Chapter 25 Lazarus #2
I turned from the Dreadhold—away from the corpses, away from the brother I once loved, away from the father I had destroyed—and walked into the wind.
The night air bit cold against my skin. I now carried two books, their weight dragging against my arms. My own Tome of Shadows, bound in the same dark leather that now bore my name, and Gareth Blackmoor’s—Amara’s father.
Her father’s tome pulsed softly as I walked, alive and waiting. His presence within it was not cruel like Severen’s. It was patient, sorrowful.
The leather bindings were slick with dust and blood. I tore strips from a dead man’s tunic and tied both tomes together, fastening them to my side. The cloth was brittle with age and stained with gore—fitting, I thought, that the fabric of the dead should carry the weight of the damned.
With a weary sigh, I rose and began the long trudge home.
When I pushed open the rusted gate encircling the Dreadhold, it shrieked—a sound of iron grinding against iron, like a mourner’s wail echoing through a tomb. It felt right, a dirge to mark my leaving.
I didn’t look back.
That place had taken everything—time, faith, love, mercy—and left me with only this—the burden of the shadows and the ghosts of what I once was.
I stepped beyond the gates, but the world was no longer the same.
The air smelled of salt and ruin; the sea wind carried whispers through the pine-covered hills, and the earth beneath my feet trembled, alive with unseen movement.
Shadows stretched where they shouldn’t, slithering beneath my feet, coiling alongside me, whispering—always whispering.
Some murmured my name. Others wept, pleading for deliverance I could never give.
I breathed deep, filling my lungs with the night.
The air was colder than I remembered, sharper, as though the seasons themselves had shifted while I’d been buried beneath stone.
The scent of pine and damp soil lingered—familiar, grounding—but beneath it clung another smell—the bitter tang of burned offerings and the dust of the dead.
The road to Ugarit wound before me, unchanged yet unrecognizable.
The old basalt stones glimmered under the moon, damp from the mist rolling in from the sea.
The fork marked by the great limestone boulder shimmered in the distance—not with light, but with memory.
It pulsed, grief made visible, as though it still remembered the travelers who never returned.
The longing to see Amara burned in my chest, a hunger fiercer than any I had known in the trials.
The journey that had once taken a full day on horseback now felt unbearable to my impatience.
Strength coiled through my limbs, the shadows feeding it, driving me onward.
I began to walk faster—then run, feet pounding the old Phoenician road, every stride a prayer and a curse.
I told myself that soon, we would have peace.
But the closer I came to home, the less familiar the world became.
Night draped itself over the hills of Canaan like a funeral shroud.
The fields that once glowed with fireflies now lay suffocated, the long grass pressed flat as if by unseen hands.
The olive trees bowed low, their twisted branches reaching toward the ground like bones clawing from the earth.
Even the air felt wrong—thick, restless, whispering in tongues older than any prayer I remembered.
The scent of pine and damp earth should have calmed me, but it was poisoned now—laced with iron and smoke, the stench of sacrifices burned too long ago.
And then I saw it.
Our home.
Its shape stood against the moonlight, built of mudbrick, familiar yet cloaked in unease.
The small oil lamps flickered in the windows, their flames bending as if afraid.
My chest tightened. My legs trembled with each step forward, torn between dread and the desperate hope that she was still waiting.
The wooden door creaked open.
Amara stepped outside.
She stood in the dark, framed by the glow of an oil lantern cupped in her hand. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, a dark cascade glinting with the reflection of flame. Her eyes searched the night, wide and uncertain, until they found me.
“Lazarus!”
Her voice cracked—half cry, half prayer—but it was joy that filled it, raw and trembling.
The oil lantern fell from her hand, the flame sputtering in the dust before dying.
She ran into the yard, hair streaming behind her, and I was already moving.
My feet struck the earth hard, my pulse thrumming.
I needed to reach her, to feel her warmth, to believe she was still real.
For one heartbeat, everything felt almost right.
Then a shape tore out of the dark.
A hand caught her wrist, yanking her back. The bronze glint of a blade flashed beneath the moon—and pressed against her throat. A thin line of blood bloomed, as dark as wine.
And Salvatore stepped into the light.
His eyes burned with fever—not human, not sane—the fire of the shadows crawling just beneath his skin. His smile was wrong, a crack in something already broken.
