Page 67 of Sweet Venom Of Time (Blade of Shadows #6)
“The trials were created by Morgrath Severen—ancient, merciless. Designed not to test strength but to shatter it. To tear us down to bone and blood and rebuild us into something else.” His eyes darkened.
“Most failed. Broken. Unmade. The dungeons ran red with the blood of those who begged for death.”
A chill swept through me at the cold finality of his words, as though I could hear the echoes of screams carried on the mountain wind.
“And you... survived.”
“Only Salvatore and I,” Lazarus said quietly. “We endured. We were reforged in pain, remade in darkness. Not by choice—but by necessity. And when it was over, we emerged not as men... but as Shadow Lords. The price of survival was losing everything that made us human.”
A silence stretched between us, heavy and suffocating.
“How did you end up in prison, Lazarus?” I asked, the words careful and cautious. A part of me already regretted the question.
Lazarus’ gaze drifted, distant and veiled, as though staring into a chasm no light could reach. “That,” he said, voice low and resolute, “is a secret I shall never speak of.”
The air around us felt heavier, charged with unsaid truths. I didn’t press him. Some wounds were too deep, too old to reopen.
We continued, the mountains looming like ancient gods, silently witnessing our passage. The wind howled through the peaks, whispering fragments of forgotten stories, indifferent to the burdens we carried.
But I couldn’t shake the thought of the trials—the blood-soaked path that led to power. The darkness clung to Lazarus like a second skin woven into his very being. Whatever he had endured or become was not simply a title. It was a transformation etched into every breath he took.
We trod upon a mosaic of stone and earth, our boots scuffing the remnants of a path long claimed by time.
The air was thinner here, laced with the scent of pine and something older—something ancient and watching.
The Carpathian wilderness whispered around us, promising secrets only the brave or the foolish dared to seek.
“Salvatore’s name,” I said at last, unable to contain the gnawing curiosity, “it falls from your lips with a weight of history. You speak as if you were bound by more than rivalry.”
Lazarus halted, his eyes distant, lost in memories that had long since turned to ghosts.
“We were close,” he admitted, and the words seemed to cost him, pulled from a place long buried.
“Brothers, in all but blood. But power…” His jaw clenched.
“Power overcame him. Twisted what we were into something unrecognizable.”
His voice was hollow, as though speaking it aloud made it real again—reopened a wound long buried beneath layers of time and silence. I felt the pull to ask more, to peel back the layers of that darkness, but before I could form the words, Lazarus raised a hand—a silent barrier, firm and final.
“No,” he said, his voice a blade. “I will not answer more questions. Some truths are too perilous to unearth.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty—it was thick, alive with what remained unsaid. And I knew then that whatever had passed between Lazarus and Salvatore left more than scars. It had caused a chasm no words could bridge.
Resigned, I let the silence settle over us once more.
We pressed onward, the mountainside begrudgingly yielding beneath our steps as though the earth resented our intrusion.
Then the land began to speak—not through sound, but through signs.
A trail of withered flowers stretched before us, their once-vibrant petals shriveled and gray, crumbling beneath the weight of unseen decay.
We were touched by something unnatural, something wrong.
Like breadcrumbs from a forgotten fable, they led us forward—not to guide, but to warn.
Our journey culminated at an imposing stone wall—but this was no ordinary barrier.
Shaped into the mountain’s face stood an ancient door, weathered yet immovable, the final guardian of realms long forgotten.
The structure was monumental, flanked by towering columns worn by time and wrapped in creeping ivy.
Moss clung to every crevice, while intricate carvings—symbols of a lost age—etched their way up the stone facade like veins of memory.
At its center, the door loomed, forged of greenish-blue stone streaked with veins of age, its surface marred by the slow erosion of centuries.
Twisting wrought-iron designs formed an ornate gate before it, delicate yet impenetrable, like vines frozen in mid-growth.
Above the archway, a stone relief crowned the structure, engraved with runes half-worn by time and overgrowth.
The doorway seemed to pulse with dormant power as if the mountain had been cleaved open to protect the world beyond.
“This is it,” Lazarus declared, his voice slicing through the hush of the wilds.
He placed a hand upon the cold, rough surface of the door; reverence creasing every line of his face.
“Beyond this stone lies our realm—Solaris in its veiled glory. Whatever awaits us there,” he turned, locking his dark gaze with mine, “will change everything.”
A shiver crawled down my spine—not from the mountain’s chill but from the weight of his words. This was no mere crossing.
It was a reckoning.
We stood together, two men haunted by shared and solitary pasts, poised on the precipice of an uncertain future. Bound by fate, secrets, and the world that waited beyond the stone.