Chapter 20
Salvatore
The decision was made.
Destroy Severen. End the nightmare. Free the prisoners.
But for me, it was more than duty. It was personal.
Amara’s warning still echoed through my skull, but beneath it came another voice—softer, older, one I had longed for and feared in equal measure.
My mother’s.
“He destroyed me, too.”
The words cut deep, sliding beneath my ribs like a hidden blade.
“You must destroy him, Salvatore. He is evil, more than you can imagine. But before you strike, you must find it… my Tome of Shadows. He stole it. He trapped me inside. That is my prison, and only by finding it can you free me.”
Her voice faded like smoke pulled into the dark. But the echo remained, burning in my chest like a live ember that refused to die.
Severen hadn’t just twisted this prison. He had taken her. My mother. Her life, her soul, her power.
He had devoured her, too, and for that I would make him fucking pay.
The clang of iron wrenched me back.
The door to Amara’s healing chamber flew open, a bronze latch snapping, stone shuddering from the impact. Torchlight slashed across the floor, throwing long, jagged shadows over the three of us crouched there.
“Found them!” a guard barked, his voice thick with triumph. “Our filthy prisoners—and the healer who hides them.”
Amara jolted upright from the ground, eyes wide, lips parting in shock. For an instant, the chamber held its breath. Then the doorframe erupted with motion. Bronze plates glinted over linen tunics as the guards flooded in, the scent of sweat and metal dust clinging to them like armor.
Amara froze, her trembling hands rising instinctively, palms open. “Please—they’re hurt—”
The nearest guard seized her arm and yanked her forward so violently she cried out, her bare heels skidding across the floor.
“Let her go!” Lazarus shouted, lunging forward, but another guard slammed the haft of his spear into his chest. The sound thundered through the chamber. Lazarus fell back into me, the breath torn from him.
“Stay down,” the guard hissed, spitting onto the stone. His eyes glimmered with something almost eager.
The head guard stepped forward, taller than the rest, his hair tied back, a cruel calm in his voice. “Take the prisoners to Severen. He’s waiting for them… for their last trial.”
Then he turned to Amara. “And you, wait until the Lord of Shadows learns what you’ve done. Your punishment will be ugly.”
Lazarus surged up again, fighting the grip of the men holding him. His chains clanged against the floor, iron biting his wrists. “No! Don’t you fucking touch her!”
A guard backhanded him hard enough to split his lip. Blood sprayed, dark against the limestone.
Amara tore free just long enough to reach him. “Lazarus!” she screamed, catching his arm. Her fingers dug into him, desperate, refusing to let go. For a heartbeat, their faces found each other, and in that single look, I saw something whole. Something untouched by the filth of this place.
“I love you so much.” Her voice cracked. Her nails scraped against the chain between them.
“Enough!” the guard behind her snarled. He drove his knee into her side, and she collapsed, coughing, clutching her ribs. Even on the floor, she kept calling his name.
“Amara!” Lazarus shouted, but they dragged him faster, one man twisting a fist into his hair to keep him upright.
My own chains jerked taut as they pulled me beside him. My shoulder slammed into his as the guards forced us toward the corridor. Behind us, Amara tried to rise, only to be shoved face-first into the stone.
“Lazarus!” she screamed again, voice raw, echoing through the chamber until it met the walls and broke apart.
I should have pitied them. But as I watched them—even in agony, reaching for each other through the iron, through the filth—I felt only the hollow burn of envy. They still had something left to lose. I had nothing. I always had nothing.
The guards shoved us forward. The chains dragged across the stone, shrieking. The air grew hotter with each step, thick with smoke and the smell of burning oil.
Then the corridor opened wide, and I froze.
Severen’s throne room was gone.
The space shimmered, warped into something profane. The stone walls pulsed as if alive, bleeding a dull black light that rippled outward. The air buzzed, heavy with the energy of dark rites.
Oil lamps burned atop iron stakes, their flames bending sideways though no wind stirred. The light was unnatural—feverish, pulsing—throwing long, stuttering shadows that crawled across the walls like living things.
Whispers slithered along the floor, rising from nowhere and everywhere at once. I couldn’t understand the words, but I felt them—deep in my bones, like something ancient scratching against the inside of my skull.
