Chapter 18 #3
Lazarus dragged himself up beside me, chest heaving, face blood-slick and furious. His voice ripped through the air, each word heavy with vitriol.
“Your father was right to beat you bloody as a child,” he spat. “He saw it. He knew what you were. He tried to beat the monster out of you, but it was already in your bones.”
The words hit harder than his fists. My vision blurred red; the torchlight pulsed.
He came closer. “You think you suffered because he hated you? No. He knew. You’ve always been poison. Everything you touch withers. He should’ve killed you in your cradle—spared the rest of us this misery.”
Something inside my chest gave way with an audible crack.
“Stop,” I rasped. The sound barely made it past my throat, swallowed by the hissing all around us.
He bared his teeth, eyes blazing. “Weak. Pathetic. Worthless.” His voice scraped raw against the air.
“He carved it into your skin, didn’t he?
And he was right. Every lash, every bruise—you earned them just like you earned losing Helena, losing Amara, and losing me.
You don’t deserve love, Salvatore. You don’t deserve anything but pain. ”
His words split the world.
My ears rang. My heartbeat drowned out the hiss of the serpents, the rattle of chains, even the groan of the pit walls around us.
In the dark behind my eyes, the shadows of my father’s fists rose again—his voice striking like a whip, “You think you’re a man? You’re not. You’re a mistake I regret—weak, useless, a name I wish I’d never given.”
Helena’s face followed, cold and pale, lips curling with contempt.
“I loved Julian. Not you. You were nothing but flesh and regret dressed up as love.”
And now Lazarus—my brother, my only anchor—stood above me with their voices in his mouth.
Something in me broke.
The words tore through me like claws, each one opening an old wound that had never truly healed. My vision swam red. The pit fell away; the snakes vanished; all that remained was the echo of those words—“Your father was right to beat you bloody.”
My chest heaved like it was splitting open. The air thickened until it was fire. I could see nothing but Lazarus’ face wearing my father’s sneer.
I lost control.
“STOP!” I roared, my voice shredding itself raw. Spit and blood flew from my lips as I lunged, hammering at him with fists that no longer felt like mine. “You don’t get to say that to me! Not you! NOT YOU!”
The snakes stirred, hissing louder, their bodies writhing to the rhythm of my fury. Their heads rose in unison, tongues tasting our rage.
They began to move—slowly, deliberately—forming two separate currents.
Some slithered toward me, their scales rasping against my legs, wrapping my ankles like shackles. Others coiled around Lazarus, scales glinting in the sick-green light, brushing against his arms, his throat.
They were dividing.
Choosing sides.
The pit came alive—madness and venom, hunger and hate.
And then Severen’s voice seeped down from the black above, as smooth as venom, dripping through every crack in the stone.
“My, my,” he purred, each word a thread of poisoned silk. “I haven’t seen this in centuries… serpents taking sides.”
A heavy clang split the air—two blades hurled into the pit, steel singing like death-bells. The sound pounded through my skull.
Severen’s laughter shredded the space above us, the noise churning the torches until sparks rained like angry insects. “Kill the snakes on your side,” he hissed, “and you’ll live. Fail… and they’ll eat you alive.”
The serpents tightened. Their scales ground against my calves, cold and papery. Their tongues flicked, taste testing the sweat on my skin, tasting the fear that bled from my pores. Their eyes were coals, patient and bright, as though they already knew how the story would end.
Something in me snapped into a hot, animal focus. Rage replaced the cold clutch of terror. I had never felt so ready to kill.
Across the pit, Lazarus met my gaze. Blood streaked his face, his breath ragged. His blade dipped. For a mad second, old bonds flickered like tinder between us. We lunged together—not for one another this time, but at the living tide that sought to braid us into corpses.
Steel bit scales. Flesh parted under iron. Heads thrashed once, twice, then stilled, leaving the air thick with the copper taint of blood and venom. I hacked and drove, as dying serpents slid away in glistening loops. The pit answered with an orchestra of hissing and the wet slap of bodies.
Pain erupted when a serpent struck, fangs sinking into my thigh.
Fire lanced through me. I screamed, the sound snatched by the cave, then lashed out, blade tearing through muscle and skull until the creature went limp.
Another coiled round my wrist, crushing.
I ripped it free with teeth, grit, and a prayer no god would hear.
