The tomes whispered on, their voices low and fervent.
“If your bond is pure, if your gifts are enough, the traveler will rise. But if the measure fails, the city will burn, and time will swallow what remains.”
Lazarus and I exchanged a glance. The eclipse had swallowed half the sun, and the world outside glowed the color of old bronze. The sea raged against the cliffs, hammering at the stone as if it, too, wanted in.
We turned back to the pages. The words burned across the parchment like veins of fire. Together, we began to read the chant—the first lines of the creation that would open time itself.
The room seemed to breathe as we began to speak. The air thickened, the chalk circle flaring with white light.
Our voices joined, the words older than language, heavy enough to bend the air around them.
“Oh, Sun, judge of fire.
“Oh Moon, keeper of silence.
“Witness this offering?—”
The door exploded inward before the last word left our tongues. Wind from the cliffs roared through the chamber, scattering ash and parchment. Queen Seraphina staggered across the threshold, her white gown drenched in blood, her hands clutched around her swollen belly. Behind her, King Cyrus stumbled, half-dragging her, his armor blackened and cracked.
“Ugarit has fallen!” he shouted. “The Sea People have taken the palace—everything is burning!”
Seraphina fell to her knees. “Lazarus,” she gasped, “please… the child—it’s coming.”
The chant died on our lips. The circle flickered, the light faltering as the queen’s scream filled the room.
Lazarus was already moving, clearing a space beside the hearth. “Get her here!” he barked. The king caught her before she hit the floor.
Her body convulsed, and through her pain, she reached for something only she could see.
“You told me we would be saved,” she whispered. “You said the time traveler would save us.”
Lazarus crouched beside her, his eyes burning with fury and sorrow both. “It will,” he said. “Hold on, Seraphina. Hold on.”
But I barely heard them.
I was staring at the blood—the scent of it. The sight of her husband’s hand still gripping hers in death. The way she whispered to him, though he could no longer answer.“My love,” she kept saying, “it’s all right. We came this far together.”
The words tore something open inside me.
That was what I’d wanted all my life—to be that comfort, that anchor. To love and be loved so fiercely that even death couldn’t silence it. But Severen’s curse had taken that from me. I could take any pleasure I desired but not love. Never love. Never life. Never a child I could hold.
And the shadows heard my ache.
They coiled around me, whispering with the same tenderness that once came from human lips.
“You can have it, Salvatore.”
The shadows’ voices threaded through me like smoke, soft and venomous.
“We can give you what was stolen,”they whispered.“When the time traveler rises, we will rise with them. We will walk the world in flesh. Not wraiths, not whispers—children of shadow, born from you. They will look human, live human, yet carry some of your shadow power. They will be born every time a time traveler is born. Each one will bear a piece of you, a fragment of the darkness that made you.”
My breath caught. The queen’s scream tore through the air again, shaking the jars. Her pain filled the house like thunder. Lazarus shouted orders to King Cyrus, his voice lost beneath the storm.
The shadows tightened around my feet, the black tendrils twisting in the lamplight like serpents coiling to strike.
“You both have shadows,”they hissed.“Bound to your heels, tethered to your will. But they belong to us. They long to be free. You will unleash them—from you, from him. They will walk the earth as many. When the time travelers come, we will come with them, walking in human skin.”
The words sank deep, latching onto places I didn’t know still existed.
