Chapter 29 Salvatore
Salvatore
The sky was the color of blood when the end came.
Smoke rose from the harbor like black serpents, winding through the alleys, devouring the rooftops.
The smell of salt and burning pitch hung thick in the air.
The Sea People had breached the gates at dawn, their war cries echoing through the city like the roar of beasts.
The soldiers of Ugarit fell one by one, their bronze shields gleaming dully beneath the dying light.
Three days had passed since the king and queen last came to us. Three days of silence, of the shadows growing restless, of the sky darkening bit by bit as the moon climbed to devour the sun.
Lazarus stood by the hearth, the last light of the dying sun falling across his face.
“It’s time,” he said.
He moved to the chest at the base of the altar—an old cedar box banded with bronze and sealed with wax and salt. The sigils on its lid glimmered in the half-dark. He drew a knife and cut the wax, the smell of cedar and iron filling the room as the lock broke.
When he lifted the lid, I saw it.
My Tome of Shadows.
Fifteen years without it, fifteen years of silence. The air changed the instant its cover met the open light. The runes along the spine burned, as if recognizing the hand that had once carried them. I could almost hear the pages breathing.
He held it out.
“You’ll need this.”
My fingers brushed the leather, and every shadow in the room seemed to bow. Power flooded through me, thick and cold, coiling up my arms like smoke. The sound of the sea outside dimmed to nothing. The pulse within the tome matched my own.
For a moment, I forgot the war, the famine, the dying city below. All that existed was the weight of the book in my hands—the proof that I was whole again. A Shadow Lord was nothing without his tome; it was the marrow of his power, the tongue through which the darkness spoke.
I opened it. The first page glowed like a coal fanned back to life. The voice of the shadows rippled through me, a whisper that felt like worship. Lazarus placed his own tome beside mine, the twin sigils on their covers flaring gold and black.
“The eclipse has come,” he said. “The shadows will speak now. They have to.”
We laid our palms on the covers. The runes crawled beneath our skin, binding us to the books, to the words that would decide everything.
“Shadows,” Lazarus said, his tone commanding but raw, “the sun and moon are one. The time has come. Show us how to create the traveler.”
The room quaked. Both tomes burst open. Pages whipped violently as smoke and light poured into the air. The shadows’ voices rose together, a thousand overlapping whispers that filled the chamber like a storm.
“At last,” they said. “The heavens align. The circle opens. You will build the gate between what is and what was.”
Words burned into the parchment before us.
Clear the ground. Draw the circle in white. Place within it the twelve jars—the laughter, the sorrow, the agony, the envy, the longing. Join hands. Speak as one. Let your blood seal the offering.
We obeyed. We cleared the room down to bare limestone. The air smelled of chalk and sweat and the sea’s decay. Lazarus ground the chalk to dust between his palms, marking the circle by hand. Its edge shimmered with a light that wasn’t light at all.
We set the jars inside—twelve hearts pulsing with color. The room seemed to breathe with them, each pulse answering the next.
The tomes whispered on, their voices low and fervent.
“If your bond is pure, if your gifts are enough, the traveler will rise. But if the measure fails, the city will burn, and time will swallow what remains.”
Lazarus and I exchanged a glance. The eclipse had swallowed half the sun, and the world outside glowed the color of old bronze. The sea raged against the cliffs, hammering at the stone as if it, too, wanted in.
We turned back to the pages. The words burned across the parchment like veins of fire. Together, we began to read the chant—the first lines of the creation that would open time itself.
The room seemed to breathe as we began to speak. The air thickened, the chalk circle flaring with white light.
Our voices joined, the words older than language, heavy enough to bend the air around them.
“Oh, Sun, judge of fire.
“Oh Moon, keeper of silence.
“Witness this offering—”
The door exploded inward before the last word left our tongues.
Wind from the cliffs roared through the chamber, scattering ash and parchment.
Queen Seraphina staggered across the threshold, her white gown drenched in blood, her hands clutched around her swollen belly.
Behind her, King Cyrus stumbled, half-dragging her, his armor blackened and cracked.
