They shoved us inside. The clang of the bars slammed shut behind us and echoed through the hall like a death knell.
I didn’t look at Salvatore. I couldn’t. If I did, I would strangle him where he stood.
The silence swarmed close. It wasn’t peace—it was pressure, as heavy as stone, pressing into my skull until the silence itself began to roar. But my mind wasn’t quiet. It was chaos, a storm ripping me apart from within.
Orin. Rian.
Their faces came first.
Orin, who could still laugh in this pit of bones. Rian, who had trusted me when no one else would, who had placed his faith in me in a place where faith was a dying thing. Against all odds, we had become brothers. For a moment, their friendship had made this cursed fortress almost survivable.
And Salvatore slaughtered them.
Butchered them with his hammer like they were nothing. I could still see Orin’s head splitting open like rotten fruit, still hear Rian’s scream cut short. Their blood painted the sand, soaking into it like the ground had been waiting to drink it.
My friends. My brothers and Salvatore killed them.
And still, I hadn’t killed him.
Gods, I had the chance—the blade at his throat, his blood ready to spill into my hands. But I didn’t. I held back. I let him live.
For Amara.
I had convinced myself that mercy would buy her freedom. That Severen might spare her. That sparing Salvatore meant saving her. But mercy was a lie in this place. Mercy died before the guilty did.
Because I was weak, because I was a fool, and for that, Amara was thrown into the fire.
Her face still burns behind my eyes—her hair tangled in the guards’ fists as they dragged her away, her voice breaking as she screamed my name. I didn’t know if she were alive. That not-knowing was its own kind of death. Every breath I took carried her scream, burrowing deeper with every exhale.
And through it all, I could still hear Salvatore.
Broken. Bleeding. His voice was raw and desperate.
I could never kill you… because I love you.
Those words seared into me like poison. Even now, they echoed inside my skull, crawling through the cracks of my thoughts.
Love.
He spoke of love while everything I loved burned because of him.
Love—from him? From the same hands that butchered my friends, that tried to take Amara, that dragged me into hell itself. It twisted my insides until I could barely breathe. It was a sickness—a disease. And yet I couldn’t rip it out of my head.
The snake pit had only made it worse. The Serpent’s Crucible, Severen called it. But there was no glory in it. No triumph. Only shadows, venom, and death. Watching Salvatore fight beside me—the same man I wanted to kill—filled me with a fury so violent I thought it would split me in two.
Everything I believed in had turned to ruin.
And then there was Severen.
The truth of him still burned through me like acid. My father. My blood. I had built my whole life around a lie—a soldier’s son, a hero’s heir. I had worn that story like armor, a shield against the filth of this world. But now I knew the truth.
I wasn’t born of honor.
I was born of shadow.
Spawned from a monster.
The Lord of Shadows himself.
