Severen’s voice dropped, low and sure, and even the flames seemed to bow toward him as if they listened. “Tonight, your wildest dreams shall be fulfilled.”
“All I want,” Lazarus growled, “is to be away from this fucking place. Away from you.”
“My son,” Severen crooned, unnervingly fond, “are you ready to become the next Shadow Lord?”
“Don’t you dare call me that,” Lazarus snapped, fists tightening until his knuckles blanched, his chest heaving with the effort to breathe.
Severen’s smile never broke. He folded his hands, and the shadows around his feet twitched like animals expecting the command. “Prepare yourselves,” he said, as cold and inevitable as winter. “Tonight, you are stripped of what you were and remade. And Amara’s screams will be the chorus to your rebirth.”
The chains at my wrists felt suddenly heavier, not mere iron but verdict and fate, biting into skin and memory. The threat that he would use Amara’s torment to fashion us into something else whispered across my ribs like ice.
Lazarus ground his teeth until a sound cracked out of him, equal parts prayer and promise. “You won’t get away with this,” he hissed. “Whatever you do to her—I will end you.”
Severen inclined his head, amused and as certain as a god. “We shall see, my son. We shall see.”
Lazarus scoffed, rage curling his lip. “Mock us all you want, Severen. When we survive the final trial—when we ascend as Shadow Lords—we will end you.”
Severen tilted his head. Shadows curled up around him like a living crown, coiling and tasting the air. “So much noise about destroying me… while you stand on the edge of becoming me. Perhaps I should end it now. Split you open, bleed you dry, and feed your bones to my shadows.”
“No,” I hissed, fists trembling. “We want a fair fight.”
His smile split, jagged and vicious, as if some part of him delighted in the cruelty of the suggestion. “Then let us begin the final trial.”
He flicked his fingers, and the guards descended. Rough hands seized my arms and wrenched the shackles from my wrists; iron clattered to the stone with a dull metallic cry. The metal had chewed my skin raw; I rubbed at the bleeding stubs where it had bitten through. Lazarus’ chains fell with him, his wrists a lattice of bruises like fresh brands.
Severen’s voice filled the chamber, thick with hunger and expectation. “You will both enter the Pit of Shadows. There, you will face the shadows themselves. If you survive… You will rise, reborn, as Shadow Lords. If you fail…” His grin widened until it was a threat. “You never emerge. The shadows will devour you alive, piece by piece, savoring your screams.”
From the black behind his throne, a mirror slid forth, its surface not glass but a dark ripple that swallowed light. The shadows in it writhed and snarled, their shapes clawing at the other side as if they could tear through. Just looking at that reflection made my skin crawl, as if hot, unseen fingers had already begun to drag down my spine.
Then something else answered the hush.
On the table beside the glass dome, where the black-and-silver flower turned like a knife, a book shimmered into being. Ancient leather, its cover cracked and weeping with age; the spine sighed as if it held the breath of centuries. It appeared as if summoned, sliding into the light with the soft authority of things that do not ask permission.
Severen lifted it like a relic. He cradled the book on his knees with the tenderness of a man holding a newborn made of rot. When he opened it, the pages moaned, not paper, but thin wood and bone, and the sound felt like coffins shifting beneath soil.
He dragged a fingertip across the brittle parchment. Where his skin touched, ink bloomed—black symbols that coiled up out of the page like snakes, twisting and pulsing with a sick, living light. The runes crawled in the air and left a taste of iron on my tongue.
His smile turned into a mask of hunger.
And then, beneath that hunger, my mother’s voice came, small and as clear as a bell struck in the dark, vibrating under my ribs?—
“My Tome of Shadows. He has it. Find it… or I will never be free.”
The book whispered too—not like parchment, but like something breathing. Voices seeped out between its bindings, ancient and broken, murmuring in a language that scraped at the inside of my skull. The sound slid across my skin like wet fingers, crawled into my ears, and nested in my bones.
“You will step into the Pit of Shadows,” Severen intoned. His voice carried the rhythm of ritual, the cadence of damnation. “You will not leave until every shadow is destroyed. There may be three waiting for you…” His grin stretched wider. “…or three thousand.”
He turned another page. The whispering deepened, slithering up through the air—voices not human, not sane, as ravenous as carrion birds. The air grew thick with it. My breath hitched. Every part of me screamed to look away, to run.
“They attack the body like vermin, locusts, and swarms of bees,” Severen said, his tone low, intimate, almost tender. “They enter when you breathe. They crawl beneath your eyelids. They burrow into your flesh. Every opening in your body becomes their passage.”
His eyes lifted from the page and fixed on me. The weight of that stare hollowed me out; it peeled me open from the inside. My pulse hammered in my ribs like a war drum, sweat prickling down my neck.
“The shadows will hurt you,” he whispered, voice gone soft, almost loving. “They will hurt you immensely. They will show you pain you have never imagined, Salvatore.”
He reached out and brushed a hand across the glass dome beside him. Inside, the silver-and-black flower quivered as if alive, and at his touch, it shuddered—so did I.
Lazarus shifted, fists trembling. “Are you fucking done tormenting us?” he spat. “Let’s just get on with it.”
