Chapter 24 #3
Severen writhed, his shadows flailing like storm-whips, cracking against the floor, tearing gashes into the stone. His agony poured through the room in waves—heat, pain, fury, hatred—until even the air trembled with it.
“You dare!” he shrieked, his voice a roar of thunder and bile. “I MADE you!”
I hurled my shadows like chains, black coils snapping through the smoke. They wrapped around his arms, his throat, his chest, dragging tight until I could hear the creak of bone beneath the strain.
“You made me,” I spat, my voice breaking through the din as I pulled tighter, forcing him down. “Now you’ll be broken by me.”
Lazarus’ book burned with black fire, his voice rising over the chaos, words of the binding spilling from his throat in a rhythm that split the air like blades. Each syllable echoed through the throne room, carrying into every corner of the vast stone chamber.
The walls shook. The floor cracked.
The shadows screamed, torn from their master, dragged unwillingly toward the tome that awaited them.
And Severen’s howl rose higher, filled with fury, filled with terror, as his own darkness turned against him, scratching to escape the body it once obeyed.
Severen writhed like a beast caught in its own snare, the Noctyss brew boiling through his veins. His shadows shrieked, tearing from his flesh, clawing at the air like serpents denied their master. His roars filled the chamber, each word spat with venom and defiance.
I slammed him down. Chains of shadow lashed from my arms, coiling around his wrists and ankles, driving him hard against the altar stone.
They fused black into the salt-and-marrow circle Lazarus had carved into the floor, the lines hissing as they sealed.
The circle pulsed once, alive, hungry, imprisoning him within.
“Hold him!” Lazarus barked, his markings burning brighter, his book already open in his hands.
The pages bled ink as though torn open by claws unseen. Words appeared one after another, written in a hand older than time itself, each one quivering with a hunger that made my jaw ache.
Step I:
The Shadow Lord must be poisoned, stripped of his grasp. The Noctyss petals must wound him first, only then are his shadows vulnerable.
Already done. He was screaming, his body twisting, the black coils fighting my restraints.
I yanked tighter. “You’re not escaping this, old man.”
Lazarus drew a knife across his palm, blood spilling onto the page. The parchment hissed, drinking it greedily.
Step II:
Marrow. Salt. Kin-blood. A prison carved from death.
The circle glowed at our feet, the salt burning red where his blood touched it. Severen convulsed, the sound of his screams splitting the air.
Step III:
Write his name. The name at birth. In your own blood.
Lazarus’ voice thundered through the chamber as he scrawled the letters across the page, his hand trembling.
“Morgrath Severen.”
The shadows shrieked, recoiling as though the name itself had struck them. The truth, the buried name, had been spoken aloud.
Beneath it, Lazarus carved the words the tome demanded.
“By shadow, by scream, by coil, I bind you.”
The throne room groaned, the air tightening until it felt like stone in my lungs. The walls pulsed, the torches guttered, and the scent of carnage and fire filled the hall.
Severen thrashed, roaring, his darkness collapsing inward, clawing at the edges of the circle, desperate to escape its own prison.
Step IV:
The shadows demand torment. Pain. Scourge the captive. Offer agony as their feast.
Severen roared, his voice shattering through the chamber. “You dare scourge me? I am your master!”
I answered with a whip of shadow across his chest. The strike cracked through the air, splitting flesh. Blood hissed as it struck the salt-and-marrow circle, searing where it fell. Severen screamed, a sound so deep, so raw, it made even my shadows dance with delight.
Lazarus’ voice rose over the din, his tone a weapon, his words cutting through the roar.
“By the marrow that fed you, by the blood that named you,
“By the coil of the shadows and the agony they claim,
“I bind you. By blood and book, you are bound.”
His voice echoed against the stone like a priest calling to a god that no longer listened.
Step V:
When the book hisses, press it to their chest. Let it drink. Let it devour.
The tome shuddered in Lazarus’ hands, its pages hissing, bleeding shadow that writhed like smoke made solid. Severen convulsed, his body twisting against the chains, muscles splitting beneath his skin. The torches burned low, their light turning black, spitting blood-colored sparks into the air.
I pressed him harder into the altar, my shadows winding around his throat, burning through my veins. “Now, Lazarus!” I shouted. “End him!”
Lazarus drove the tome against Severen’s chest.
The sound that followed wasn’t human, a deep, hollow wail as though the stone itself had begun to scream.
The shadows beneath my hands spasmed, fighting to escape, writhing like serpents in the fire.
Severen’s body convulsed violently, his ribs rising like claws beneath his skin.
The Noctyss still burned through him, a poison devouring his strength from within.
His roar cracked like stone splitting, but I leaned close, my voice slicing through the chaos.
“Where is she?” I hissed. My breath hit his face, the stench of blood and sweat between us. “Where is my mother? Where did you bind her? Where is her Tome of Shadows, so I can free her?”
Severen’s laughter came low and wet, bubbling through blood. His eyes rolled toward me, dark and glistening with madness. “Your mother?” he rasped, his voice slick with mockery. “That is something you will never know.”
I wrenched the chains tighter, fury splitting me open. “Tell me!”
His grin widened, grotesque, teeth red with blood.
“You think she was good, don’t you? Gentle.
Pure.” He coughed, a clot of black blood spilling from his lips, and his tone turned venomous.
“But you have no idea who she truly was. She might sound like salvation in your dreams, my son, but she was the devil. A creature of cruelty. Far worse than I ever became.”
He spat another streak of black. “It is best to leave her where she is. Best to never see her again.”
My stomach twisted, rage boiling through me. My voice broke on the words, “Where. Is. She.”