My chest caved. “Salvatore…” My voice faltered. “Let her go.”
He pressed the knife harder. Amara gasped, her whole body shaking, and he drew her closer, his arm tightening around her as if she were nothing but a lure to drag me in.
“No,” he said, voice low and guttural with fury. “It’s because of her, Lazarus. Don’t you see? Because of her, you never loved me. Because of her, you never looked at me the way you should have. She’s poisoned everything.”
“Please,” Amara whispered, her voice small, strangled. Her eyes met mine—wide, wet, pleading—and I wanted to tear the world apart to reach her.
I stepped forward, the shadows thrashing at my heels, begging to be released. I raised my hands in surrender. “Don’t do this, Salvatore. This isn’t you. It’s the shadows twisting you, chaining you. Fight it. You’re stronger than this. You can still stop.”
He laughed—hollow, vicious—the sound scraping through me like a rusted blade. “Stronger?” His grin widened, teeth catching the moonlight. “No, Lazarus. This is me. This has always been me. And you—”
He shoved the blade closer until Amara whimpered again. “You’ll finally see it.”
Tears streaked her cheeks. The moonlight caught them as they fell.
“I had to rid you of everyone who ever gave you love,” Salvatore hissed, voice shaking with madness.
“I killed your mother first. And now…” He pressed his cheek against Amara’s hair, inhaling her scent like a predator tasting blood.
“…now it’s her turn. Then you’ll understand.
You’ll feel what I’ve felt my whole life. ”
His words tore through me like flame through dry grass.
“I never felt love, Lazarus,” he roared, the words cracking into something feral. “Never! And neither will you. You’ll never know peace, never know joy. You’ll choke on emptiness until the day you die. You’ll rot the way I have!”
The shadows around him screamed. They burst from his skin like black serpents, writhing in the air, feeding on his hatred, his despair. His markings blazed bright across his arms, chains of living ink twisting in ecstasy.
Amara sobbed in his hold, her body shaking, her eyes locked on mine. Her lips moved—no sound, no air—but I knew the word.
Please.
It wasn’t just a plea. It was her last prayer, and the moment it left her mouth, I felt Severen’s curse coil tight around my ribs, strangling me from within.
“Salvatore…” My voice broke. “If you hurt her, there will be nothing left of me. Maybe that’s what you want. Maybe you think that will make us the same. But I will never love you. I will never give you what you crave.”
For a heartbeat, something flickered in his eyes—grief, loneliness, a flash of the boy he once was—and then it was gone. His teeth bared, his grin stretching into madness. The blade slid deeper, carving a line of red across her skin.
“Then this is where I kill her,” he whispered, “forever.”
Before I could move, before I could even breathe, the knife swept across her throat.
Amara’s eyes widened. Her mouth parted as if to speak my name, but only blood came, dark and hot, spilling down her neck, soaking her hands. The lantern light caught her face for a single instant, and then it vanished, the flame dying as she did.
She crumpled in his arms.
“NO!”
The word ripped itself out of me, more scream than voice, more grief than sound. Shadows burst from my body, a violent storm, slamming into him with the fury of every god that had ever abandoned me.
He laughed—laughed—as Amara’s blood splattered across the ground. His smile was wild, gleaming through the dark, the sound of his joy a blade I could not pull free.
I fell to my knees beside her, catching her before she hit the earth. Her body folded into my arms, limp, warm for a moment longer. Her head rested against my chest; her hair wet with blood, and when I brushed it from her face, my hand came away red.
“Amara,” I whispered, choking. My fingers pressed against the wound, useless, desperate. “Stay with me. Please, stay—”
Her eyes were glassy. Her lips parted in a soundless breath that never came.
She was gone.
The night went still.
Something inside me broke. I felt it—the shatter of a soul too full of sorrow to hold itself together. The shadows poured out of me like blood, writhing across the ground, howling in my voice.
I screamed until my throat tore, until I tasted iron and salt. I screamed until the sound became something not human. Tears burned my face, hot, relentless, falling into her hair, into her open mouth, into the dirt that would soon claim her.
The world blurred. The stars above flickered and dimmed.
And I understood, in that hollow, infinite silence, that I had nothing left to give this world.
No mercy. No forgiveness. Only destruction.