Chapter 10 Death Screech
Death Screech
Callista
“The claiming brand will be beautiful against your skin.” Enyo arranged the silken shawl over my shoulders and smiled at me in the mirror. “My son chose well.”
I stared at my reflection, trying to see what Enyo did.
The woman looking back wore elegant silk and careful cosmetics, but her blue eyes held confusion.
Everything about this moment should have felt right.
Phonos was kind, his family welcoming. They offered the belonging I’d never had.
So different from the brutal village that had condemned me, the violent world that had marked me as worthless.
So why did wrongness still claw at my chest?
“You’re still fighting yourself,” Enyo observed, meeting my eyes.
“I know I should feel ready,” I admitted. “You’ve all done so much to make me feel at home. Phonos has been so patient with me. I don’t want to disappoint him.”
“Oh, child, you could never,” Enyo said, resting her hands over my back. “Phonos has been waiting so long for the right woman. He knew the instant he saw you. You don’t have that luxury, but you’ll understand soon.”
Soon. Dawn approached, and with it the thread entwining that would bind me to Phonos permanently. The hollow ache in my chest might fade once we were properly connected. Phonos claimed it would, and his family seemed certain.
“I know. It’s just… nerves.”
“It’s perfectly normal, Callista. Just remember this. You might not have been woven in Asphodelia, but you belong by Phonos’s side. With us.”
On some level, I agreed. Over the past week, they’d made space for me in their home. I’d shared meals where Megaera asked thoughtful questions about my weaving techniques. Alecto had regaled me with stories of her patrol missions. Enyo had taught me the history written in their tapestries.
And then, there was Phonos, and the tentative way he embraced me, the way he looked at me. They all wanted this ceremony to succeed. They all believed in it.
Did I? I wasn’t sure. But after all his consideration and care, I owed it to him, to all of them, to at least try.
“Almost ready.” Enyo stepped back and examined her work with obvious satisfaction. “The silk suits you perfectly. Don’t you think so, Callista?”
I didn’t get the chance to answer. A distant sound made us both freeze. Low and rumbling, like thunder, but wrong somehow. Too organic, too filled with rage. “What was that?” I asked.
Enyo moved to the crystal window, peering down at the city below. Her face went pale. “Alecto! Megaera!”
Footsteps pounded across stone as both sisters rushed into the chamber, familiar sounds I’d learned to recognize. Alecto’s measured stride, Megaera’s quieter steps. “Mother?” Alecto asked, already scanning the room for threats. “What’s wrong? What do you see?”
“There’s something climbing the spire.” Enyo backed away from the crystal panes, her fingernails already turning to talons. “Something massive.”
The sound came again, closer now. Stone cracked somewhere below us, the entire spire trembling slightly. Megaera’s breath caught, as if a horrible realization had just dawned on her. “Get away from the window!”
Alecto shoved everyone back, and not a moment too soon.
The crystal shattered inward, and a giant head pushed through the opening, black fur wreathed in flames.
Amber eyes fixed on me with terrifying intensity.
Two more heads followed, each larger than a normal creature’s entire body.
The beast’s shoulders wedged in the window frame, stone cracking as he forced his way inside.
“Three-headed Cerberus!” Enyo grabbed my arm, face pale with terror beyond description. “Alecto, get Callista out of here!”
“No.” The word came out steady despite my racing heart. “I know him.”
I truly did. This was a creature more ferocious than every monster I’d met in Asphodelia put together. But I looked at him and saw safety. Warmth.
“You know nothing!” Enyo snarled. “A person destroyed by a Cerberus will cease to exist. Their past, present, and future will be entirely erased. Not even the Moirae will be able to salvage their death energy. Even Thanatos himself cannot stop him. He doesn’t bring ending. He brings absolute void!”
The explanation made my breath catch. She wasn’t talking about death, because why would she?
No, the people of Asphodelia worshipped death.
This was something else, dissolution, complete erasure.
To be unmade so thoroughly that even divine powers couldn’t restore what remained. No wonder Enyo’s terror ran so deep.
And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to agree with her, to believe. Not this time.
For once, the Keres weren’t willing to listen to me and my human whims. “Get her out of here, Mother.” Alecto spread her wings and launched herself into the air. “I’ll distract it.”
“Alecto!” I screamed, but she was already attacking. Her feathers hardened into sharp projectiles, targeting the huge beast.
She meant to keep her distance from the monster, to draw his attention with a ranged attack. But she underestimated his reach. The creature moved with impossible speed for his size. Within seconds, the left head caught her midair in his jaws, giant teeth puncturing her torso.
Alecto hissed, but drove her talons toward her opponent’s eye. She was still unwilling to give up, still the warrior I’d come to care about. But then, something shifted in the creature’s stance. Alecto let out a choked cry, her spine arching and twisting in the beast’s grip.
Even when he hurled her aside, Alecto continued to convulse. For a few seconds, she clawed at her face and her eyes, her mouth opened in a soundless scream. When she finally went limp, it almost came as a relief.
“Sister!” Megaera dove toward the fallen warrior, silk robes trailing behind her.
The beast’s right head tracked her movement with vicious intelligence.
When he swiped at her with a huge paw, the claws seemed to rake through reality itself.
The moment he touched her, her entire body contorted midair.
She hit the wall with a sickening thud and slumped to the floor, her wings twisted at an awkward angle, her hair tinged with premature silver.
“My daughters!” Enyo cried out. “No!”
The creature turned toward her, but for all her earlier terror, Enyo didn’t falter. She straightened her back and opened her mouth. No sound came out, but the air rippled as if distorted by something I couldn’t see. The beast recoiled and took a step back, as if he had taken a physical blow.
I dropped to my knees, my stomach turning as my head started to spin.
