the walls, their links crusted with rust and what might once have been flesh. Dried strips clung to the metal like parchment left too long in the sun. Masks of hammered iron—faces frozen mid-scream—watched from the stone above.
At the end of the hall waited Severen’s throne, carved from bone and obsidian, as jagged as the cliffs beyond the city.
He rose when we entered. Shadows curled around his ankles like obedient dogs.
The bone charms on his chest clattered together, the sound like small relics shaking in a sacrificial bowl.
His hand came fast. The strike cracked across my face, a flash of pain that split my lip and filled my mouth with copper.
“You fucking idiot!” Severen’s voice struck harder than the blow. “Why did you defy me? Why didn’t you kill Salvatore? You knew the rules—you knew the fucking stakes! Yet you still cling to that bastard. Why spare the one who dragged you into this prison?”
The words hit deeper than the slap. My blood went molten. My fists clenched until the chains cut skin.
“What… did you say?” I managed. My voice shook between disbelief and fury.
Severen smiled, and the torches flared as if the fire itself recoiled.
“Salvatore murdered your mother,” he hissed.
“He couldn’t face the Dreadhold alone, so he put her in the ground and framed you for the murder.
Every pain, every lash, every hunger you’ve known in this place is because of him.
He wanted you to rot beside him—miserable, chained, his equal in damnation. ”
The floor pitched beneath me. Heat flooded my chest, making it hard to breathe. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the sound of my pulse, hammering like a drum behind my ribs.
“No—Lazarus, let me explain,” Salvatore’s voice cracked, the word shattering halfway out of his mouth.
That sound set something feral loose inside me.
“No?!” The roar ripped through me, bursting from a place beyond reason. It crashed against the walls, louder than the rattle of chains, louder than the hiss of the braziers. “You killed her! You fucking killed my mother!”
Red swallowed the world. My body moved before I thought. I lunged, dragging the chains, iron cutting deep into my wrists as I threw myself at him. Every muscle burned with rage; every breath tasted like smoke and blood.
“YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED IN HER PLACE!”
Severen’s grin widened, teeth flashing in the haze. His voice slid through the air, venomous and cold.
“While you slept beneath the stars on the beach with Amara, he stabbed your mother again and again. She fought him, but he overpowered her. When her blood hit the floor, he left her there—left the dagger beside her body so the blame would fall on you. He made sure the world believed you killed her.”
He lifted his hand. A mirror of polished bronze shimmered into existence between us, its surface rippling like disturbed water.
“See what you’ve been blind to,” he whispered.
Light burst across the mirror’s surface.
The image took shape—moonlight spilling over the black sands of the Ugarit shore, the sea restless and cold. Amara and I lay near the dying embers of a fire, our bodies heavy with sleep. The waves rolled close enough to touch our feet, the night thick with salt and quiet.
Then Salvatore stirred beside us. He rose slowly, the surf clinging to his legs, his hair hanging wet against his face.
For a moment, he only stood there—watching us, watching Amara—the moonlight turning his eyes to glass.
Then he turned away, his shadow stretching long across the sand as he walked toward the cliffs.
The mirror followed him as he left the shoreline behind, climbing the narrow path that wound toward the upper terraces of Ugarit.
The view of the waves faded, leaving the city in absolute stillness—shuttered stalls, clay lamps burning low, no movement rising from the streets below.
He moved through it like a ghost passing through a dream and turned down the small street that led to my cottage.
He stopped at the door.
For a heartbeat, he hesitated. Then rage—or something darker—took hold. He drove his shoulder into the wood once, twice. On the third strike, the door split apart, the wood bursting inward in a spray of splinters.
Smoke rippled across the mirror, and the view shifted inside.
The hearth burned low. Clay jars lined the wall, shadows wavering over the plaster. My mother stood near the fire, hands raised, trembling, her voice lost in the silence the mirror held.
And then Salvatore stepped through the broken doorway. His eyes were wild, his jaw clenched, a dagger flashing in his hand. The blade caught the firelight and came down—once, twice—again. Each blow thudded through the air like a heartbeat turned to stone.
My mother’s body folded. Blood poured from the wounds, slick and red, pooling beneath her. She tried to crawl away, her hands dragging through it, but he grabbed her hair and drove the blade home one final time.
Then he dropped the dagger beside her.
He stared at what he had done—face ghost-pale, mouth open—and fled into the night, leaving her to die alone.
The mirror died, and the room snapped shut around me. My chest split open as if something had struck it; blood thundered in my ears so loud I could taste it.
I spun. My fist found his face—bone answered bone, a hot, satisfying snap that ran pain up my arm and lit my blood like wildfire. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t think. Rage moved me wholly.
“You fucking son of bitch put me here?!” I barked, voice as ragged as torn leather. “I’m in this hellhole because of you?”
“Lazarus, please—let me explain—” Salvatore choked, stumbling back, a smear of blood glinting at his lip.
I shoved him. He hit the stone with a sick thud that echoed through the chamber. The sound tasted of iron and old things.
“You killed my mother? Because you were too weak to face punishment alone?” I spat.
“You don’t understand!” he cried, panic stilting his voice.
My vision swam red. I slammed him again, harder this time, my fingers clawing into his shoulders until the stone bit through skin.
“I trusted you,” I roared, my voice tearing my throat raw. “I believed in you! All the pain, the trials, the screams in the dark, the beasts tearing our flesh, eating the corpses of our own—and you brought me here!”
He gasped, writhing under my grip, breath a shallow rasp, his face going the color of wet clay. “I didn’t mean—” he choked.
“You fucking betrayed me!” I snarled, venom sharpening every word. “You’re just another monster. Like him.”
The anger was not a fire. It was acid—thin, hot, eating through everything. My grip tightened. I drove him into the stone again. Shadows writhed on the wall, black tongues licking at his outline as if the room itself thirsted for his end.
“I should crack your skull,” I hissed close to his ear. “I should watch you bleed and finally make you pay.”
Severen’s laughter coiled through the chamber—rich and delighted. It fed on the heat of my fury like carrion.
I had Salvatore pinned; my hands ground his shoulders into the stone, the taste of iron thick on my tongue. His eyes bulged, his lips moved, begging me to stop, but I couldn’t hear him—only the roar of blood in my ears.
My breath came out as a growl. “Why would you kill my mother?” I hissed. My voice cracked, rough and raw. “She was the only parent I had left. You took her from me!”
He tried to speak, but the words tangled in his throat, swallowed by my rage.
“I never even got to tell her I was sorry,” I said, the words shaking loose before I could stop them.
“The day before she died, I yelled at her. I begged her to tell me who my father was, and she wouldn’t.
I said things I didn’t mean—gods, I said things no son should ever say.
And I left her like that. Angry. Alone.”
My fingers tightened on his skin until my knuckles turned white.
“I went back the next day to apologize. I wanted to make it right. I wanted her to know I didn’t hate her.
” My breath shook, broken, every word dragging itself from somewhere deep.
“But she was gone. Because of you. Because you killed her. You fucking stole that chance from me!”