“Kill him! Or wither. Save her or lose her. Destroy him or be destroyed. Severen waits. Amara waits. The world waits. You must choose Lazarus.”
I shivered. My breath came ragged. Tears blurred the boy before me—myself.Gods, I wanted to keep him. I wanted to keep his mercy, his kindness, that fragile shard of light that had refused to die. I wanted to hold him, to staywith me.
But then came the faces.
Amara—thin, starving, weeping in the dark.
My mother—blood streaked, bones visible through bruises.
The prisoners—screaming beneath Severen’s torture, their voices devoured by the pit.
All of them were waiting.
All of them were chained because I refused to let go.
I dropped to my knees and pulled the boy close, pressing my forehead to his. My tears slid down, mixing with his.
My voice cracked apart.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for being the good in me when everything else was filth and blood. For holding mercy when I couldn’t. For never letting me stop caring.”
His hands, so small, clutched my wrists, trembling. His eyes searched mine—wide, terrified, still shining with the light I no longer deserved.
“I love you, little boy,” I said, the words scraping my throat raw. “But saving Amara… destroying Severen… freeing them all—it outweighs everything I want. Everything I am.”
He shook his head, sobbing. “Please?—”
I cupped his face, thumbs brushing the salt from his cheeks. “Let my last good heart be this,” I whispered. “To save them all, even if I cannot save myself. Maybe one day… one of my blood will be kind again. Kinder than I ever was. Kinder than I can be now.”
He broke against me, small and shaking. And I broke with him.
“And so now,” I said softly, “I must let you go.”
The shadows shrieked—a thousand chains snapping, a thousand souls crying out in one terrible joy. The pit thundered with their hunger.
I kissed the boy’s forehead, tasting tears and salt and innocence.
“I love you,” I whispered—a prayer, a farewell, a promise.
Then I wrapped my hands around his throat.
His tears ran down my fingers as he gasped, clawing, pleading. His small frame trembled, his eyes wide with the horror of what I’d become. I roared through the grief, through the horror, through the agony that split my ribs open—and I crushed him.
His body convulsed. His innocence was shattered. His hope turned to smoke.
His face dissolved to ash between my hands, the child of mercy and light collapsing into nothing but shadow and memory.
And then—silence.
The boy was gone.
And with him, the last good part of me.
His ashes drifted through my fingers like smoke, as faint as breath, devoured by the dark.
The pit breathed around me—slow, heavy, alive. My knees slammed against the stone, and I folded forward, choking on sobs that refused to die. Each sound tore my throat raw, each breath a wound that would never close.
Then the shadows came.
