“This is what they want!” Spit and blood sprayed from his lips. “This is how they win! Do you think they care whether we live or die? No!” He threw his fist into the dark, trembling with fury. “They feast on our suffering. But I refuse, do you hear me? I refuse to let them win!”
The pit echoed with his voice, raw and defiant, ringing off stone like a prayer turned inside out.
And I stared at him—my brother, my rival, my mirror—wondering if the gods were watching, or if they’d turned their faces away long ago.
I dragged the back of my hand across my chin, shaking.
“Not like this, Salvatore…” I croaked. “Not like this.”
He didn’t answer. He just shook his head, then reached for another corpse with a calm that was worse than fury. His fingers sank into its ribs. The sound—wet, tearing—echoed through the pit. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t hesitate.
If anything, he lookedalive.
Every shred of flesh he tore free seemed to feed him, sharpen him, strip away the boy I once knew. The act should have broken him, shattered him into dust—but it honed him instead. It made him into something other. Something that could no longer die.
“We’re still human,” I whispered, though the violent roar of my stomach drowned my voice. Hunger clawed at me from the inside, tearing at my ribs like a caged beast.
Salvatore’s eyes hardened, as bright as hammered bronze.
“Not if we die here. Not if we let them turn us into bones for others to chew. That’s what happens, Lazarus. You refuse, and you’ll be nothing but scraps.”
He shoved a strip of flesh toward me. The stench hit first—thick, copper-sweet, alive. It filled my lungs, crawled down my throat until I could taste it.
“I can’t,” I whispered. But even as I said it, the lie burned through me.
Across the chamber, the others met my gaze—uncertainty flashing through their features, a mirror of my own.
“You must eat,” Salvatore said. His words didn’t just echo—theystruck,bouncing off the stone like the pit itself agreed with him. “You must eat. You’re breaking, Lazarus. But we’ll finish this trial. We’ll live. Let me feed you—like I always have.”
I shook my head, voice splintering. “No! I can’t!”
Then Severen’s hiss curled through the dark, thin and poisonous, “He’ll eat you next.”
“Stop it!” I screamed, clutching my skull as if I could claw him out.
Salvatore gripped my shoulders, his hands iron and shaking. “Lazarus.” His voice cut through everything—the buzzing, the hunger, the whispers. “Look at me.”
And I did. I kept my eyes from the others and fixed them on Salvatore alone.
For an instant, I saw him—the boy who once smuggled bread under the fine linen of a rich man’s son to feed me in secret; the boy who never called me less; the one who stood beside me against the world.
But the image fractured.
Now I saw him drenched in blood, teeth tearing flesh, eyes bright with something not human. A murderer. A monster.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” I whispered. The words didn’t sound like mine. “Were we ever friends? Were we ever real?”
For a moment, he only stared at me—eyes hollow, rimmed with exhaustion. Then his voice cracked through the silence, rough and human.
“Of course, we’re friends,” Salvatore said. “Of course, we’re real. The hunger’s twisting your mind. It’s showing you ghosts that aren’t there.” He leaned closer, his shadow blending with mine. “Don’t fight it, Lazarus. Not the hunger. Not me. It’ll kill you.”
The hunger answered before I could—a roar inside my ribs—ripping, clawing, begging. My body spasmed; every nerve screamed for food, for anything to stop the burning emptiness. My will splintered.
“You’ll die if you don’t,” Salvatore said again, pressing the strip of flesh to my lips. “I can’t do this alone, Lazarus. You’re all I have left. Please.”
My vision blurred. I saw my mother’s smile—soft, tired—Amara’s laughter—as bright as bells. But the faces melted, smeared into shadow.
“I’m sorry,” I choked, as my shaking hands reached for the meat.
