His laughter shook the chamber, a low, choking sound that carried through the cracks in the wall. My hands trembled as I dragged the slab of rock back over the hole. The scrape of stone against stone echoed like a lid sealing shut over a grave.
I slumped back against the wall, the cold seeping through my spine. My breath came in short bursts. Salvatore sat down beside me, as pale as bone, his jaw tight. Amara lowered herself next to us, eyes fixed on the floor, her lips pressed together until they turned white.
None of us spoke.
The quiet pressed in from all sides, thicker than the darkness, heavier than the heat. Somewhere above us, water dripped through the stone ceiling, slow and steady, like time itself refusing to die.
Then Amara broke the silence.
“That’s what he does.” Her gaze never left the slab of stone. “Severen feeds. On pain. On agony. In the moments when someone thinks they’ve nothing left to lose. Every scream, every gasp, every sob that tears the soul—he takes it. That’s what keeps him strong. That’s why this place bleeds of suffering.”
Her words sank into me like knives.
She clenched her fists against her knees. “Prisoners come and go every day. They’re dragged in, used up, bled dry, and then thrown away when there’s nothing left for him to take. And it will never stop. Not until someone tears him down.”
My chest burned with rage and shame and the nausea of what I’d seen, but I held her stare.
She leaned forward; her voice hardened, an iron edge in it. “The only way is to destroy him forever. And only you two can do it. You’ve endured his worst. You survived what should have killed you. That makes you dangerous to him.”
Her eyes flicked between Salvatore and me, unwavering, as fierce as a flame. “You can’t do it alone. Whether you hate each other, whether you would spill each other’s blood, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t unite, he’ll break you both, and this prison will go on forever.”
Her hand brushed mine, a small, steadying weight. “But if you do… if you stand together and kill Severen once and for all… then this place dies with him. The Dreadhold falls. And we all go home.”
The wordhomehung between us like something fragile and impossible.
I turned to Salvatore. When our eyes met, there was no mockery now, no sneer. Only something raw and real—grief and a hard, hollow kind of fury.
He broke his silence, voice low and guttural. “We do this together. Bring Severen down, free the prisoners, burn this place to ash.”
Every part of me wanted to spit back that he was unworthy, that his hands were already soaked through. But Amara’s face, bruised and trembling, wouldn’t let me. Orin’s laughter, Tarek’s blind trust, the dead bodies we’d seen, they wouldn’t let me.
I forced the words out. “For Amara. For every soul he’s devoured in this dungeon. We destroy him. Together.”
Amara exhaled as if she’d been holding her breath for years. Her eyes shone with a cold, steady fire.
But I wasn’t finished.
I leaned closer to Salvatore, my voice as hard as flint. “You listen to me, Salvatore. When this is over, when Severen is dead and this place lies in ruins, you and I are finished. No more brotherhood. No more friendship. No more us. We part, and I never want to see your face again.”
His jaw tightened; his eyes narrowed. He gave a slow, curt nod.
“Good,” he rasped. “Because the day this is over, I never want to see yours either.”
We held each other’s gaze, not as brothers, not as friends, but as enemies bound to the same purpose.
Side by side, for one last war.
Chapter20
Salvatore
The decision was made.
Destroy Severen. End the nightmare. Free the prisoners.
But for me, it was more than duty. It was personal.
Amara’s warning still echoed through my skull, but beneath it came another voice—softer, older, one I had longed for and feared in equal measure.
