Eve
It all sunk in like a stone in a stream, my pulse hamred against the heavy iron clamps that were connected to those on my neck chains. The air was stale with nothing but misery, defeat and the collective scrutiny of those I now stood before.
My eyes darted around, furtively, looking for a door thar would leaf outside this nightmare but none existed.
Rhea's voice beca muted against the the echo of my panic and rising dread. "You are...." Her voice died down in my head, drowned and uncompleted.
>"Rhea?" I called, screaming into the void of my head. I heard a little but not enough. I swallowed, looking down at my feet, and not at the company I had, or the judgental crowd in front of .
The sound of a horn ripped through the tentative silence of the execution ground. My heart leapt into my throat, stomach dropping, every hair raising despite the sweltering heat.
"We are here today to allow the gods to usher in a new era." The voice was commanding, vibrating down to my marrow, too familiar to dismiss.
I didn't need to turn around to know who it was. Who else could it be other than Elysia's uncle, my descendant, Malrik Valmont himself. Yet, his voice was one that I recalled, one that sank in deep and promised nothing but ruin and more suffering.
One that called a curse, disowned , sold, only to try and pull back into his invidious fold.
Darius Valmont.
"Do not see this day as one of demise and one of hope as we all gather to purge our ranks of the maggots that eat away at our flesh. Today, we end what Elysia Valmont started by betraying her bloodline in favour of a Vampire, our predators. We co to witness as justice is served for her atrocities against our pack. She promised loyalty and instead awarded your trust with treachery and debauchery. Even birthing hybrids for the monster of the night.
My clenched my jaw, bracing myself against the emotions of dread and fear I could not could not control despite the fact that I knew this was all a mory, made a mirage to further make sink and deter for what I was brought here to do.
Find Hades before he was eraced along with his corruption.
"Elysia Valmont spat on the moon's blessing. She took a vampire to her bed. She carried his seed. And for what? Love? Unity? No. Weakness." he continued, his voice twisting with more venom.
With each syllable, the clamps seed to tighten, crushing my throat, trapping the air in my lungs, screaming becoming an impossibility. The chains grew heavier as though they rembered the last neck they bound. Mine but in another lifeti, yet i was back for one more round. One more bloody dance.
"She defiled the rites," Malrik spat, his voice now thunder rolling across stone.
"Bound her soul to a creature that drinks blood and mocks the sun. She did not die a martyr. She died a warning."
A low murmur rippled through the crowd. Sowhere, a weapon was drawn—not in threat, but in reverence. A ceremonial blade catching the light like a prophecy already fulfilled. The sa blade that would end this mory. End . Again.
> "She was my blood,"
Malrik growled, and for the first ti, his voice cracked. Not from sorrow.
From exhilaration.
Malrik stepped forward, the ceremonial blade gleaming at his side, the silver etchings pulsing in ti with the crowd's silent reverence. His lips curled—not with hate, not with grief—but with cruel delight. That sa crooked smile. Eerily familiar.
Just like Darius.
Though they looked nothing alike, the resemblance clawed at my chest. That smile had haunted in two lives. Father and uncle, legacy and curse.
"But you will not die just yet," Malrik announced, voice a blade shearing through the hush. "No. That would be too kind."
My breath hitched. My wrists strained against the bonds.
> "Your first punishnt," he continued, stepping to the edge of the execution platform, "will be to watch him die."
The crowd didn't cheer. They didn't breathe.
My heart slamd into my ribs.
Two guards moved in unison, seizing my arms, forcing to turn. I noticed the sa "M" symbol.
And there—
Vassir.
Dragged like an animal. Not roaring. Not resisting. Barely conscious. Blood oozed from dozens—no, hundreds—of silver nails driven into his skin like iron thorns. His wings were clipped. His limbs trembled. His mouth was slack.
That was how they subdued him.
That was how they planned to end him.
The nausea rose like a tide. I tried to look away, but the guards gripped my chin, holding still. Made see.
Malrik turned to , tilting his head with mock sympathy.
> "Thank you, niece, for your confession."
His smile widened.
> "Had you not whispered his weakness to your second-in-command, we would not have known."
The words echoed.
A second-in-command.
