Chapter 25 Lazarus #3
I pressed her closer, my forehead against hers, cradling her face in my blood-stained hands.
Her breath was gone, yet I could still feel her there, as faint as the echo of a heartbeat.
“I love you, Amara,” I whispered, voice breaking.
“I always have. I always will. If the gods deny me your touch, I will defy them. I will tear through every veil, walk through every shadow, cross every hell until I find you again.”
I bent low and pressed my lips to hers. They were cold, but they still tasted of life—salt and sorrow, memory and promise.
The world fell silent around us. Even the shadows stilled, as though the earth itself bowed to the vow between us.
“I’ll find you again,” I murmured against her mouth, closing my eyes. “In this life, or the next. Not even death will keep you from me.”
I laid her gently upon the ground, brushing a strand of hair from her bloodied cheek. Then I turned.
Salvatore stood there—the monster who had taken her from me.
“You took her from me,” I rasped, my voice cracking like fractured glass. My hands trembled, my whole body shivering under the weight of what burned inside me. “You took Amara away from me… so hear me now.”
I rose, my arms shaking, rage and despair twisting through every word.
“I’ll make sure you never, ever find your mother.
You’ll never know her. You’ll never find her book, because I hid it.
I buried it so deep that even the shadows will starve before they find it.
You killed Amara… so Marianna will rot forever in her prison. ”
For the first time, Salvatore’s grin faltered. Fury flared across his face; the shadows writhing beneath his skin convulsed in outrage.
He spat, his voice venomous. “Then I will make your life a living hell. Every step you take, every breath you draw, I will haunt you. And I will find my mother’s book. No matter what you’ve done to it… I will find it.”
And then he was gone, swallowed by shadow, leaving only his curse echoing through the stillness.
I fell to my knees beside Amara’s body, clutching her close. A sound broke from me, raw and inhuman, grief turned to ruin. Her blood smeared across my hands, my chest, my mouth.
My vision blurred until I could barely see her face.
The tears fell fast, splattering warm against her skin, mingling with the blood at her throat.
I pressed my hand there, desperate to stop the flow, and saw it—silver streaks glinting against my fingers, catching the moonlight as they slid down onto her chest.
The shadows stirred around me, whispering, hissing in wonder—
“True love.
“Only true love awakens silver tears. For a Shadow Lord feels nothing—nothing but the one they love beyond death.”
The whispers pressed closer, curling in my ears like temptation.
“Open your book, Lazarus.
“You can bring her back. You have the power. Use it.”
My hands trembled. Slowly, I lowered Amara back onto the earth. Her skin was pale in the moonlight, her lips parted, blood dark against her throat.
My breath came shallow, jagged, my heart a broken drum inside my ribs. “I’m a Shadow Lord,” I whispered, voice hoarse. “I have the power to do anything.”
I lifted my book. The leather burned hot beneath my palms, alive, pulsing, waiting.
It opened by its own will, bleeding shadow, its pages sighing as if waking from slumber. Black ink slithered across the parchment like veins filling with blood, twisting into shapes I had never seen before.
The air thickened, heavy and alive, as the words carved themselves into the page.
Reincarnation of the Soul
The letters shimmered in the dark, their light silver—the same as my tears.
And for the first time since I had become a Shadow Lord, I felt something like hope.
But hope in the hands of the damned was a dangerous thing.
Step I.
The shadows cannot return what is lost—they can only rehouse it.
When love defies death, a soul may be drawn again into the world of living flesh through the womb of another.
The unborn, untouched by time or sin, becomes the vessel; and within it, the lost may take breath once more.
A keepsake of the lost must be bound to the ritual—a lock of hair, a drop of blood, something that once belonged to the soul. The shadows follow what they remember.
This is not resurrection. It is a reincarnation.
Reincarnation.
The word trembled across my tongue, fragile and sacred.
Amara lay beside me, her skin still warm, her lips parted as if she might wake if I only whispered her name the right way.
The torchlight brushed her face and made her look alive again, cruel in its mercy.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost hear her breathing—imagined, merciless.
Step II.
The mother must be with the child in her first months, when the soul within is still soft and unformed.
The lost one is guided toward that life, their essence twined with the new heart still learning to beat.
If the unborn’s own soul grows too strong, both souls shall tear each other apart, and the shadows will feast upon the destruction.
My throat closed around the words.
She had been a healer—her hands mending what the world broke, her touch gentle where mine had drawn blood.
Now, I was reading how to twist life itself, to turn creation into theft, only to see her breathe again.
The shame burned deeper than the grief.
Would she still look at me the same, if she knew what I’d done to see her again?
Step III.
For nine moons the shadows must be fed through the vessel so that they may weave soul to flesh.
They hunger not for flesh or flame, but for emotion drawn through the Shadow Lord himself—love, agony, and suffering—the path from devotion to ruin.
If the offerings are made in measure, the lost soul will take its vessel. If he falters, the shadows will feed upon him instead.
The parchment darkened, symbols writhing as though alive. The next words bled through in silver fire.
Before the binding, the blood-runes must be drawn.
The Rune of Passage, the Rune of Containment, the Rune of Memory, and the Rune of Debt.
