Prologue: Severen
UGARIT 1282 BCE
They all screamed the same.
Every Shadow Lord I’d unmade ended on that same jagged cry—raw, guttural, animal. It sheared through the iron dusk—the cold, gray-metal light that always settled over the Dreadhold like a blade about to fall. It wasn’t meant for ears; it raked the lungs, buckled the heart, and when it ricocheted through the Dreadhold’s black halls, it declared them dead long before my eyes confirmed it. Tonight, the last of them broke on that note, a nerve severed. Silence followed like a grave slammed shut. I listened, hollow, like a man who already knew how every song must end.
Gareth writhed on the altar, shackled in black iron. The chains bit deep, forged hatred driven into stone that remembered a thousand betrayals. His blood ran thick with Noctyss brew, soaked marrow-deep, crawling through him like winter rot, like shadows tearing free of their host. His body convulsed, not with hope, but with that mechanical twitch of dying instinct—the kind that knew too late it was finished. His wounds gaped wide, hissing in the brazier’s spitfire glow. The shadows recoiled from him, refusing to touch what the Noctyss now owned. I forced it down his throat while he screamed. It thrived inside him still, vicious and unrelenting.
The Tome of Shadows thrashed against his chest as I pressed it down. Its leather was swollen with pride’s ink, names carved in arrogance, commands etched like chains now snapped and useless. Yet it bucked in my grip like a starved beast, desperate for the master who once fed it. The smell was foul—blood, mildew, and that strange animal tang of flesh that thought itself divine. Salt circled Gareth’s feet, burned marrow smoldered, sea-stench and grave-dust thick in the air. My fingertips dripped with the blood I carved to open the grooves; it ran into the stone, whispering to the dark, binding it here. The chamber closed around us like a great beast exhaling, its breath filling every corner.
“Where?” Gareth rasped, his voice a tangle of cracked teeth and fever, each word snagging in his throat like a hook. “Where did you find my bloodline?”
I leaned close until his breath scalded my tongue with rust and sickness. My whisper whittled deeper than any blade.
“Don’t worry,” I murmured. “Your daughter remembers nothing. Not the screaming. Not the shadows.”
His eyes flared wide, veins straining, rage boiling beneath skin gone as pale as ash. The chains held, trembling.
His scream wasn’t a sound—it was a shattering. Rage and agony fused into one raw rupture that tore through the chamber like a fault line splitting. He thrashed against the restraints until flesh divided, blood slicking the stone in hot ribbons.
“You… monster?—”
“Yes,” I breathed, and smiled.
Blood bubbled at his lips, thick and blackening. “Severen… you will not have us all. You may have taken me… Marianna… the others—but your reign will fall. Two will rise. Two will come for you.”
I smiled wider, teeth catching torchlight like drawn steel.
“Let them come for me,” I whispered. “For I already know their names. Salvatore. Lazarus. I have watched them since the hour they first cried.”
His fevered glare trembled, but the words still scraped free. “I know you fear them,” he rasped. “They will grow older. They will grow stronger. And when they do, they will come for you.”
I bent close until his breath grazed me, thick with iron and something long-forgotten. “No,” I said, soft and certain. “They won’t come for me. I’ve made sure of that.” My smile stretched slowly and cruelly. “They won’t come for me… because I’m already there.”
Gareth’s breath caught. Rage flickered in his eyes like the last ember of a dying pyre.
“I don’t need to wait for them to find the Dreadhold,” I murmured, the words curling like smoke. “I’ve slipped into their lives through cracks no one sees—whispers in the dark. Gentle nightmares. Shadows at their windows. I let them see things that aren’t there, then vanish before they scream. I am the fear they can’t name, the hunger blooming behind their ribs. They don’t know me, not yet. But I am already teaching them,” I warned.
“They think the world is cruel,” I continued, voice as dry as ash. “But it’s me. I’ve shaped every wound, every silence. And when the time comes—when they think they’ve found their strength, their purpose… I’ll be waiting.”
Gareth’s wrists tremored. The chains clinked as he tried to rise, fury scraping through his shredded voice.
“You poison them from afar,” he choked. “Twist their blood. But they will find the truth. And when they do…” His breath rattled. His eyes blazed one last time, burning out against the dark. “…they’ll be the fire that ends you.”
I leaned in until the torchlight cut harsh lines across my face. “No, I won’t give them the chance. They will never reach that power. They will never become Shadow Lords. I will end them the moment they think they’ve found it,” I paused, drawing a deep breath.
“Before they can ever raise a blade… I’ll bury it in them first.”
He stared, breath shallow, hatred spilling from him like blood from a split vein. “You are no king,” he spat. “You’re a butcher in robes.”
I smiled. “Butchers get things done.”
From my sleeve, I drew a sliver of glass and scored patient lines along his ribs. Each incision was a phrase the tome could read. Where Noctyss met flesh, the cuts hissed, black smoke crawling from the wounds. I spoke the old syllables—words that tasted of ash and tide—and the chamber drank them.
When I signed his name in my blood, the pages trembled. The name was the lock the tome waited for—a child’s naming that tied flesh to fate, the one whispered that opened its mouth. The leather leaned forward as if listening; the ink on the page stirred like something waking.
It took him without ceremony. Shadow unspooled from tendon like smoke pinched between two fingers; a name tore from his throat and bled into paper. His scream thinned and folded beneath the sound of ink drinking life. For a single long breath, the world narrowed to pages feeding.
