My throat tightened. My voice came out small against the vastness of the pit.
“Did my mother… do the same thing?” I asked. “Did she feed like Severen? Did she feed on pain… on people?”
The pit went still.
Even the air froze, as though waiting for permission to move.
Then the whispers returned, winding around me like smoke threaded with venom.
“Yes.”
The shadows’ voices curled low, whispering through the pit like smoke through broken glass.
“She fed, as all who bear the shadows must feed—Mistress or Lord, it makes no difference, just like Severen. But not all are the same. Some gorge themselves on horror and cruelty. Some wield the hunger to heal, to protect, to strengthen. Your mother stood between. She did not revel in torment as he does, nor did she deny what was required. She walked the gray, bound to the hunger but not consumed by it.”
Their words settled heavily in my chest. For a moment, I could almost see her again—my mother, her hands trembling as she tried to hold the light that would never stay.
But the tone of the pit shifted, darkening. The whispers grew serrated, thick with warning.
“But Severen…”they hissed,“Severen destroyed every Shadow Lord and Mistress who came before you. He bound them within their own books, their souls screaming between pages of endless dark. He wanted no rivals, no equals. He devoured them all so that only his name would remain.”
The walls groaned. The air grew colder. Even the fire bleeding from the cracks dimmed to gray.
“He had planned your destruction since the moment you both drew your first breath. He feared your bloodlines—the union of what should never have existed. That is why he brought you here, into his prison. He wove his voice into your dreams. He whispered to you before you could even speak. He seeded doubt. He broke you, Salvatore. He made you believe you were weak, unworthy—that pain was all you deserved. He needed your mind shattered before you ever stood against him.”
My stomach knotted, the ache of recognition cutting through my ribs.He broke you.The words felt truer than anything I had ever heard.
“Severen shares his power with no one,”they continued.“That is why he made you endure his trials—not to prove strength, but to feed him. Your pain. Your rage. Your fear. Every lash, every scream—his feast. When he cast you into the pit, he believed he had finally erased you. He believed his reign eternal.”
A tremor crawled through the walls, low and deep. The shadows’ tone shifted again—no longer cruel, but something older. Almost reverent.
“He was wrong.”
The pit trembled. Smoke shivered across the ground like ripples on black water.
“The shadows have always waited for you. Across centuries, they whispered your names in the dark. Two brothers, born of ruin. One of fire, one of sorrow. Never before have two risen together. Never before have two shared the same mark, the same hunger. You are the first in an age, and because of that, your bond carries power the shadows have not seen since the beginning.”
Their chorus deepened, the sound pressing into bone.
“Yet the shadows have seen the future. After you, others will rise — but a certain Lord and a certain Mistress, born of your bloodlines, will awaken in separate eras. They will not rise as one; each will face ascension alone. But when their paths finally collide, the connection forged between them will reshape the world. Together, they will wield a power no Shadow Lord has ever held.”
My heart stuttered.
“That is why he fears you,”they whispered.“Why did he hunt you? Why did he break you? Because he saw this before you were born. He saw what you and Lazarus would become—a union of darkness and defiance strong enough to unmake him. And so, he built your cage long before your first breath.”
The pit pulsed, as if listening to its own truth.
“But he failed. You rose. And the balance he tried to bury… has begun to wake again.”
Lazarus stepped forward, his voice a blade cutting the hush.
“Then tell me,” he snapped, each word ringing like glass against the stone. “Now that we are Shadow Lords… how do we destroy him? How do we kill Severen?”
The pit went still. Even the air held its breath, waiting for a mercy that did not exist.
Then the voices answered—like a thousand whispers dragged across old stone.
“You cannot.”
