I could feel the truth in my veins, in every syllable.
“With the Blade of Shadows severed, Isabelle and Armand are dead.And now—Alina of Solaris has returned from the grave.And you—what do you do, Shadow Lord?”
I stepped closer, voice rising like a battle cry.
“You sit idly, barking orders...while our world burns.”
The words had barely left my lips when he struck.
The blow wasn’t just flesh and bone—it was power, raw and ancient.
Dark energy surged through his fist, through me, and agony exploded across my face.
Pain blinded me, and then my lungs seized.
I staggered back, hands clawing at my throat.
Invisible manacles—tight, unrelenting—strangling the life from me.
Panic tore through me, a caged animal thrashing in my chest as I fought for air, for life.
Each breath became a war.
Every second stretched into an eternity of terror.
And in that moment—gasping, choking, collapsing—I finally understood.
The fragility of life.
Of defiance.
Of myself.
Lazarus stood over me, towering and unmoved.
His eyes burned with fury, a storm barely restrained beneath the surface.
He raised his hand—without hesitation, without mercy—and I shattered.
Slammed to the ground by a force I couldn’t resist, pain exploded through me.I gasped, mouth open, body convulsing, lungs dragging in ragged bursts of air as pain racked every muscle.
His voice roared above me, every word a hammer blow.
“I know about Alina.I know what Salvatore and Mathias are planning.I know Mathias hunts for the blades.I know my failure to Isabelle and Armand.”
His footsteps echoed—approaching.
Closer.
“Do not presume to lecture me.I am painfully aware of what is happening.”
He stopped just above me, his shadow swallowing mine, a figure cloaked in power—death itself.
“You dare speak to me like that again, Amir—and I will personally kill you.”
His voice was steel, lethal and cold.
“Your death will be unlike anything you have ever felt before.”
