“Only with him can the veil be torn,”the voices said, patient and cruel. “Only with him will we reveal the rest. Bring him forth, and the path shall be made known.”
The tome slammed shut with a sound like thunder, sending a shiver through the stone. Dust rained from the rafters.
For a long moment, I stood in the dark, listening to the slow beat of the book’s heart beneath the silence.
Outside, the wind howled over the Sea of Ashur, carrying the taste of salt and ruin.
And within that wind, faint and mocking, the shadows whispered again?—
“You already knew his name.”
It was possible. But only with Salvatore.
The thought burned like poison.
Severen’s curse had mocked me for fifty years, and now it tightened again, a chain drawn through bone.
To split the decades, I would have to kneel beside the man who had murdered my mother.
The man who had slit Amara’s throat.
The man who had thrown me into prison.
The shadows hissed—pleased, cruel, insatiable.
“You cannot escape him. You never will.Together, you are the wound in the world.
“Together, you are the key.Join him, Lazarus. There is no other path.”
The words pressed into my skull, hot and heavy, wrapping around my mind like a chain.
My chest tightened. Rage burned through me, hotter than the brazier’s flame.
“No.”
The word tore out of me raw, stripped of reason.
I staggered back, bile rising.
“I can’t. I won’t. Not if it means kneeling beside that monster.”
Invisible hands closed around my throat.
My pulse throbbed in my temples.
My hands—steady through war, through chains, through decades—shook now under the weight of what they demanded.
The monarchs had to know the price of their request.
Shadows gathered around me of their own accord, as thick and cold as smoke from a burnt offering.
The flame in the brazier bent low, shrinking away as the darkness swelled. It coiled around me, heavy and alive, drawing the warmth from the air until even my breath vanished in its depth.
The chamber folded inward, the edges of the world softening like wet clay. Stone, light, and sound dissolved together.
And then I was gone—swallowed by my own shadow.
The night wind hit my face. Below, the Sea of Ashur sighed against the cliffs.
