The wind keened through the cliffs, carrying the scent of salt and rain and something older—something stirring far beneath the stones.
Seraphina’s voice broke the silence, barely more than a whisper. “Save us, Lazarus. Whatever the cost.”
I bowed my head, though I did not deserve her faith.
And from deep within the dark, so faint it might have been the sea, I heard it—Salvatore’s laughter.
Low, cold, and rising.
* * *
The lamp burned low in a shallow bowl of oil, a small sun flickering on the rough wooden table. Outside, the sea pulled at the cliffs with the same patient hunger it had worn into the world since before men remembered names. Inside my cottage, the air tasted of ash and dried herbs; the shadows leaned close to the walls like listeners.
The king and queen had spoken. Their consent lay on my shoulders like a stone. They had chosen to save Ugarit no matter the cost. They had chosen the river of time. They had asked me—Lazarus—to undo a line of fate I had once helped write.
I sat very still and let the silence gather. The house creaked around me—cedar rafters settling, the old bones of mortar sighing. My hands wrapped the rim of the bowl until the skin blanched. I remembered the shape of the stair beneath my feet, the hole I had carved out under the hearth fifteen years ago, each cut of the chisel a promise that name would never see the sun.
We had been children once—Salvatore and I—running through alleys with bare feet, daring one another to reach the highest terraces, sharing bread beneath the tamarisk. Brotherhood had been a warm thing then; it had been laughter and the quick-easy trust of boys. We rose together—blades, oaths, the clatter of bronze. Then the Dreadhold and Severen’s curses molded us into what we are. He became hunger. I became the hand that bound hunger to stone.
Now, the same hands—I, who forged chains and carved seals with my blood—must go below my own hearth and undo what I made. I tasted iron in my mouth at the thought. How many times had I whispered that I would never undo it? How many nights had I lain staring at the ceiling and promised the dead that I would not wake him?
The price the queen and king offered was simple and terrible—a time traveler. One who could walk the river and turn back the rot. That promise sat before me like a child on a pyre. If I freed Salvatore to bind himself to me in that work, perhaps Ugarit would live. Perhaps the barley would fatten, the wells would run, the children would not go thin. Or perhaps I would unleash again the hand that stabbed my mother and that slit Amara’s throat, and the city would burn faster for my folly.
I thought of Amara—her laugh as soft as the cloth she wrapped over a fevered brow, her hands steady where mine had always led to weapons. I thought of the oath I had sworn when I first bound him—never to free him, never to let that name loose. The oath felt thin now, like a worn cord that might snap at a firm hand.
My shadows stirred along the wall, patient and hungry, as if the house itself remembered the day I chained him and resented me for both the act and the bargain I would now strike. The lamp flared once, as if in warning, then settled back to gold.
Let the memory of brotherhood and betrayal wash through me—boyhood bread, the first shared spear, the first time his laugh turned to a snarl.
“Amara,” I breathed into the dark—no prayer the gods would hear, only a name to steady me.
“I miss you,” I said softly, the words breaking against my teeth. “I wish you were here.”
For fifteen years, while Salvatore rotted in my dungeon, I thought about bringing Amara back to me. The temptation clawed at me every time I opened my Tome of Shadows. But each time, I remembered I was no longer the young man she loved—only an old man now, gray-haired, carrying a past carved by grief. Amara would have been reborn, bright and untouched, and I would still be this aging relic. She deserved another life… not an old man haunting her, begging for what he lost.
For a heartbeat, the room seemed to listen. The lamp’s flame bent toward me, and the shadows swelled, as patient as the tide.
If I could walk the river myself,I thought,if I could go back…
Back before the blood. Back before the Dreadhold. Before her death.
The thought rooted in me like a sickness. If Salvatore and I could shape the time traveler, perhaps I could step backward through the years and reach her before the knife did. Perhaps I could mend what he broke—what I broke.
The shadows stirred, their voices sliding through my mind like reeds in the wind.
“The possibilities are endless,”they whispered.“The river has many mouths. Walk it, and all things may be unmade… or made anew.”
Their promise filled the silence like smoke. I rose. The chair scraped against the stone floor, the sound harsh in the small room. My heart thudded once, as heavy as a drum.
My shadows grew restless immediately, crawling at my heels, curling up my arms, eager. They hissed with anticipation, their hunger a living thing.
“At long last,”they breathed.“Blood calls to blood. The curse binds tighter. You despise each other, yet you will kneel together.”
Their voices burrowed through me, cold and eager. I ignored them and crossed to the hidden door behind the hearth.
The air cooled as I descended the stairs. The lamp in my hand threw gold along the limestone, and the smell of the sea lessened with each step.
At the bottom, the chamber opened wide. The chains still hung from the walls—black iron inlaid with runes, slick with salt, humming with old power. The torchlight brushed the figure within.
