“The time has not come. You will speak to us again when the light dies and the sky bleeds black. Only then will the rest be revealed.”
The tome slammed shut. The silence that followed was immense. I stood motionless, breath catching, fury clawing its way up my throat.
Something in me broke.
I slammed my fist against the table, dust burst into the air like breath from a dying god. The jars rattled, their colored lights flickering against the walls. “How could you tell me that the time hasn’t come?” I roared. “After everything we’ve given you?”
The shadows shifted, dark threads slithering along the ceiling. Still, they said nothing.
“We’ve fed you pain. Blood. Chaos. Agony. Despair. Longing. Envy. We’ve filled your damn jars until the house itself bleeds light—and yet you give me nothing! You refuse me!”
My voice cracked. The rage that had simmered in me for months came boiling to the surface, burning hotter than the lamps. “Salvatore and I are reforging our bond, tearing ourselves apart to do it—feeding you every broken piece of what we were! Do you have any idea what that costs?”
The tome lay still. The air around it pulsed, as though mocking me.
“I need to know!” I shouted. “You expect me to stand before the city when the sky turns black and pretend to be a god? When the world falls to ruin, how am I supposed to hold it together if I don’t even know what’s coming?”
The shadows whispered then, as faint as wind over bone. I could not make out the words, but the sound carried the rhythm of laughter.
I struck the table again. “Damn you,” I hissed. “All of you.”
The anger drained from me as quickly as it rose. I sank against the table’s edge, breathing hard, my hands shaking. The sea roared below the cliffs, the wind howling through the open shutters.
Then, quietly?—
“Lazarus.”
I turned and saw Salvatore standing a few paces away, half-bathed in the glow of the jars. There was no mockery in him, no arrogance. He stepped closer, his voice low but steady.
“Enough,” he said.
I stared at him, ready to lash out, but his eyes held something I hadn’t seen in years—the calm of the boy I’d once shielded from his father’s whip.
“When it happens, it will happen,” he said. “You can’t force the heavens to speak before they’re ready.”
His tone was steady, quiet, but it carried weight. He reached out, placing a hand on my arm—not as command, not as condescension, just presence.
“We’ve done everything we can, Lazarus. More than anyone ever could. Let the heavens take their turn.”
I said nothing. The fury in me settled into something colder, smaller. His voice, calm and almost human, chipped through the rage until only exhaustion remained.
It felt strange to be the one comforted. For decades it had always been me pulling him back from ruin, soothing him after each storm. And now the roles were reversed. The boy who once sought solace in me had learned how to offer it.
We stood there in the glow of the jars, two hollow creatures carved from what was once flesh and fire, while outside the wind screamed over the cliffs and the sea tore itself against the stone.
“Everything will unfold as it should,” Salvatore said. “When the sky goes dark, the answers will come.”
The words should have felt like reassurance, but they only deepened the unease twisting in my chest.
I turned back to the tome. Its surface pulsed, like a buried heart under stone. The light from the jars flickered over its leather binding, and I could feel the shadows inside listening, waiting.
“I hope we’ve done enough,” I murmured. “All the feeding, all the jars, all the pain we’ve given them—if the shadows reject it, if they find fault in what we’ve done, then Ugarit will fall. Every life in this city, every cry in its streets, every sacrifice—it will all have been for nothing.”
The words left me barely above a whisper. “I just hope, when the eclipse comes, we are ready… and that we save this city, not doom it.”
Salvatore didn’t answer, but I felt the faintest pressure of his hand still resting on my arm, steady and real.
Outside, the bells from the temple began to toll again, carried by the wind up the cliffs.