The venom did its cruel work. Color bled, distorted. The torch flames smeared into long streaks of green and gold. The air shimmered like the surface of a poisoned pool. Reality thinned—the edges of the world fraying into something hungry and dreaming.
Then she stepped out of that thin place between heartbeats—Helena.
Pale as ash, eyes sockets of absence, drifting forward on a current of smoke and the pit’s green light.
Behind her, my father loomed—lash in hand, jaw hard with the satisfaction of someone who had always known how a child should hurt.
I saw myself then—smaller, hollowed, the coward my whole life had been built to hide.
The breath froze in my chest. The pit’s hiss dimmed, as soft as breath against stone, carrying something that might have been pity—or mockery.
A voice threaded through the chaos, soft and familiar. It did not come from the doorway or the ceiling. It came from the stones beneath my bare feet, from the blood in my veins, from the same hollow that had swallowed my mother’s last breath.
“Salvatore… you must destroy Severen.”
My blade trembled in my hand. My head swam; my wound burned like coals. The whisper wound tighter. It was her—no memory could have taught me the shape of the words, and yet I knew them better than my own name.
“Only you and Lazarus can do this,” the voice pressed, every word winding tighter around my ribs. “You cannot do it alone.”
My pulse hammered. My lips cracked as I whispered, voice breaking like a child’s. “Mother?”
Her reply came soft but heavy with sorrow. “My son… I am trapped. Severen bound me inside my Tome of Shadows—my soul, my power, my prison.”
Panic clawed at my chest. “What? Where are you? Tell me where!” I turned in wild circles, eyes raking the pit, seeing only smoke, serpents, and ghosts.
“You must find my tome before he destroys you both.”
“What tome?” I croaked, throat on fire, fingers slick with my own blood.
“My Tome of Shadows. He keeps it. It holds me. You must take it from him.”
“Where?” I screamed, my voice cracking under desperation. “Tell me where!”
She paused for a moment, and then she whispered, “…In Severen’s chamber.”
And then nothing. The voice died, guttering out like an oil lamp smothered in its own smoke.
But it didn’t leave me. The words pulsed inside my chest, a coal buried deep, too hot to touch, too real to doubt.
I didn’t have time to think. To breathe.
We fought like men already dead. Not to win—just to last another heartbeat.
Steel split scales. Blades hacked through the living tide. Black blood rained against the walls, hot and metallic, burning where it touched our skin. My sword arm turned to stone; every swing tore a scream from my muscles. My lungs were ash. My vision blurred.
A serpent lunged; I met it with a shout, driving the blade down its throat until its skull burst. My hands slipped on the slick hilt, numb with venom and exhaustion. I couldn’t even feel the ground anymore.
We bled. We screamed. We carved through the nightmare until the world itself seemed to bleed with us.
And then—the last serpent slithered free from the heap of corpses.
It was thicker than any that had come before, its scales glistening with blood, its eyes burning with a malice that felt older than the gods.
It reared back, and the hiss it gave off wasn’t so much a sound as something ancient and hateful that made the walls quiver.
Lazarus stepped forward. His body was battered, torn, streaked with grime, but his eyes still burned with defiance. He raised his sword and struck.
The serpent moved like lightning. It coiled around him with muscle and scale, its body winding up his chest, his ribs groaning under its grip.
He didn’t cry out. Didn’t beg. His jaw locked, teeth clenched, eyes fixed on me even as his spine bent beneath the pressure. He would rather die choking than give me the satisfaction of hearing him break.
And still—I moved.
I drove my blade into the serpent’s back. Black blood sprayed across us both, hot and slick. The creature only hissed louder, tightening until I heard something inside Lazarus crack. His lips parted for air he couldn’t reach, but his eyes never left mine. Hatred burned there, bright and merciless.
I slashed again, cutting deeper. The serpent turned its head toward me, jaws yawning wide, venom dripping from its fangs.
It struck. Pain exploded through my arm as the fangs sank in.
Fire raced through my veins. I roared and hacked at its skull again and again until the bone split and its hiss died mid-breath.
The coils slackened. The massive body fell away with a sickening thud.
Lazarus dropped to the stone floor, chest heaving, skin turned gray. He didn’t speak. He didn’t thank me. He just looked at me, eyes burning with something worse than rage.
And then I saw it.
My blade was still raised.
Torchlight licked along the steel. My arm trembled. My blood boiled with venom. Lazarus lay at my feet, bloodied, broken—but alive.