A kingdom. A throne. Not whispers in the dark but hearts to command, men to kneel, voices to break. So, I took it. I sank my teeth into Ugarit until nothing was left but ruin, and I ruled its ashes as if they were gold.
The second time I saw Lazarus that refused to fade was the night he came in chains.
Between those nights and the years that followed, the curse Severen carved bound me in whispers, a dirge that followed every step.
Loveless. Childless. Empty.
Three words. Three wounds that never closed.
It was meant to punish me, to hollow me out until nothing was left but shadow. I wore it like armor, convinced I could out-sin the silence. I buried the ache beneath cruelty, smothered it with power, pretended I had chosen this life freely.
But the truth was uglier.
I tried to defy the curse the only way I knew how. When the hunger rose, I filled my bed with women and fed the shadows pleasure, convinced that if I gave enough—if I bled myself empty—something living would finally take root. It never did. Every attempt ended the same way, the promise extinguished before it could draw breath.
Each failure gouged me deeper, carving out a hollow where the idea of fatherhood once lived.
I told myself love was expendable. Love, I could survive without—I had surrendered it willingly for power.
But barrenness was another thing entirely.
The shadows refused me. They took, but they never answered. And when the last hope withered inside me, I raged against the curse like a god denied his own creation—furious, unmade, and utterly alone.
Every failure fanned my fury. Every empty womb reminded me of the father who made me—his whip, his voice, the way his hands smelled of bronze and blood. I swore I would never become him. I wanted to prove that I could be more. That I could create life, not destroy it.
But the shadows made their mockery complete.
They whispered that they were my children now—obedient, faceless, born of pain.
They swarmed around me like smoke, loyal and voiceless, calling me father in ways only I could hear.
But they were not flesh. They did not bleed. They did not breathe.
They were notreal.
Even now, the thought clawed at me.
Fifteen years of solitude gave a man too much time to count the things he would never touch again.
Yet when the gate screamed open tonight, when the firelight bled into the chamber and Lazarus stepped inside—older, thinner, still carved from iron—I felt something I hadn’t felt in years.
Not rage. Not hatred.
Something closer to longing.
It reminded me of the Dreadhold—of the pit we crawled through side by side, chained, starved, half-mad.
Above us, the world still turned—kings crowned, wars waged, temples filled with prayer.
But we saw none of it.
We were buried beneath it all, two forgotten creatures clawing for light that never came.
Fifteen years I had been alone—fifteen years of gnawing at bones, laughing at the silence, waiting for my own echoes to answer.
And when Lazarus came back—when his shadows slithered into my prison and his voice broke the dark—I realized a truth I would never admit aloud.
I missed him.
