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.
