Page 52 of Sweet Venom Of Time (Blade of Shadows #6)

“What the fuck is going on?!”

He stood frozen, dagger still raised, but his power—his moment—had already been stolen.

The great lords of this society—the ones who had called for my torture, who had toasted to my execution?—

Were now dying before me.

The illusion of their power collapsed in real time, and their wealth and titles became meaningless as they choked on their arrogance.

I did not waste the moment.

With predatory swiftness, I lunged to my feet, my hand snapping around Mathias’ wrist like a vice.

He gasped, startled, his once-unshakable confidence now a thing of the past.

The room spun as my body fought against its own exhaustion. Darkness crept at the edges of my vision, whispering for me to succumb, but I would not.

I anchored myself to this world, to this moment.

Towering over the chaos, I stood defiant as the nobility writhed at my feet.

“You forgot about the powerful alchemist in France,” I bellowed, my voice a blade, slicing through the terror.

“You thought it was me. You should have listened to my warning.”

Mathias’ wild eyes darted across the room, desperately trying to piece together the nightmare unraveling before him.

He lashed out—a frantic, uncoordinated attempt at control.

But the poison was merciless.

It stripped him of his precision, his balance—his very dignity.

His blows were weak and ineffectual, a pathetic display of a man who had once believed himself untouchable.

His strength bled out of him with every passing second.

And then, I moved.

Surging through the convulsing masses, an apparition of vengeance.

The air reeked of death and dying grandeur, their once-opulent laughter now twisted into guttural gasps, choked screams.

Still, my thoughts flitted to Elizabeth.

The architect of our salvation.

She had vanished.

A clawing sense of unease stirred in me, but there was no time to falter. I needed to gather my men.

I needed to seize control of the chaos.

And then, I saw them.

Alexander and Winston.

The titans of this society were now nothing more than writhing corpses-in-waiting.

They twitched and convulsed on the opulent floor, their power unraveling, their wealth offering no salvation.

I loomed over them, my shadow stretching long and mercilessly over their tormented forms.

“You should see your faces,” I snarled, my voice a dark hymn, each word dripping with finality.

“You seemed to have forgotten my warning when I first entered your home. You were so focused on destroying the Black Wraith that you failed to fear the one true force that could undo you. The powerful alchemist in France. Perhaps you should have spent less time hunting me—And more time fearing them.”

Alexander’s eyes, wide with horror, darted helplessly, his mind frantically clawing for an escape that did not exist. His lips parted in a silent scream, but no words came. There was nothing left to say.

They had played their game.

And they had lost.

I leaned close to Mathias, my breath warm against his paling skin, my voice a low growl laced with triumph and warning.

“You are nothing but a pitiful fool,” I whispered, each syllable a dagger sliding between his ribs. “Barely worth a second glance.”

Mathias shuddered, his body betraying the terror he refused to voice.

I let the moment hang, savoring the weight of his helplessness.

Then, I smirked.

“If only Balthazar could see you now. The sheer delight it would bring him to witness your downfall would be… immeasurable.”

A choked gasp rattled from his throat, but he had no strength left to fight.

“Another of your so-called societies lies in ruins,” I continued, my tone almost mocking, a slow dismantling of everything he once stood for. “And no one is coming to save you.”

I let the silence stretch, watching his composure crack.

“No one.”

His breath hitched.

The fear in his eyes deepened, widening into something close to understanding.

Too late.

“This is how you meet your end,” I said, my words dropping like a stone into the abyss of his fading consciousness. “Crumbling. Defeated. Forgotten by all.”

I straightened, letting my gaze drift over the wreckage of the men who had once ruled with impunity.

“In the end, Lazarus and I will reclaim Solaris as our own.”

I watched as the last flickers of resistance faded from his trembling form.

“And you—you and Salvatore will fade into eternal oblivion.”

I took a step back, my eyes cold, unforgiving.

“Erased from existence.”

Mathias’ eyes flickered with the last, dimming light of comprehension as the poison turned his veins into rivers of fire.

His lips parted, a final, strangled breath escaping—a useless plea to a world already leaving him behind.

And then, something darker than the room emerged from the shadows.

Salvatore.

He did not step into the light. He annihilated it.

The flickering glow of dying candles seemed to recoil from him, shrinking away as if his being devoured illumination.

