Chapter 27 Salvatore #2
Lazarus turned toward me, his face tight, his eyes aflame. “This isn’t a game, Salvatore.”
“Oh, but it is,” I said softly. “A year of feeding the darkness with the sweetest things we once had? Tell me, brother, isn’t that what we’ve been doing all our lives?”
He said nothing.
The tome’s light flared, its pages alive with movement, the ink shifting like blood beneath skin.
“Begin feeding us,” the shadows commanded.
“Gather laughter. Gather grief. Rebuild what was broken. When the heavens align, we will see if your bond is worthy. When the feeding is complete and the sun devours the moon,” they intoned, “you will stand together beneath its darkness. Only then will the next words be given.”
The smoke dispersed, leaving the room heavy and still.
We stood there—two men bound by a curse, surrounded by empty jars waiting to be filled.
Lazarus stared down at the page, the torchlight trembling in his grasp.
“One year,” he said under his breath. “Perhaps less.”
I smiled.
“Then we have no time to waste.”
* * *
The sea beat against the cliffs outside Lazarus’ house, the sound rising through the stone like a pulse.
It was a strange place—clean, austere, too quiet for a man who had lived in war. The air smelled of salt and ash, and the hiss of the wind seeped through every crack in the shutters.
I had forgotten what freedom felt like, and this didn’t feel like it.
The table stood at the center of the room, covered with empty jars. Lazarus stood beside them, motionless. The torchlight danced along his cheekbones, painting him in gold and shadow.
The tome sat open before him, but the pages were still. It had said all it needed to say.
But the shadows’ words had not left us.
Gather laughter. Gather grief. Rebuild what was broken.
Our first task—capture joy.
It sounded simple enough, but joy was rare in Ugarit now. The markets were empty, the fields barren. The people laughed in whispers, like they feared the sound itself.
Lazarus had found a village beyond the southern cliffs—a place where children still played in the dust, where music sometimes rose to chase away the hunger. That was where we went.
I followed him through the alleys, our cloaks drawn tight, the jars clinking softly in the satchel on his back. The wind carried the scent of barley.
When we reached the square, the sound of laughter found us first.
It struck like light through fog.
Children chased one another around a broken fountain, their feet kicking up clouds of dust. Their laughter was wild, pure—the kind of sound that once filled me with warmth.
Now, it filled me with ache.
I watched them from the shadows of a crumbling archway.
Every shriek of delight twisted through me like a blade.
Loveless. Childless. Empty.
Severen’s curse still clung to my bones like a brand.
I once wanted to be a father—more than a king, more than a god. I wanted to build something that would outlive me.
But every woman I touched had turned cold beneath my hands, every chance for life swallowed before it began.
Now, watching those children, I felt the enormity of every failure.
Lazarus crouched in the shadows at the edge of the village and simply watched. The jar rested in his hands, and I saw his shoulders tense as though he were holding his breath. The air around him began to change—thicker, charged, alive.
There was no chant, no spell. Only feeling.
He reached out, not with his hands, but with something deeper. His gaze softened, and for a fleeting moment, his eyes reflected the laughter.
Then I felt it—the pull.
The joy of those children rippled through the air, drawn toward him, drawn through him. The sound folded in on itself, fading until it was gone.
The village fell silent. The children froze mid-step, confusion flickering across their faces.
Lazarus closed the jar.
The glass glowed, warmth still pulsing through it like a dying heartbeat. Lazarus held the jar close, his eyes reflecting the dim light inside.
“The first one is done,” he said quietly.
I looked past him, toward the children—their laughter gone, their faces turned upward in confusion. One of them began to cry, and another called out for her mother. The ache in my chest burned enough to make me hate it.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Lazarus murmured. “Pure joy. Untouched.”
I forced a smile. “Beautiful,” I said, though the word felt like ash.
As we walked back toward the cliffs, the shadows followed us, whispering in a dozen voices that slid between our thoughts.
“Feed us. Feed us again. Joy first, sorrow next. The jars must drink all that the heart can bleed.”
The wind whipped around us, carrying their words into the night.
Lazarus clutched the jar close to his chest, the glow seeping through the folds of his cloak.
When we returned to the house, he placed it on the table beside the tome. The shadows gathered around it like moths drawn to flame. Their hum filled the room—a sound somewhere between a heartbeat and a growl.
I stood beside him, silent, staring at what we had taken.
The jar glowed, its light steady and alive. The laughter we had stolen still echoed inside my skull. I wanted to crush it. Not as joy—but as loss.
My voice broke the silence. “You know what the shadows said,” I murmured. “About our bond. It has to be rebuilt.”
He turned to me slowly. “And you think that’s possible?”
I clenched my jaw. “It has to be.”
Lazarus laughed—a hollow, broken sound. “You think you can just bring that back into being? After everything? You think I’ve forgotten what you took from me?”
The torchlight flickered between us, painting his face in amber and shadow.
“You took everything,” he said.
“Amara. My mother. My life. You chained me in the dark and took me to the Dreadhold with you. It will take more than a jar of laughter to fix what’s broken.”
I met his gaze, unflinching. “Then we’ll have to start somewhere.”
Lazarus’ voice cracked, the fury inside it barely contained. “You think it’s that simple? That I can just—forget? That I can pretend you didn’t rip my life apart?”
His shadows trembled against the wall, jagged and restless.
“You destroyed everything, Salvatore. You made me bury her. You made me bury us.”
I stepped closer, the floor groaning beneath my weight. “And yet here we are,” I said quietly. “You brought me out of my prison. You need me.”
“Because I have no choice!” he shouted.
The torch spat sparks; the light warped between us. The jar on the table shivered, its glow dimming as though it, too, felt the strain.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of our breathing—and the hungry hiss of the shadows crawling through the rafters.
Lazarus turned his head, refusing to look at me. “I can’t,” he whispered. “Not yet.”
The glow inside the jar flickered again, casting our faces in the same dim light.
I saw it then—the grief in his eyes, buried beneath anger—the memory of the boy who once saved me from my father’s whip.
And for the briefest moment, I wanted to tell him I remembered too.
But I didn’t.
I reached out and brushed the surface of the jar with my fingertips. Its warmth burned against my skin. “You don’t have to forgive me,” I said. “You just have to keep me around long enough to finish this.”
He didn’t answer.
The torchlight died between us. The shadows swallowed the walls, the ceiling, the floor—leaving only the two of us and the glow of the jar.
And in that fragile light, I realized something I hadn’t before.
The shadows didn’t just want our power.
They wanted our pain.
His face was carved from stone, his eyes hollow of everything that once made him human. I remembered the hiss of molten runes as he sealed me beneath his home, the way the air thickened when my Tome of Shadows was torn from my hands.
He left me with nothing but silence and the memory of what I had destroyed.
He did not come with love.
He did not come with mercy.
He came with purpose—and I was his penance.
Fifteen years of darkness followed.
Fifteen years without a voice, but the shadows gnawed at my bones.
Without my tome, I was nothing. The book was not ink and skin—it was marrow, it was breath. When it was taken from me, my power died. The shadows grew sluggish, heavy, like snakes sinking into cold water.
I had become a man again.
And men were fragile things.
It would remake us both.
And perhaps…just perhaps…this time, I could learn to be something more than the monster he buried.