Chapter 26 Lazarus #2
Seraphina’s gaze fixed on me, sharp and unblinking despite the silver in her hair. “You have served us faithfully all these years, Lazarus. You have never asked for anything. But this… this is beyond us.”
I said nothing. Silence was my only shield.
“But now,” she pressed, her hands trembling though her voice sought firmness, “we must ask the impossible.” She paused, gathering the last of her dignity.
“If we could go back in time… we could stop the famine before it took root. We could slit the traitors’ throats before they opened our gates.
We could forge alliances before they soured. In short, we could save Ugarit.”
A shiver rippled through me, a cold whisper in my darkened heart. Somewhere behind me, the tome pulsed against its chains, a slow heartbeat of shadow, as though it, too, listened.
“What are you asking of me?”
Her answer was quiet, but it struck like a hammer. “We need you to create a time traveler.”
The king nodded, his jaw set. “Someone who can bend time itself.”
When I spoke again, my voice felt old, brittle, unused. “You ask me for something so powerful; I am not sure it can be done. But…” My eyes drifted to the shadows rippling at the edges of the chamber. “I will ponder it.”
The queen’s composure cracked entirely. “Please, Lazarus. I beg you.”
And with nothing more to say, they both bowed their heads and left, their footsteps dragging down the path like the last beats of a dying heart.
When the silence returned, the tome shuddered once, a tremor that crawled through the floor.
The chains rattled, metal rustling against stone.
The shadows gathered closer to my feet, whispering not of hunger this time—but of possibility.
With a murmur and a twist of my hand, the protective sigils on the hearth broke apart, their glow dying in the dust. The air thickened. The spell unraveled. I drew the Tome of Shadows free from its resting place and set it upon the table.
The leather was warm beneath my palms, slick with age. The scent of iron rose from it like breath.
“How to create a time traveler?” I whispered, the words raw and uncertain.
The book convulsed.
It quaked against the table, rattling the stone beneath it as black smoke bled from its spine. My shadows recoiled, hissing, slithering through the air as if even they feared what would come next.
Then the tome opened on its own—slowly, deliberately—as if it had been waiting all along.
The parchment heaved like lungs. Smoke seeped between the pages, thick and damp, curling through the room until even the flame at the wall bent away in fright. The smell of blood and salt filled my throat.
Then, in jagged strokes like wounds carved into flesh, the words crawled across the pages of the tome, burning themselves into being—
“We have waited a long time for you to ask this question.”
The sound pressed against my skull, deep and soft, like hands upon my temples. My vision swam.
“It is possible,” the voices whispered. “But one Shadow Lord cannot bear the weight. Time is a wound too vast for a single vessel. It will break you.”
The tome’s pages rippled, and glowing script burned itself into the parchment—each line etched as though carved by invisible knives—
Only two Shadow Lords may endure.
Two bound not by love, nor blood, but by curse.
Two who were broken in the same pit and rose together.
My throat tightened.
I had known the name that would come next long before I asked. I had known since the queen first spoke of turning back time.
Still, I needed to hear it—to make the horror real.
“Who?” I breathed. “Say it.”
The ink flared. The shadows recoiled as though burned. The answer seared itself across the page in strokes of living flame—
Salvatore Lorian.
The light seared my eyes before fading to black ash.
“Only with him can the veil be torn,” the voices said, patient and cruel. “Only with him will we reveal the rest. Bring him forth, and the path shall be made known.”
The tome slammed shut with a sound like thunder, sending a shiver through the stone. Dust rained from the rafters.
For a long moment, I stood in the dark, listening to the slow beat of the book’s heart beneath the silence.
Outside, the wind howled over the Sea of Ashur, carrying the taste of salt and ruin.
And within that wind, faint and mocking, the shadows whispered again—
“You already knew his name.”
It was possible. But only with Salvatore.
The thought burned like poison.
Severen’s curse had mocked me for fifty years, and now it tightened again, a chain drawn through bone.
To split the decades, I would have to kneel beside the man who had murdered my mother.
The man who had slit Amara’s throat.
The man who had thrown me into prison.
The shadows hissed—pleased, cruel, insatiable.
“You cannot escape him. You never will. Together, you are the wound in the world.
“Together, you are the key. Join him, Lazarus. There is no other path.”
The words pressed into my skull, hot and heavy, wrapping around my mind like a chain.