Etch them in blood mixed with ground hematite. Let the blade taste your skin. The shadows cannot weave without sacrifice.
I could almost feel the edge pressing into flesh—mine, hers, anyone’s. My hands twitched. The smell of iron lingered in the air, though I hadn’t bled yet.
Then came the chant, blooming across the page like breath made visible—
“Lost to the void, hear my call.
“By shadow’s grace and mortal fall, cross the veil, obey this plea—return and breathe, be bound to me.”
The sound of my voice filled the silence, hoarse and trembling.
Amara didn’t stir. The shadows did.
Love. Agony. Suffering.
The same three torments she had freed me from—and now the price to bring her back.
I would give them all.
Step IV.
When the child draws first breath, the lost soul lives anew—renewed, unremembering, and whole.
If the feeding was flawless, the child will grow untouched by shadow.
If the rite faltered, the child shall be born hollow, reaching for a past it cannot name.
But the tome’s ink did not stop there. New lines crawled across the parchment as if written in living shadow.
Know this—the one who binds cannot sever the tether.
When the soul returns, it will carry a part of the binder within it, and he will feel its heartbeat as his own.
Every joy, every fear, every pain—shared across the void until death claims him, or the shadows take pity and unmake the bond.
My hand trembled above the page.
To bring her back was to give up peace forever—to feel her laughter and her suffering inside me until I broke.
It was love eternal, twisted into punishment.
And still, I knew I would do it.
Step V.
Though reborn souls carry no memory, love is the wound that never heals.
When the lost one meets the soul they once cherished, the shadows will stir; a flicker will return—a dream, a whisper of recognition.
And in that heartbeat, the veil thins, and the pattern begins anew.
I looked down at her, at the body that had once held every answer I’d ever needed.
Love is the wound that never heals.
I brushed my thumb across her knuckles, cold now. The shadows shifted, uneasy. Even they feared what I was thinking.
Note: The nine moons may be folded into seven nights, but only a master Shadow Lord can endure it. Attempt it too soon, and the shadows will turn within, tearing at flesh and soul until their fury fades and the agony wanes.
My voice broke as I read the final line aloud.
I was no master. I barely knew what I had become.
But I could not let her stay in the ground forever.
The torch beside me trembled, its flame bending low as though afraid to watch.
The words carved themselves into me—beautiful and terrible, a promise wrapped in torment.
And though the shadows whispered you are not ready, my heart whispered back through clenched teeth—I will be one day.
Amara lay still beside me, her face pale beneath the moon’s cold eye, her lips parted as though waiting for my breath. The air around her was already giving up its warmth.
I could bring her back. The tome had shown me how. Nine months of feeding the shadows—of love, agony, suffering—all given in perfect measure. A mother in her first months, a soul waiting to be rehoused. It was possible. Not while Salvatore lived.
If Salvatore learned what I had done, he would hunt her through every womb, every lifetime, until nothing of her remained.
I cut a lock of her hair with my dagger and pressed it to my heart.
“Forgive me,” I breathed. “I’ll keep this until I am strong enough to bring you home—until I can guard what I once failed to save.”
Then I placed her father’s Tome of Shadows beside her body and pressed it to her chest.
“He’ll watch over you,” I said. “Until I return.”
I covered her with earth, handful by handful.
The soil was cool and heavy, clinging to my fingers, filling the silence between each breath.
When the last of her was gone, I pressed my palm to the grave and collapsed, my throat raw with a grief too vast to contain.
Silver tears streaked my face, burning paths into my skin.
I pressed my forehead to the earth, bloodied hands splayed wide as if I could reach her through the soil.
“My love,” I rasped, voice torn from the pit of me. “One day—when strength no longer fails me, when Salvatore’s body is nothing but ruin, when every shadow bends to my command—I will bring you back. You are mine. Only mine. I will touch no other. I will remain alone until the day you return.”
I forced myself upright, every muscle shaking, every breath like fire in my chest. My body felt carved out, stripped of everything but fury. Rage kept me standing—rage and the promise burning hotter than the curses crawling through my veins.
I lifted my face to the endless dark. “One day,” I swore, my voice trembling but as hard as iron, “I will trap Salvatore in his own Tome of Shadows. I will bind him as we bound Severen. I will lock him in the dark until his name is nothing but an echo. Every scream, every drop of pain he gave me—I will return tenfold. He will pay for my mother. For Amara. For all he’s slaughtered. He will drown in his own darkness.”
Silence answered—then laughter.
Low at first, curling from the corners of the grove, then swelling until it filled my chest, my skull, my veins. The shadows slithered through me, their whispers overlapping, mocking—
No. You will never destroy him. You will never unmake him. Together, you and Salvatore will forge something greater than Severen ever dreamed.
Their voices tightened around my throat like chains. You are bound. You are cursed. You are not free of him—and you never will be.
Severen’s echo followed, laughter bleeding from the pages of his book.
Rise together. Fall together. Die together.
I stumbled back from the grave, bile rising in my throat, tears still burning my cheeks. I swore, again and again, that I would prove them wrong—that I would tear Salvatore from my life and bury him deeper than the shadows could reach.
But as I staggered into the night, their laughter followed me.
And somewhere deep within me, where the curse still lived, I feared they might be right.