Chapter 2
Chapter Two
I caught a glimpse of my mother’s face—and my heart shattered.
Her fierce emerald eyes, mirrors of my own, were rimmed in red. Tears streaked down her cheeks—silent, endless—but somehow, she still smiled.
Radiant and broken.
As she watched the man she loved slip further from her.
“My Bella…” My father’s voice cracked as he looked at her like she was a puzzle he couldn’t quite piece together. Like looking at her might still save him. “I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been,”he breathed. “To love you. To love Emylia.”
She laughed softly—shaking her head as fresh tears glimmered.
“How could I resist these tangled scarlet locks?”she whispered.
She was rewarded with a chuckle. Just for a moment. Then the laughter collapsed into a brutal coughing fit.
His body arched. Rattled. By the time it passed, he sank back into the pillows, pale and shaking, spent.
Before she had me, my mother had been a priestess. A healer.
Not just any healer—the healer.
The best Agertheria had ever known.
My father used to say she’d been touched by the Goddess herself. And I believed him. There had always been something divine about her. A light that clung to her skin, bright and unrelenting—a light so fierce it felt like divinity.
I remembered once—a man had stumbled to our door, half-dead, blood soaking through torn clothes, body barely holding together. His screams pulled us into the night. My mother didn’t hesitate. Not for a second. She shouted for my father to carry him inside. Her voice was steel—sharp and commanding. I watched, frozen, as she tore through the blood-soaked tunic, exposing wounds so deep they split open like cracked earth. Blood spilled across our oak table, staining the wood so deeply it looked black, not scarlet.
She met my gaze—her eyes steel.
Emylia. If you are going to stay, you are going to help.
If you cannot stand the sight, leave.
His arms were shredded.
His chest, torn wide.
She worked for hours—her hands tireless, her spirit unbreakable—and within days, the man walked away—scarred, but breathing. A miracle stitched together by her hands. Before that night, I wasn’t sure the Gods were real. But watching her… I stopped doubting.
Magik had to exist.
She was proof that divinity still breathed in this world, even if the world had thought it lost it.
Which made everything crueler.
Because for all her power, all her miracles— the woman who had defied death a thousand times could do nothing when it came for the man she loved most.
I saw it in her posture. In the lines that carved into her brow. In the way her shoulders curled inward—like she was already collapsing under the weight of losing him.
She blamed herself. She wore it like a brand. And it was killing her long before death came for him.
Her jade eyes never left him—staring, as if she could hold him here by sheer will alone. Once, those eyes had been filled with laughter. Now, they brimmed with grief. The same grief tearing through my own ribs like splinters. Like the hollowing aftermath of something so intense it left nothing in its wake.
Her fingers trembled as they brushed back a dark lock of hair. It slipped over her shoulder—absently twisted around her fingers. A nervous habit she’d picked up when he first fell ill.
“Until Aziel rides his golden chariot to the gates of the Goddess, and delivers me back to you, my love…” Her voice was barely a breath. A raw, broken thread. “I will wait for you.” Fresh tears slid down her face.
Mine mirrored them.
“I’ll wait… for the rest of eternity, just to be with you again.” My father’s voice was now nothing but air. Barely sound. But it broke her anyway.
“Please don’t leave me, Atlas.”
It had been so long since I’d heard her speak his real name. Not a pet name. Not a softened thing. But him.
Atlas.
The word trembled on her lips. It cracked as it passed through her teeth. It carved another fissure straight through my already shattered heart.
“You have my whole heart, my love,”he rasped. Each word a struggle. A goodbye that was carved in pain and despair. “Ever since the day I laid eyes on you.”
“I don’t want to do this without you,”she cried. The words folding in on themselves.
Pleading.
Begging him to stay.
To fight.
To defy death one last time.
“You don’t have to,”he whispered. And with the last reserves of strength he had left—he reached for her. His hand shook as he pressed it over her heart.
“I’ll always be with you. In here.”
His hand fell from her chest.
Too heavy now.
Too tired.
One last smile curved his lips—exhausted, weathered, and still somehow… beautiful. Then his eyes fluttered closed.
His chest rose.
Fell.
His breathing slowed. Shallowed. Stilled.
Became non-existent.
I watched, paralyzed, as a final shudder rolled through him. And then—he was gone.
The world collapsed with him.
Air ceased to exist.
Sound, air, meaning—gone.
And all that remained was the hollow wreckage of everything he had ever touched.