“Your days are numbered,” he croaked, raw from the bindings. “They will end you.”
I closed the tome until its heartbeat slowed beneath my palms. My fingers rested on the cover, warm with the echo of his suffering. For a moment, the thought of flame rose—feed his name to the brazier and watch it vanish—then I let it pass.
Some things were worth keeping.
I slid the tome into its place among the others—quiet trophies bound in silence and failure. Each spine was a monument to a Shadow Lord who once believed he could endure me. As the binding settled, the shelves stirred, a faint rustle, like teeth clicking in recognition.
Let him spend eternity pressed between those who fell before.
Let him learn what it meant to be owned.
Outside, the cliff-wind flayed salt across the black glass of the Dreadhold. I wiped my hands on the altar and decided—clear as a path cut in stone—that it was time to pay Salvatore and Lazarus a visit.
The city below breathed salt and torchlight. Beneath the fortress’ shadow, life wore its mask of normalcy. Children chased one another through crooked streets, lovers whispered behind shuttered doors, and merchants shouted in the dust. The sea battered the cliffs like a slow war-drum. I moved through it unseen, like an audit of shadows.
They were twelve. I knew the number as if it had been etched into me—the age of twelve was enough to bruise, enough to shape memory into scar.
Under a guttering torchlight on a narrow lane, I found them. Salvatore wore clothes that tried to make him larger than he was; Lazarus stood beside him in rags, ribs sharp beneath threadbare cloth. Around them circled older boys—fourteen, fifteen—who carried cruelty the way others carried inheritance.
The pack came for sport. They shoved and jeered, laughing at the smallness they expected to break.
Salvatore moved with the mimicry of confidence, a brittle but dangerous mask. Lazarus moved like one who had survived on scraps, learning to stretch every breath into defiance. They took more than they should—sandaled feet to the ribs, fists to the jaw, elbows splitting skin. They hit the ground, iron on cobblestone, and rose again.
Without thought, they folded into each other’s rhythm—two halves of the same battered weapon.
When the beating ebbed, they lay bloodied on the stones. Salvatore’s sleeve was torn; Lazarus’ lip split—blood pooled in the gutter, black in the torchlight.
The older boys loomed, crowing victory before the dust had even stilled. But when they pressed closer to finish the game, the two younger ones found each other. Back-to-back—instinct, not plan—Salvatore pushed, Lazarus struck. They rose again, and again, until the pack’s laughter thinned, until knuckles bruised on bodies that refused to stay down.
The older boys tired first. The younger boys never stopped. Even bloodied and broken, they rose like something the world had already chosen, something too stubborn to die.
I waited until the beating stilled. They lay on the cobbles, bodies pressed to cold stone, lungs rasping like something split open. A small figure stepped from the gloom as if night itself had spat her out—Amara, the daughter of the man I put down with a smile. His blood still freckled the flagstones; she walked through it barefoot, calm and stubborn, bearing rags and salves like a parish priest with a ruined altar. She did not flinch. She did not look away. She carried a light that the surrounding black would not swallow.
Her hands moved as a ritual. She knelt among the wounded as though tending wounds were a sacrament—cloth pressed to rents, a needle threaded through torn flesh with a motion the world had taught her. No hesitation. No mercy in the motion, only exactness. She hummed—less lullaby than low incantation—an odd cadence that filled the alley like a knife held to the throat of silence. She did not care whose blood soaked her palms. She moved through the ruin as if it had always been her domain.
Salvatore, heir to old names and rusted coin, slipped a crust of bread into Lazarus’ hand with the furtive shame of contraband. Lazarus treated it like a relic, cheeks hot—not from hunger but from the bewilderment of receiving without cost. In his life, nothing came free. He tucked the bread beneath his tunic, fingers shutting around it as if the world might reach in and take it back.
Amara brushed a streak of gore from his brow and offered a clumsy joke—soft, awkward, somehow warm. Laughter broke, sudden and crooked, a sound too human for these streets, a single shard of sunlight through storm clouds.
It made my teeth ache to watch—privilege and want, softness and survival braided into a fragile thing. I studied how their fingers found each other in the dark, how that touch became a vow.
Behind me, the darkness convulsed.Kill them. Now. While they are weak.The whispering teeth of shadow scraped at my thoughts.
I could. Two quick cuts. Two names erased. Nothing more.
My hand moved toward the blade—habit, reflex—but the laugh stopped me; Amara’s low humming kept me rooted; the stubborn rise of those boys from the stones held me. I let the steel rest in its sheath. The night curled around my shoulders, displeased and hungry, and I stepped back into its folds.
Some bargains were sealed by taking; some were kept by patient cruelty. Tonight, I chose patience.
But easy was for cowards. I wanted them to learn the shape of loss.
So, I gave them small mercies—bread slipped into a palm, a lip stitched closed, the hiding of a single need—only to leave the right hollows behind—tenderness never offered, a hand that should have steadied them and did not. One would ache for what should have been his; the other would learn to scrap and take what the world withheld. Amara would learn to mend wounds, and necessity would carve the compassion from her until it became lean and efficient—hardness grown from duty, the sort that could be steered.
Different wounds. Different hungers. Same results. Easy to bend. Easy to break.
They believed the gods forged their bond. Good. Let that lie swell into legend; it would make their undoing spectacular. For I did not share my power. I would burn this trio from history—Salvatore, Lazarus, and Amara. Their story ended with me. Their hope ended with me.
They laughed now. They thought the night belonged to them. Let them.