Something was wrong, so very wrong. All of a sudden, I was back in Agrion, watching people I’d known all my life die in front of me.
I saw Elena’s face twisted with rage, Melos bringing his hammer down with that wet crack, Syagros inexplicably going rabid.
This was the same magic that had turned my neighbors against one another, transformed them into killers. Enyo’s power was what had destroyed Agrion. It hadn’t been natural mob violence, but deliberate manipulation.
Come to think of it, I’d seen this strange skill used before, in Phonos’s duel in the Kratos Circle.
But back then, I’d been too far to process what was happening.
Or maybe he had deliberately aimed away from the crowd.
Enyo hadn’t been able to do that, too caught in the desire to help her children.
Either way, her inaudible screech hadn’t worked. The monster lost interest in her and headed toward me. Spirals of energy twirled around his paws. Enyo tried to screech again, but the creature couldn’t be bothered to care. All three heads focused on me, and me alone.
I didn’t mind. Out of everyone here, I was probably the best person to handle him. He would never hurt me. Somehow, I knew that, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The way he looked at me... That desperate intensity felt so familiar. I couldn’t quite place it, couldn’t tell why. But I wasn’t wrong about him. Bestial or not, this Cerberus was connected to me.
I wished I could reach for him, but I was too stunned, paralyzed by the shock I’d just had. And then, Phonos burst into the chamber, his wings already spread wide. He took one look at his sisters’ fallen forms, his helpless mother, and the creature dominating the space, looming over me. “You.”
It was a single word, but it held almost as much anger as the giant beast emanated. And there was recognition in his voice. Phonos knew the beast. They’d fought before.
The realization hit me like ice water. This was him, the desperate lupine warrior from the Kratos Circle.
The monster I couldn’t stop thinking about, no matter how hard I tried.
The same one Phonos had targeted with his cry.
But what had happened to him? How had he become this twisted, terrifying thing?
“Get away from Callista,” Phonos snarled, and the beast’s attention snapped to him. It was as if my name had been some kind of cue. Those six eyes studied Phonos with almost anticipatory glee.
The last time these two had fought, the battle had ended in a draw. Now, Phonos couldn’t have been more outmatched, and he knew it. That didn’t stop him from launching himself forward, his hardened feathers turning into sharp, black daggers.
The projectiles bounced harmlessly off thick hide, but he pressed the attack. He moved like a whirlwind, so fast I couldn’t even follow him with my eyes.
But the battle was over before it had even begun. The creature opened its center maw, and energy poured out in a torrent. The vortex caught Phonos midflight, and he collapsed, his magnificent form suddenly seeming hollow.
Then came the hellfire. For a few moments, the entire spire seemed alight, and I covered my eyes, blinded by the intensity of the beast’s attack.
It took me seconds to focus again, and by then, flame engulfed Phonos’s already ravaged body.
His flesh was blistered and charred. One of his wings was already broken and had lost most of its feathers.
The creature wasn’t satisfied with what he’d already inflicted. He grabbed Phonos just as he had Alecto, his jaws crushing his ribs, tearing his muscles. And never once did Phonos scream.
Watching him endure the agony in silence, I couldn’t help but think of my neighbors. Many of them had screamed. Even Syagros had, when I’d killed him. But they hadn’t chosen to fight. They’d been forced into madness by powers they couldn’t understand or resist.
But this was Phonos. Phonos who had been kind, patient, whose family had cared for me. I couldn’t allow this.
My hand burned, and the dark brand that lingered on my flesh snapped me out of my stupor. “Stop!” I begged, stumbling forward through the burning ruin of the tower. “Please, stop!”
It was the same thing I’d begged the people of Agrion when they’d attacked each other. Back then, my words had gone unheard. But the beast heard me. The moment I spoke, he dropped Phonos from his snout and turned to look at me.
By the time I finally reached the beast, I was breathing hard, but somehow so much calmer.
From up close, the creature’s transformed state was overwhelming.
He could unmake me with a thought, erase me so completely that I would never have existed.
But when I reached toward his muzzle, there was no fear. Only certainty.
“I know you.” My palm touched warm fur, and lightning shot through my body.
The dark brand on my hand flared again, but this time, it lit up brighter than ever before. Pain and joy exploded through me as my stolen memories flooded my mind in a devastating rush.
Choosing him at the bride market. His gentle hands worshipping me. The claiming ceremony interrupted just before completion. Everything Charon had taken returned, overwhelming me with the truth of what I’d lost.
“Theron.”
The creature’s form began to shimmer and contract. The three heads merged back into one, four legs becoming two. And then, he was standing before me, exactly the way I’d known him, and it was almost too much to bear.
“Callista,” Theron murmured, each syllable echoing with every single emotion he couldn’t otherwise convey. Relief, love, desperate need.
I fell into his arms, pressing against the solid warmth of his chest. His scent wrapped around me, familiar and right.
How could I have thought, even for a moment, that Phonos’s affection could compare? It was no wonder that I’d felt so hollow. Without Theron, everything I’d experienced was meaningless.
“I’m sorry, Theron,” I somehow managed to say. “I didn’t remember.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His arms tightened around me as if he could keep me safe through strength alone. “It wasn’t your fault, and you should never apologize to me.”
For this perfect moment, we were complete again.
But around us lay the family that had shown me such genuine kindness.
Alecto and Megaera were badly hurt, and Phonos was barely breathing.
The gravity of what I’d just learned, about them, about my village, about my impossible situation, weighed heavily on our reunion.
I could feel Theron’s tension too, his knowledge that this wasn’t over. These people who’d welcomed me, who’d made me feel like family, were the same ones who’d destroyed my world to save my life. And now they lay broken because of our love.