His cloak draped over his hunched frame, its tattered ends dragging like funeral veils across the cold marble. The fabric hung from him like decay incarnate, as if he had been stitched together from the remnants of old kingdoms and forgotten nightmares.

And his face—carved from vengeance itself.

A mask stretched too tightly over angular bones; skin pulled thin where veins slithered like blackened tributaries beneath the surface.

The creases etched deep into his flesh were not from age alone—they were the scars of a man who had ruled through terror, who had built an empire on the bones of the fallen.

His eyes—glacial, endless, distant—gleamed with a flicker of something inhuman.

Not madness.

Not cruelty.

Something worse.

Something that knew far more than any mortal should.

And then—he smiled.

It was a ghastly thing, the corners of his lips tugging back ever so slightly, revealing teeth yellowed with time and stained with something older than wine or rot.

He did not speak.

He did not need to.

The air grew heavy, thickening like an approaching storm, pressing in against every wall and every breath. The room felt smaller, suffocating beneath his existence.

A moment passed—one heartbeat stretched into eternity.

Then, he rolled his neck, the tendons pulling taut beneath his paper-thin skin?—

And roared.

The sound was not human.

It ripped through the chamber, an earth-shattering, marrow-deep bellow that threatened to tear the very foundation apart.

The walls trembled.

The floorboards groaned.

The air seemed to crack and shudder beneath the weight of that sound.

Every muscle in my body seized.

And my heart?—

My heart lurched.

Because Elizabeth was nowhere in sight.

“Elizabeth,” I breathed—barely a whisper, yet it pierced the chaos.

Bodies collapsed around me—choking, convulsing, dying. The masquerade we had so carefully crafted was unraveling into ruin with Salvatore here. Poison laced the air, its scent acrid and metallic, a twisted symphony of death. Screams echoed, then faded into silence, one by one.

And she was gone.

Nowhere by my side.

Nowhere safe.

Then—through the swirling mist of death—I saw her.

Across the ballroom, her silhouette emerged. She was cloaked in black, her face masked, the same attire she wore in France.

In her hand, the final vial. The last of the poison.

And she was aiming it at him.

Salvatore.

“No,” I whispered, horror freezing my blood. “Elizabeth... don’t.”

She moved.

Poised with deadly accuracy, she threw the vial at him.

“ELIZABETH!” I roared, surging forward, sprinting toward her—toward them. My heart was pounding, and desperation was clawing at my throat.

But the vial had already shattered.

A thick, noxious cloud exploded through the air, rushing out in all directions. I was too close—too slow. The poison hit me like fire, slicing into my lungs. I gasped, choked, staggered.

No—no—NO!

Salvatore reeled back, shadows erupting around him. He moved fast, slipping just beyond the edge of the poison, escaping into the dark like a serpent.

He didn’t inhale it.

I did.

I stumbled, but through the burning and haze, I saw him strike.

His hand shot out—grabbing her.

Elizabeth’s body jerked in his grip, and before I could scream, before I could reach her, he hurled her across the ballroom.

Her body hit the wall with a sickening crack.

She crumpled to the ground—motionless.

“Elizabeth!” I tore across the room, falling to my knees beside her. My lungs singed, my vision swimming, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered but her.

Her skin was pale, and her breath shallow. Blood stained her lips. Her eyes fluttered open—just barely.

“I’m here,” I choked out, gathering her in my arms. “You’re okay—you’re okay—I’ve got you—just stay with me—please?—”

Her lips moved, but her voice was gone. Her body trembled in my hold, fading, fading...

With a inhuman roar of unrestrained fury, Salvatore seized Mathias’ lifeless body, lifting it high above his head with an iron grip.

His knuckles turned bone-white, his sinewy arms tensed like iron cables, and every muscle in his form coiled with unearthly power.

And then he screamed.

Not a sound.

Not a mere shout of anger.

A bellow of wrath so raw, so volcanic that it tore through the very bones of the palace.

The air itself trembled.

And then—the explosion.

A blinding detonation of rage, a shockwave of destruction that ripped through the grand hall with a force that defied nature itself.

The world shattered.

The remaining walls detonated outward, massive slabs of stone and brick hurtling through the air like cannon fire. The earth quaked beneath Salvatore’s fury as though the palace screamed in its final moments.