“Ugarit has fallen!” he shouted. “The Sea People have taken the palace—everything is burning!”
Seraphina fell to her knees. “Lazarus,” she gasped, “please… the child—it’s coming.”
The chant died on our lips. The circle flickered, the light faltering as the queen’s scream filled the room.
Lazarus was already moving, clearing a space beside the hearth. “Get her here!” he barked. The king caught her before she hit the floor.
Her body convulsed, and through her pain, she reached for something only she could see.
“You told me we would be saved,” she whispered. “You said the time traveler would save us.”
Lazarus crouched beside her, his eyes burning with fury and sorrow both. “It will,” he said. “Hold on, Seraphina. Hold on.”
But I barely heard them.
I was staring at the blood—the scent of it. The sight of her husband’s hand still gripping hers in death. The way she whispered to him, though he could no longer answer. “My love,” she kept saying, “it’s all right. We came this far together.”
The words tore something open inside me.
That was what I’d wanted all my life—to be that comfort, that anchor. To love and be loved so fiercely that even death couldn’t silence it. But Severen’s curse had taken that from me. I could take any pleasure I desired but not love. Never love. Never life. Never a child I could hold.
And the shadows heard my ache.
They coiled around me, whispering with the same tenderness that once came from human lips.
“You can have it, Salvatore.”
The shadows’ voices threaded through me like smoke, soft and venomous.
“We can give you what was stolen,” they whispered.
“When the time traveler rises, we will rise with them. We will walk the world in flesh. Not wraiths, not whispers—children of shadow, born from you. They will look human, live human, yet carry some of your shadow power. They will be born every time a time traveler is born. Each one will bear a piece of you, a fragment of the darkness that made you.”
My breath caught. The queen’s scream tore through the air again, shaking the jars. Her pain filled the house like thunder. Lazarus shouted orders to King Cyrus, his voice lost beneath the storm.
The shadows tightened around my feet, the black tendrils twisting in the lamplight like serpents coiling to strike.
“You both have shadows,” they hissed. “Bound to your heels, tethered to your will. But they belong to us. They long to be free. You will unleash them—from you, from him. They will walk the earth as many. When the time travelers come, we will come with them, walking in human skin.”
The words sank deep, latching onto places I didn’t know still existed.
“How?” I breathed.
“You must bleed,” the shadows said. “Draw the blood of shadow and man—his blood and yours, joined with ours. The queen will be the offering—the vessel of life. She will not die, but she will feed the circle. Her pain, her screams, her agony, her child, her blood—all must be within when the chant begins. When you begin the ritual again with Lazarus… hold his bloodied hands in yours, and the shadows will emerge together from you both. When your tattoos ignite and the darkness joins as one—embrace him as the brother he once was, whole and broken. When it completes, the shadows will be your children in the flesh. The darkness will walk the world beside the time travelers.”
The queen clutched her belly, each breath a battle. Her cries weren’t those of weakness but of defiance—the sound of a woman who refused to die before her child had lived.
Her husband knelt beside her, his hands steady even as blood spread through her gown. His voice was low, a murmur against the chaos outside, his strength anchoring her while the world burned.
It was that love—unyielding, fierce, blind to ruin—that kept her alive. Love that made mortals fearless before gods.
I watched them, that devotion burning between them like a torch in the dark, and envy rose in me.
That was what I’d wanted once—to be that strength for someone, to have that purpose. To create life, not destroy it.
Lazarus looked up, wild-eyed, sweat streaking his face. “We must finish what we started—before it’s too late!”
I nodded, careful, calm. “Yes,” I said. “But we’ll need the queen and the child inside the circle. They will be protected there.”
He didn’t hesitate. He helped King Cyrus lift her into the chalk ring. The white lines glowed beneath her feet, brightening wherever her blood touched the stone. The shadows shivered, hissing their approval, the sound like knives dragged across silk.
I turned to Lazarus. “There’s one thing we forgot.”
He blinked, distracted. “What?”
“The blood,” I said evenly. “We never gave it. Without it, the bond won’t hold.”