The admission I made. In another life. Another loop. Another illusion.
I had dood him.
Again.
Vassir's eyes—Hades' eyes—t mine. Not with fury. Not with bla.
But with pain.
Tortured understanding.
He knew.
Malrik faced the crowd once more, raising his voice, letting it crash over the assembly like a wave of stone.
> "He betrayed his kind. For love. For Elysia. He turned against the Night Court, and now they will not answer his cries. They will not co."
He stepped forward, grabbing Vassir by the horn, just behind the curve.
My body tensed.
> "They will let us do this."
And then—
He tore it off.
A scream exploded from Vassir's throat—a sound no creature should make. Power burst from the wound like a geyser, silver and black light twisting skyward like a beacon of death. It reached the heavens.
And then fell.
Like ash.
Vassir collapsed.
No longer a beast. No longer a god.
Just a man.
And all I saw—
All I felt—
Was Hades.
His face.
His agony.
His end.
The sword ca down.
Clean. Silent.
Final.
> "NO!" I scread, the sound splitting through space, raw and wild.
But it was too late.
He was gone.
Again.
And this ti, the chains weren't on my wrists.
They were in my soul.
"Eve."
The voice cracked like a whip across my mind.
Not Malrik's.
Not the crowd's.
Rhea.
> "Snap out of it! This isn't real!"
My lungs convulsed. The world wavered—no, peeled. Like skin flaking off a corpse. The chains tightened, then—
Shattered.
They disintegrated into dust around my neck, wrists, ankles, floating like ash in a windless sky.
The platform buckled beneath .
> "Eve, RUN!"
The guards still held —but now they flickered. Their hands blurred like sared ink on wet paper. One blink, and their faces lted into void.
The fire began at the edges.
The crowd caught first. Like dry grass soaked in oil, they went up without a sound—only light, red and gold, consuming robes and runes and banners. The platform splintered beneath my feet, the stone dissolving into fla-licked air.
Vassir's body—Hades' body—jerked.
Black veins pulsed once.
Twice.
And then his skin peeled open like old fruit, decaying in fast-forward. The silver nails hissed as his form collapsed, curling in on itself with a sickening crunch. Bone shriveled. Wings twisted. Eyes glazed.
I tore my gaze away.
> "Now, Eve—MOVE!" Rhea bellowed.
A door exploded open behind the pyre. I didn't question it.
Didn't think.
I ran.
I sprinted past the burning corpse, past the altar of false justice, past the lting stone and mory. Heat singed my back. The roar of flas chased like the voice of the past refusing to let go.
I dove through the threshold just as the fire lunged—
And the world behind collapsed in a blast of silence.
No smoke. No scream. No breath.
Only—
Air.
Real air.
I landed hard—knees scraping gravel, hands stinging from stone and ash. My chest heaved. Sweat poured down my back. My heart pounded, a drum that wouldn't slow.
When I lifted my head—
I froze.
The city stretched out before , but not as I rembered it.
Obsidian Tower—reduced to half a spine of blackened tal.
Shattered bridges. Cracked dos. Spires broken like teeth.
The world was ruined.
This wasn't just a mory anymore.
This was his mind.
What was left of it.
The collapse wasn't taphor—it was actual, spiritual decay. The tower's bones, the fractured glass of the council chamber, the echo of Elliot's laughter all buried under layers of ntal rot.
> "Rhea," I gasped, rising on shaky legs. "Where is he?"
> "Sowhere close. But the Marker… it's waking. If it finds him first—"
Her voice faded into static, like a radio losing signal.
"You have to move. Now."
The ground cracked behind .
I turned—
A fissure, deep and glowing with veins of crimson, split the earth. Sothing snarled in the dark.
The Marker was near.
It had no form. No shape. Just heat and malice and mory—twisted into a storm of judgnt. And it was hunting. Not .
Him.
My lungs burned as I ran, feet pounding over rubble and glass, past toppled statues of wolves, of kings, of gods no one believed in anymore. The deeper I ran, the more the world warped. Ti folded in on itself. Hallways stretched, then crumbled. Rooms bled into each other—Elliot's nursery beca a war room, beca a chapel, beca a prison. All of it in ruin.
Reviews
All reviews (0)