Salvatore lounged against the packed earth as though it were a throne, his long limbs stretched, his back to the wall. The chains rasped when he lifted his head. A thin smile crept across his face. His eyes—once bright with fire and command—burned now with venom, dulled by years of darkness but not extinguished.
“Well, well,” he rasped, voice rough from disuse yet still cutting. “Look who comes crawling home. Tell me, brother—did you finally find the courage to bind me inside my own tome?”
I stepped closer, letting the shadows gather behind me. “No.”
His smile widened. The chains clamored with the motion of his arms. “No? Then what does my beloved brother want?”
I stopped just short of the seal. My shadows writhed, hissing through the dust, hungry to strike. My voice, however, was steady.
“I need your help.”
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then came the laughter—slow, jagged, a sound that did not belong to a man. It leeched through the cavern like metal on stone, echoing until it seemed the prison itself mocked me.
Salvatore’s shadows stirred with his mirth, slithering over the ground, brushing the bones that littered the floor.
“Ah, look at this,” he said at last, his voice frayed by long quiet yet sharpened with cruelty.
“The mighty Lazarus returns. The dutiful hound of kings. The chained god of restraint. And after fifteen years, you stand before me and whisper that youneedme?”
His grin widened.
“You locked me beneath your hearth, brother. Fed me rot and silence. Thought you could bury me in your pity. And now?—”
He leaned forward; the chains screamed in protest.
“—Now you come crawling back. Tell me, how does it taste? That wordneed? Does it burn your tongue? Do your precious shadows recoil from you as mine do from me? Tell me it hurts, Lazarus. Tell me you hate it.”
I said nothing. His laughter filled the chamber again—low, bitter, endless.
The sound was a storm trapped under the earth.
My shadows hissed, writhing up my arms like serpents eager for command, but I held them fast.
When I spoke again, my voice was cold, clean.
“You’re right,” I said. “I do need you. Not your venom. Not your ruin. Only your shadow. Only your strength.”
For an instant, his grin faltered—then it returned, thinner, crueler.
“You’ve changed, brother,” he murmured. “You sound like stone that’s forgotten what fire felt like. Tell me—are you bolder now, or simply more desperate?”
“Both.”
He chuckled, a sound like gravel in the throat. The chains scraped against the wall as he leaned forward.
“Then speak. What drives you here after fifteen years? What plague has finally broken the dutiful Lazarus enough to crawl back into my darkness?”
I met his gaze through the wavering torchlight. The smell of oil and salt filled the chamber.
“Ugarit bleeds,” I said. “The fields lie barren. The granaries are dusty. Rebels and invaders gnaw at the gates. The king and queen have come to me for salvation—and if I cannot give it, the city will fall.”
Salvatore’s laugh was low, feral.
“Then let it fall. Let the sea take it. Sit among the bones and call yourself a god. You always loved pretending at goodness, didn’t you? You and your oaths and your mercy.”
My shadows hissed around my ankles, hungry for his throat, but I kept my tone level, each word measured like the step of a man on a cliff edge.