He cursed under his breath. “You’re right.”
He drew his dagger and cut his palm, the blade gleaming in the half-light. “Together, then.”
I did the same, though my wound was deeper. Our blood dripped into the circle—black and red swirling together before sinking into the chalk. We dropped our daggers inside the ring.
For a moment, the world stood still, as if the heavens themselves leaned in to listen.
The air grew heavy, trembling with light and shadow. The tomes began to whisper again, their pages breathing smoke. The markings on our arms flared to life—silver, gold, and black—winding up our skin in burning spirals that pulsed with the same heartbeat as the earth.
Without speaking, Lazarus reached out.
I met him halfway.
Our bloodied hands joined, fingers locking tight.
Blood mixed—mine, his, the shadows’. The contact burned, but we didn’t let go.
We both knew this was the price. The circle’s light crawled up around us, and our shadows twisted together beneath our feet until we could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
We began to chant.
“Oh Sun, judge of fire,
“Oh Moon, keeper of silence,
“Witness this offering.
“Let the light break, let the shadow drink,
“Let the past bleed, and the future scream.
“Let the heavens tremble, let the earth unmake,
“For we are the wound where time will wake.
“By our blood the circle turns,
“By our will, the river burns.
“Time bends, time births, time breathes—
“Through shadow and flame, the river returns.”
The final words escaped us like smoke from a tomb.
The circle flared white-hot. The world held its breath. The jars pulsed like living hearts, the tomes howled with light, and every shadow in the room strained at its leash.
Lazarus turned to me through the shimmer, his voice a whisper buried beneath the roaring storm.
“What will we call the time traveler?”
The answer came to both of us at once—no hesitation, no breath between… as if our souls had been waiting for this moment a long time.
“Timeborne.”
The word cracked the air like thunder.
The floor buckled, the roof groaned, and the light from the jars spiraled upward in blazing columns that merged into one, tearing through the air toward the bleeding sky.
The shadows screamed, their voices shaking the beams above us.
The ground convulsed, dust raining from the ceiling. The house groaned. The sea roared against the cliffs.
Without thinking, we tightened our grasp—our bloodied hands clinging together, the bond that had damned us now binding the world.
The light from our tattoos flared, searing our skin, meeting between our palms in a single blinding spark.
And when the roof began to collapse, I moved without thought. I pulled Lazarus to me.
He didn’t resist.
He threw his arms around me, strong, unyielding, as if to hold the world in place. For a heartbeat, there was no hatred between us. No gods. No curses. Only two men, broken and burning, holding on while everything fell apart.
The roar outside grew louder. The sky tore itself open. The light became unbearable.
Our tattoos ignited into white fire, and the shadows beneath our feet finally rose.
The house screamed. The walls split. The queen cried out as the child was born.
And in that same breath, I felt it—peace. Heat blurred my vision, the light searing everything white, and then something warm slid down my face.
A tear.
For an instant, before it vanished into the blaze between us, I saw its color—silver, as bright as the runes carved into our skin. The light caught it, turned it to quicksilver fire, and then it was gone.
The shadows poured upward. The roof burst. The world broke open.
And from our joined hands, creation screamed its first breath—but what was born that night was not only time.
Something else came with it.
Something older than the gods, hungrier than death.
The sound split the heavens; the cliffs of Ugarit shook beneath the city’s weight. The sea hurled itself against the walls as if to drown what we had made. Fire rained from the sky, and the air itself seemed to bleed.
The queen’s cry pierced the roar—the child’s cry followed, rising through the chaos like a blade through flesh. Their voices met and fused into a single note that shattered the air.
It was not the cry of a newborn.
It was the sound of a beginning.
And in that scream, the next age began—an age that would remember us only as gods or monsters.
Light and shadow collided, birthing a storm that would outlive kingdoms. The sea swallowed the lower streets, the palace burned, and the horizon cracked in two.
And above the dying city, the heavens tore wide—the sun and moon locked as one, their light spilling over the sea like blood.
The Age of the Timebornes had begun.
If you are new to the journey…
The Saga begins…