The lime plaster blew off the walls, revealing the raw, crumbling skeleton of the structure beneath.

The boiserie—the intricate, gilded wooden panels—shattered into a thousand deadly splinters, turning into a hurricane of wooden daggers, piercing flesh, marble, and glass alike.

What had once been a palace of decadence, power, and tyranny?—

Was now a war zone.

I clutched Elizabeth to my chest, shielding her broken body from the chaos unraveling around us. Blood coated my hands, but I didn’t let go.

The world tilted. The palace trembled—stone groaning under the weight of destruction.

And then?—

Lazarus.

He burst from the ruin like a phoenix from flame, dust, and debris parting around him. His eyes locked onto Salvatore’s with the force of a lightning strike—pure, unrelenting fury.

The air between them crackled, charged with ancient energy, something older and darker than the crumbling stone, and spilled blood around us.

Salvatore sneered, lips peeling back to reveal jagged, decayed teeth—a predator savoring the kill.

With a flick of his hand, shadows slithered forth, curling around Mathias’ broken form.

In a breath, the body vanished, swallowed whole by the darkness—erased from this place, claimed by Salvatore’s void.

And then—he moved.

With a sweeping gesture, his hands sliced through the air, fingers carving an intricate and monstrous pattern like a curse written in motion.

The world answered.

A sickening hiss, low and venomous, slithered through the chamber. The walls shuddered, and cracks spiderwebbed across the ceiling.

And then came the flood.

From shattered stone and blood-soaked earth, they rose?—

Serpents.

A writhing tide of scales and fangs spilled across the ruined floor like a living nightmare. They surged forward, over corpses, over the dying, over the barely breathing.

Screams pierced the air—the last survivors scrambling, desperate to escape.

But there was nowhere to run.

The vipers coiled around limbs, their fangs sinking into flesh. The scent of venom and blood thickened the air.

I tried to hold Elizabeth, tried to pull her closer?—

But my grip slipped.

My body—betraying me. The Noctyss poison that had invaded my veins was tearing me apart, sweltering like wildfire, hollowing me out with every breath.

Then—

Lazarus appeared.

His form blurred, flickering through my failing vision, but his voice was solid.

“I’ve got you, Amir.”

His grip was iron, unyielding, anchoring me when everything else fell away.

And then—the shadows came.

A void darker than night, blacker than ink. An abyss that swallowed light, sound, everything.

Salvatore’s fury.

The dying screams.

The writhing serpents.

All gone.

The world was erased in an instant.

I felt myself slipping—falling into the dark.

And for the first time since this nightmare began?—

I let it take me.

* * *

When I awoke, Anatolia greeted us with its timeless serenity—a world untouched by the devastation we had left behind.

The air was crisp with ancient power, and the very stones beneath me hummed with the weight of history. It was a place of refuge, of forgotten strength.

But none of it mattered.

Elizabeth lay beside me, deathly still.

Her skin, pale as moonlight, seemed almost translucent beneath the celestial glow of this sacred place.

And her breath?—

So faint. So fragile.

Panic surged through me.

“Lazarus!”

My voice came out as a desperate croak, raw and broken.

A sickness still curdled in my veins, thick and suffocating, tendrils of poison still twisting through my lungs like malignant fog.

I tried to inhale, but each breath was a battle—ragged, wheezing, drowning in my own body’s failure.

Every gasp burned. Every movement sent agony lancing through me.

But none of it mattered.

Only her.

The shadows stirred.

Lazarus emerged, silent and composed, both a balm and a warning.

I couldn’t read him.

Not now.

Not when I was unraveling at the seams.

“Please,” I rasped, my voice scraping against the silence. “Heal her. Save her.”

My words echoed off the walls, a command and a prayer entwined in desperation.

I didn’t care what it cost.

“Whatever you do, save her.”

The weight of those words hung between us, heavier than the very history of this place.

My vision blurred, darkness creeping in once more, clawing at the edges of my consciousness.

I reached for Elizabeth, my fingers trembling, my strength draining away.

My body betrayed me, the last of my willpower shattered under the weight of exhaustion, of poison, of grief.

And just before the void pulled me under?—

I held onto one final, desperate hope.

That Lazarus could undo what Elizabeth had sacrificed herself to achieve.

And then?—

Oblivion took me.