Then the mirrors appeared.
They didn’t rise—theybledout of the walls, tall slabs of black glass framed in jagged iron. Each surface shuddered as if trying to remember what reflection was. When my face appeared, it wasn’t mine. My mouth stretched into a grin I had never worn, teeth black and glistening. Hollow sockets leaked pitch that seared my skin as it fell.
Beside me, Lazarus’ reflection twisted—its throat cut from ear to ear, a dark grin of ruin. The wound gurgled, bubbling with thick blood that poured down his chest in slow ribbons. He reached for me with hands slick and dripping—then both of our doubles slid backward, swallowed by their own darkness like beasts retreating into tall grass.
The stench hit next—rot, smoke, iron. My stomach lurched. The air grew viscous, dragging through my lungs like tar. I dropped to one knee, choking, every breath blistering my throat. The shadows moved then, thin serpents of night slithering across the floor, curling up my nostrils, slipping behind my eyes, pouring down my open mouth.
Their touch was fire, a slow, devouring heat that crept through nerves, gnawed at bone, and burned the edges of thought.
“Lazarus?” I wheezed. My voice was shredded, unrecognizable.
“What?” he rasped back, but the word came broken, warped, as if something else had answered with him.
A shadow slashed past my face, hissing like steel scraping bone.
“How the fuck do we fight this with dull weapons?” I asked, spinning blind into the dark.
“Hell if I?—”
His answer broke into a scream. Not human pain. Something older, something that knew where to hurt. The sound flayed the skin from my arms, drove claws down my spine.
“Lazarus!” I staggered toward the voice, but the shadows closed over him, swallowing his shape whole. I reached into the dark. My hands met nothing but smoke and heat.
“The pain!” His voice shredded itself against the air. “It’s eating me—inside?—”
Then it hit me.
I gasped, and breath itself turned traitor. Fire tore through my lungs, raced through my veins like molten glass. My heart seized, my skin split in glowing cracks that ran like lightning across flesh. I clawed at my throat until blood slicked my palms, but there was no stopping. The pitwantedus breathing—wanted to feed us to itself.
The whispers slid deeper. They poured into my skull, coiling around every thought.
“This is the death you were always walking toward.”
The words tormented my mind. My knees buckled; the world tilted. I pressed my palms to my temples, nails digging until I felt the hot bloom of blood. My bones thrummed, a low vibration of things crawling inside, rummaging through memories that weren’t theirs to touch.
Then came the laughter.
Not one voice—a thousand. Twisting together. A chorus of centuries grinding bone against stone, iron dragged across teeth, wet and animal and endless. The sound filled the pit until there was nothing left to breathe but madness.
“Severen fooled you.Played you both. You bled for him. You screamed for him. All while he fed.”
I tried to roar back, but the pit devoured my voice. It swallowed it whole, turned it into another echo for the dark to play with.
The whispers pressed closer, hissing through my skull like smoke beneath a locked door.
“Salvatore Lorian. Lazarus James. Two lines of power. Two broken sons. Circling back to the beginning.”
My flesh burned.
The words carved themselves into me, branding my skin with sigils that blistered black through my veins. Smoke filled my mouth, thick and bitter, coating my tongue.
“Lazarus!” I screamed again, but the sound broke apart, a ragged hiss more than a voice.
His voice was gone. His presence ripped from the air like an oil lamp overturned in the wind. I felt the shadows seize him, dragging him down into some private abyss.
I was alone.
The pit pulsed around me, alive and watching. The walls bled black fire, the ground thrummed beneath my knees like the inside of a great beast. My own shadow peeled itself from the floor, its grin stretching too wide, its teeth long and dripping black venom.