The braziers hissed and spat, their smoke thick and greasy, clinging to my lungs. The scent was unbearable, incense laced with the metallic tang of dried blood, coppery and suffocating.
The walls had been shrouded in heavy black fabric, soaked and stained with crimson sigils that ran downward.
Chains still hung from their hooks, but now they carried adornments—bone charms, black feathers, and strings of finger bones that rattled together in a low rhythm, like the whispering voices below the stone.
Where once iron masks had stared down from the walls, new visages leered.
Ceremonial masks—grotesque, swollen with expression, each one carved to resemble some forgotten god.
Mouths gaping too wide. Eyes hollow, dripping red pigment that ran like tears.
Their shadows glared across the chamber in cruel judgment.
Severen’s throne no longer resembled a vulture’s perch.
The floor beneath it had been carved into a vast pentagram, the grooves burning with dull-red light that pulsed like a living heartbeat.
The obsidian slab gleamed wet, and slick with fresh blood, carved through with runes that twisted and shifted even when I tried not to see them.
Beside the throne stood a dome of smoky glass, its surface veined with imperfections. Within it, a silver-and-black flower turned slowly, hypnotic, as though swaying to music only Severen could hear. The petals caught the lamplight and flashed like knives beneath water.
And then I saw him.
Severen.
No longer the gaunt, decaying figure that haunted the pits. He sat straight upon his throne, every movement smooth and deliberate. His skin gleamed with health, his long gray hair pulled back to reveal eyes alive with something unholy.
The grin he wore wasn’t human. It was hunger given shape.
Shadows coiled around his feet, twitching and restless—drawn to him, eager to be near, to feed.
He had been reborn.
And he was waiting for us to be broken.
When he spoke, his voice slid through the air like poison—soft, perfect, each word cutting with the precision of glass.
“Welcome, my chosen.”
The sound echoed off the stone, a dark benediction.
“Tonight,” he said, “you ascend. Tonight, you are stripped of what you were… and remade into what you must become.”
His smile widened, and the shadows surged forward, crawling toward us like dogs hearing their master’s call.
The guards shoved us through the doorway; the iron at my wrists screamed as the chains bit and the chamber swallowed us. One of them spat on the floor and barked toward the throne in a voice wet with triumph. “Master, we found your prisoners in the healer’s room, she snuck into their cell.”
Severen’s head lifted. His grin spread slowly and easily, those pale, dark-rimmed eyes drinking us in like something he meant to devour. “Oh?” he said, as if the news were a delicious seasoning. He glanced toward the guards and then back at us. “Did she now?”
The taller guard pressed the claim, leaning close. “Yes. She freed them from their cells and tended their wounds. Defied your orders.”
Severen’s eyes glittered. He folded his hands as if considering a rare toy. “Do not worry,” he purred to the men, voice buttery and poisonous. “She will receive her punishment very soon. While you undergo your ascent, during your last trial, her fate will be made an example.”
Lazarus didn’t wait. He lunged against his bonds, the chain snapping, and all the soft things in him—love, fury, despair—poured into one raw sound. “Don’t you fucking touch her!” he roared. “I’m going to kill you.”
Severen’s laugh slid through the chamber like smoke.
He leaned forward, shadows pooling at his feet, and the grin widened until it was obscene.
“You can try,” he said, voice as flat as a blade.
“But death will not touch you once you ascend. No matter how hard you strike, no matter how often you think you bury me—when the dark coils around you, you will find me standing.”
The barb hung in the air. It was not only a taunt but a promise—he had already placed himself beyond the reach of the world’s rules. The guards relaxed as if they had heard a verdict.
Lazarus spat blood and fury, his chest heaving. The sight of him pushing, desperate and unbroken, set something cold and dull inside me, tugging toward a split—part rage, part calculation I could not yet admit. I felt the ember in my ribs flare.
I came forward, each step forced by iron hands, and told him what I’d been holding like a blade.
“Lazarus and I will destroy you,” I said, voice low and steady.
“When we stand over your corpse, that will be the last face you ever see. I might have done monstrous things, but you are the true monster. Every single deed of yours drips with corruption and cruelty.”