The venom did its cruel work. Color bled, distorted. The torch flames smeared into long streaks of green and gold. The air shimmered like the surface of a poisoned pool. Reality thinned—the edges of the world fraying into something hungry and dreaming.
Then she stepped out of that thin place between heartbeats—Helena. Pale as ash, eyes sockets of absence, drifting forward on a current of smoke and the pit’s green light. Behind her, my father loomed—lash in hand, jaw hard with the satisfaction of someone who had always known how a child should hurt. I saw myself then—smaller, hollowed, the coward my whole life had been built to hide.
The breath froze in my chest. The pit’s hiss dimmed, as soft as breath against stone, carrying something that might have been pity—or mockery.
A voice threaded through the chaos, soft and familiar. It did not come from the doorway or the ceiling. It came from the stones beneath my bare feet, from the blood in my veins, from the same hollow that had swallowed my mother’s last breath.
“Salvatore… you must destroy Severen.”
My blade trembled in my hand. My head swam; my wound burned like coals. The whisper wound tighter. It was her—no memory could have taught me the shape of the words, and yet I knew them better than my own name.
“Only you and Lazarus can do this,”the voice pressed, every word winding tighter around my ribs.“You cannot do it alone.”
My pulse hammered. My lips cracked as I whispered, voice breaking like a child’s. “Mother?”
Her reply came soft but heavy with sorrow.“My son… I am trapped. Severen bound me inside my Tome of Shadows—my soul, my power, my prison.”
Panic clawed at my chest. “What? Where are you? Tell me where!” I turned in wild circles, eyes raking the pit, seeing only smoke, serpents, and ghosts.
“You must find my tome before he destroys you both.”
“What tome?” I croaked, throat on fire, fingers slick with my own blood.
“MyTome of Shadows. He keeps it. It holds me. You must take it from him.”
“Where?” I screamed, my voice cracking under desperation. “Tell me where!”
She paused for a moment, and then she whispered,“…In Severen’s chamber.”
And then nothing. The voice died, guttering out like an oil lamp smothered in its own smoke.
But it didn’t leave me. The words pulsed inside my chest, a coal buried deep, too hot to touch, too real to doubt.
I didn’t have time to think. To breathe.
We fought like men already dead. Not to win—just to last another heartbeat.
Steel split scales. Blades hacked through the living tide. Black blood rained against the walls, hot and metallic, burning where it touched our skin. My sword arm turned to stone; every swing tore a scream from my muscles. My lungs were ash. My vision blurred.
A serpent lunged; I met it with a shout, driving the blade down its throat until its skull burst. My hands slipped on the slick hilt, numb with venom and exhaustion. I couldn’t even feel the ground anymore.
We bled. We screamed. We carved through the nightmare until the world itself seemed to bleed with us.
And then—the last serpent slithered free from the heap of corpses. It was thicker than any that had come before, its scales glistening with blood, its eyes burning with a malice that felt older than the gods. It reared back, and the hiss it gave off wasn’t so much a sound as something ancient and hateful that made the walls quiver.
Lazarus stepped forward. His body was battered, torn, streaked with grime, but his eyes still burned with defiance. He raised his sword and struck.
The serpent moved like lightning. It coiled around him with muscle and scale, its body winding up his chest, his ribs groaning under its grip.
He didn’t cry out. Didn’t beg. His jaw locked, teeth clenched, eyes fixed on me even as his spine bent beneath the pressure. He would rather die choking than give me the satisfaction of hearing him break.
And still—I moved.
I drove my blade into the serpent’s back. Black blood sprayed across us both, hot and slick. The creature only hissed louder, tightening until I heard something inside Lazarus crack. His lips parted for air he couldn’t reach, but his eyes never left mine. Hatred burned there, bright and merciless.
I slashed again, cutting deeper. The serpent turned its head toward me, jaws yawning wide, venom dripping from its fangs. It struck. Pain exploded through my arm as the fangs sank in. Fire raced through my veins. I roared and hacked at its skull again and again until the bone split and its hiss died mid-breath.
The coils slackened. The massive body fell away with a sickening thud.