Severen’s body convulsed against the altar, blood streaking his skin, his eyes burning with madness. He bared his teeth, voice breaking into a hiss that scraped against the air like a blade drawn across stone.
“I threw her into the Pit of Shadows,” he rasped. “That is her prison now. If you want her, go back inside. Fight the shadows again. Tear through them until your flesh peels and your soul fractures. Only then will you see her again—if she is even worth saving.”
His laughter slithered through the chamber, thick and cruel.
And then, even as his body writhed, even as the Noctyss burned through him and the chains held him fast, Severen raised his head. His eyes glowed like coals sinking into ash.
“I curse you both,” he hissed, his voice deepening, splitting, dragging up from the black pit of his heart. “For what you’ve done to me. For daring to bind me. For stealing my throne.”
His voice warped, carrying the sound of a storm gathering in the bowels of the earth. “I will not fade. I will not be forgotten. I will live in you. I will stay in your shadows, and you will never be free of me.”
He turned his gaze upon me, his teeth gleaming red through the blood.
“Salvatore,” he spat, my name venom on his tongue.
“I curse you with emptiness of the heart. You will chase love your whole life, but every time you think you’ve found it, it will disintegrate in your hands.
They will betray you. They will die beside you.
You may claim them, break them, make them lie in your bed, but no one will ever love you.
Your lips will taste only ash. Your touch will burn like poison.
You will be hated even as you beg to be cherished. ”
His grin widened, blood spilling from his mouth. “And worse still… You will never father children. Your bloodline ends with you. The shadows will remember you as nothing, a hollow name lost to dust.”
The air rippled. The shadows along the walls recoiled as if scorched, hissing as they fled into the cracks of the stone.
And then they spoke in my mind, slick and merciless—
“When a Shadow Lord curses with his whole heart, it cannot be undone. A single curse may be unraveled through sacrifice. But curses given together are chains. They cannot be broken. Not by shadow. Not by light. Not by anything.”
My body locked rigid, every muscle trembling. I wanted to defy him, to scream, to tear the words from the air, but the shadows within me purred, feeding, binding the curse into my bones.
Then Severen’s head turned slowly toward Lazarus. His eyes were pits of ink. His voice came low, strangled, but every word landed like iron.
“Lazarus. My son.” His tone was soft, poisonous.
“You will live with family, with children, with the woman you think you love. They will smile, they will call your name, they will fill your arms, and yet you will feel nothing. Emptiness will be your companion. You will bury your children, cradle them as they die, and their screams will never leave you. You will build, you will rule, you will fight, but every victory will taste hollow. Every joy will curdle into grief. I curse you that your line will continue, but it will be a line of misery. Pain will be your legacy. Agony, your inheritance.”
Lazarus staggered, his face tight, his breath breaking. I saw the curse cut into him, tearing at his insides already.
Severen’s laughter turned guttural, raw.
“And together,” he roared, his voice booming so loud the circle itself shuddered, “I damn you both. You will rise together, no matter how you despise it. You will fall together, no matter how you resist. You will die together, side by side, choking on each other’s shadows.
Even in death, you will not part. That is the chain I leave you. ”
The circle flared with black fire. The shadows shrieked, restless, clutching at the air like a storm trying to escape its cage.
Severen’s mouth stretched into a final, monstrous grin. His body convulsed, collapsing inward, but his voice carried still, tearing through the hall as the book began to devour him.
“One day…” His laughter turned to thunder and disdain. “One day I will rise again, and when I do, I will reclaim what is mine.”
The tome slammed shut like a thousand doors sealing at once.
Silence fell—vast, heavy, unholy—swallowing the chamber whole.
The smell of curses hung in the air, foul and clinging. Severen’s words gnawed at me, a serrated tide—Loveless. Childless. Empty. They coiled around my bones and tasted of iron.
For a long breath, neither of us spoke. We stood opposite one another—shadows still writhing beneath our skin, curses braided like chains about our throats—two men forged in agony, brotherhood burned away until there was only something stranger and harder.
Lazarus moved first. His voice cut the hush—thin, jagged, full of heat.
“I hope I never see you again,” he spat. “I hate you. I despise you. All of this—every trial, every scream, every death—came from you. Orin, Rian, my mother. I hope I never see you again in this life, or any other.”
His words were a blow. They sank in. My shadows shuddered as if they felt the wound. For a heartbeat, something in me trembled with the memory of what we had been. Then a smile came—cold, clean, and not merciful.
“Good,” I said, letting the shadows curl around my tongue.
The taste of venom was sweet. “Because the next time our paths cross, Lazarus, I will be the thing you cannot outrun… I’ll be your nightmare.
I’ll carve out everything you love, one by one, until you finally understand what it means to be empty.
I’ll burn your home. I’ll strangle every joy you cling to.
I’ll break your children, rip your happiness apart piece by piece, until your curse feels like a mercy. ”
The grin that split my face was not human; it was wound and hunger and whatever the pit had forged into me.
I turned then, cloak of shadow billowing like smoke, the sigils along my arms crawling with heat.
Each step away from him struck the stone like a verdict.
The chamber shrank behind me; his breath, once familiar, receded into the dark.
The whispers followed, sweet and vile and insistent—Loveless. Childless. Empty. I let them sink, let them bind. I folded the curse into my being and wore it like armor.
Curses were not chains to me. They were fuel.
And I swore, as black as the sigils that now marked my skin, that one day I would rise beyond them all. One day, I would set this world to flame until Lazarus had no name but ash, and every face that had ever smiled at him choked on my shadow.