Whatever I had once been—friend, ally, son—was gone.
What stood in the infirmary now was something else.
Someone darker.
A villain carved from hunger, pain, and rejection.
The door exploded open, iron shrieking against stone.
Lazarus stumbled inside, half-dragged by guards. His cheek was split, blood soaking his torn tunic, breath coming ragged and shallow. He looked shattered—until his eyes found me.
Foundus.
I still held Amara. Her tunic torn, her body was trembling beneath my grip.
Lazarus froze. His gaze locked on us. The silence stretched as thin as wire—until it snapped.
“You fucking hurt her?” His voice was death given shape—ice, thunder, and blade. The veins in his neck stood out, his whole frame shaking with fury. “You fuckinghurt her?”
I opened my mouth, but the storm had already broken.
He struck.
The world tilted. Stone slammed into the back of my skull. His fists came down—hard, fast, endless. Each blow cracked through my bones like lightning splitting trees.
“I fought for you!” he roared, his voice shaking with grief and rage, spittle striking my face. “I bled for you! For yourhonor!And this is what you are? This is what you become?!”
His fists were no longer fists. They were hammers, iron, and wrath. Every strike carved through skin, through reason.
I lashed out, clawing, grabbing, and dragging him down with me. Our bodies hit the stone, slick with our blood. The air filled with grunts, curses, and gasps. The sound of flesh on flesh.
“I’ll kill you!” he shouted.
“Then do it!” I spat back. “Do it!”
We were past words—past thought. Only violence remained.
Blood splattered across the walls, streaking the stone like a painter gone mad. Amara’s screams pierced the din, high and sharp, but I couldn’t hear her anymore. The guards’ shouts blurred into the roar of the Dreadhold itself.
The prison lived and breathed around us—the stone humming beneath our feet, the walls pressing closer, drinking our fury like a feast.
Hands seized our arms. Clubs fell in arcs. Pain flared white and hot. Still, we clawed and thrashed, two animals tangled on the floor until no one could tell where one of us ended and the other began.
For that savage instant, we were identical—brothers, enemies, monsters.
“Why do you get to be loved…and not me?” I hissed, blood bubbling wet at my lips.
The question stopped him. His fists hung in the air. In that narrow silence, I saw everything—the way Amara clutched at his arm, the pleading fixed on her face, the fierce, quiet hold she kept on him.
“Stop!” she cried, voice breaking. “Please, Lazarus. He’s not worth it!”
Her words landed like an accusation.Not worth it.
The guards dragged us apart. My arm throbbed beneath his grip. My ribs ached. But none of it mattered.
Because Amara looked at him the way no one had ever looked at me.
Because I knew, with a clarity that hurt worse than any lash, that I would never be loved the way he was.
