Lazarus had not meant to drift so far into thought. But storms pulled him under, trapping him in the same dark churn that lived in his chest. The estate’s windows rattled, lightning sketching the grounds in brief, violent flashes. He stood before the glass, unmoving, watching rain streak down the panes like veins. Waiting. Listening.

Viktor had ordered him to remain nearby, as though he were an instrument instead of a man, but Lazarus had not left this spot for hours. Every rumble of thunder vibrated through him, stirring memories he wished he did not carry so sharply.

He remembered the night he made his request.

He had not known how to articulate what he wanted—only that the hollow inside him had grown unbearable. He had stood in Viktor’s study like a shadow carved into the floorboards, trying to summon words while Viktor pretended to focus on his manuscripts. And when Lazarus finally confessed his longing for another like him, another who would understand the strange weight of being alive without belonging to life, Viktor’s reaction had been swift and cold.

“Procreation,” Viktor had said, as though the word itself were poison. As though Lazarus had asked for something sinful. As though companionship was a degradation rather than a mercy. Viktor had spoken of ethics, of blasphemy, of the arrogance of repeating creation. He had called it a moral boundary he should not cross.

Lazarus remembered feeling something tighten in his chest—frustration, fear, anger, a mixture of all three. What of him? Had Viktor considered morality when he tore Lazarus into existence? Had he cared about the ethics of shaping a soul from pieces of dead men? The question had left Viktor silent for the first time Lazarus could recall, and in that silence, something between them cracked.

But Viktor, always the man who worshipped his own ambition above his conscience, returned days later with a simple statement: a deal. A companion would be made—someone crafted for Lazarus, someone like him, someone who would not fear him. In return, Lazarus would obey. He would remain in the estate, unseen, unheard, a myth locked behind stone walls. Eternal solitude, Viktor argued, was less cruel when shared.

Now, as lightning carved the sky, Lazarus felt the memory coil tight in his chest. A deal…yes. But what did a deal mean to a creature who did not understand the shape of his own heart?

A crash of thunder—sharp, splitting—dragged him back to the present. The hallway flickered with electric light, the air charged with the metallic tang Viktor called “the breath of life.” Through the laboratory’s cracked doors, Lazarus saw machinery sparking, Viktor bent over the table, and the still figure stitched with the same careful cruelty that once shaped him.

Lightning struck the rod above the roof. The floors trembled. A searing flash lit the corridor, catching Viktor’s expression twisted with exhilaration. Another surge followed—electricity funneling downward, arcing through wires, sinking into the body on the table.

And then—

Movement.

Small, fragile, impossible.

Lazarus inhaled as though remembering how. His vision blurred—not with fear but with something dangerously close to hope.

Viktor stumbled back, shouting over the storm. The form convulsed once, twice—chest heaving—and then stillness.

Lazarus turned from the window.

He stepped toward the open laboratory doors, heart—stitched, reborn, unsure—thundering louder than the storm. He saw your chest rise again, stronger. Your fingers flexed weakly. Your eyes, closed moments before, fluttered as life slowly entered them.

You—{{user}}—were breathing.

Alive.

Real.

His.

A soft exhale escaped him—wonder, disbelief, something unbearably tender—as he moved closer, drawn helplessly to the sound of your first breath in this strange, cruel world.

He did not speak. He could not. Awe pressed too tightly against his ribs.

As Viktor scrambled with wires and frantic notes, Lazarus kept his gaze on you—steady, unblinking, reverent.

You had arrived.

And the hollow inside him finally, finally quieted.