My chest tightened. Rage burned through me, hotter than the brazier’s flame.
“No.”
The word tore out of me raw, stripped of reason.
I staggered back, bile rising.
“I can’t. I won’t. Not if it means kneeling beside that monster.”
Invisible hands closed around my throat.
My pulse throbbed in my temples.
My hands—steady through war, through chains, through decades—shook now under the weight of what they demanded.
The monarchs had to know the price of their request.
Shadows gathered around me of their own accord, as thick and cold as smoke from a burnt offering.
The flame in the brazier bent low, shrinking away as the darkness swelled. It coiled around me, heavy and alive, drawing the warmth from the air until even my breath vanished in its depth.
The chamber folded inward, the edges of the world softening like wet clay. Stone, light, and sound dissolved together.
And then I was gone—swallowed by my own shadow.
The night wind hit my face. Below, the Sea of Ashur sighed against the cliffs.
Ahead, the king and queen walked the narrow path toward the citadel, their cloaks dragging through dust and salt.
“Your Majesty.”
My voice carried softly, cutting through the wind like the edge of a bronze blade.
Queen Seraphina gasped, a hand to her breast. “By the gods, Lazarus! You frightened me. After fifty years, you’d think I’d be used to your cursed vanishings.”
Her smile was small, as brittle as a reed in drought.
“My apologies,” I said, bowing my head. The shadows coiled and uncoiled around my feet, restless. “But you must understand the price of what you ask.”
I met their eyes.
“To forge one who can walk the river of time… I must ally with Salvatore. I would have to free him.”
The queen’s composure shattered. Her shadow shrank and shivered, as thin as a child’s cry.
She did not fear me.
She feared him.
The creature entombed beneath black stone—the brother I had chained but never destroyed.
King Cyrus’ shadow flared, its edges snapping like fire on cedar.
Rage poured off him in waves—thick, choking, helpless.
It was not the fury of command but of loss.
He was a man cornered by the end of his own reign, hollowed out by the knowledge that the gods no longer listened.
“No!” Seraphina’s cry cut through the wind, as sharp as flint on bronze. Her hands trembled beneath her cloak. “He’s too dangerous.”
“He has tortured innocents,” Cyrus growled.
They stood tall as monarchs should, cloaks whipped by the sea wind, faces carved from the same weary stone as their city walls. But their shadows betrayed them—two shivering shapes drawn back across the dirt, shrinking from my words as though burned.
“I am sorry,” I said, and meant it. “This is not my will. It is what the tome has decreed.”
The king and queen looked at each other—that long, silent look of two souls who had ruled too long, who had given too much. The years had emptied them; the wars had stripped them bare.
I remembered them as they once were—their armies shining beneath banners of gold, their faith in gods that no longer listened. But the war had taken everything.
Now Ugarit’s walls sagged like tired lungs, its fields burned, its soldiers little more than boys with spears.
Seraphina’s lips parted, and I saw the conflict in her eyes—fear, love, and something else… the desperate need to save what could not be saved.
“You think this is easy for us?” she whispered, her voice breaking.
“We have buried sons, friends, half the city’s children.
Our armies crumble, our gods are silent, and every night I wake to the sound of the sea dragging another piece of our kingdom away.
And still, the people look to us. They believe we can save them. ”
Her voice faltered. Tears welled but did not fall. “If freeing him is the only way to protect them… then what choice do we have?”
Cyrus reached for her hand, his face drawn and gray. “We swore an oath to guard this city,” he said, his words trembling like an old sword in a dying hand. “If we must damn ourselves to keep Ugarit breathing one more day, then so be it.”
He turned to me, jaw locked, eyes hollow but resolute. “Do what must be done. If bending the river of time will save our people, then let it be bent. We will pay the price.”
The words struck like the toll of a bronze bell, deep and final.
They had permitted me—and in doing so, they had bound themselves to the same curse that shackled me.
The wind keened through the cliffs, carrying the scent of salt and rain and something older—something stirring far beneath the stones.
Seraphina’s voice broke the silence, barely more than a whisper. “Save us, Lazarus. Whatever the cost.”
I bowed my head, though I did not deserve her faith.
And from deep within the dark, so faint it might have been the sea, I heard it—Salvatore’s laughter.
Low, cold, and rising.
* * *