Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
THRAX
Thrax mourned her, staying with her in what was now her last moment on earth.
He knelt before the cave, which glowed brighter than ever. The stones blazed with light, inside and out, their brilliance flooding the space around him.
He was beyond devastated. He had done everything in his power to prevent this day, everything to keep her alive. And still, it had come. Still, it had stolen the only love he’d ever had.
Death, the one thing he had longed for all his life, was now the thing he despised most.
Sanora was gone. He couldn’t feel her anymore. His body felt empty, reverted to the same hollow shell he had been before she was born, before she had stepped into his world and lit it with her impossible light.
He stayed there for what might have been an hour or more, watching the cave’s shield flicker, praying it would weaken just enough for him to reach her, to hold her one last time. But it didn’t. If anything, its strength only grew.
He waited longer, sinking into numbness as flashes of her laughter, her voice, her touch, her warmth rippled through his mind. His heart sank deeper with each one, and all he wanted was to follow her immediately, without hesitation.
But before he could, there was something he had to do.
He pushed himself off the wet ground, staggering to his feet like a man too drunk to stand—but the only thing he was drunk on was grief.
He turned to the cave, swallowing hard, jaw tight. Then he walked.
The rain came harder, drumming on his shoulders as he moved farther and farther from the shimmering light of the cave.
The twins were still where he had left them. As he passed, he said nothing, only reached out with his mind, pulling the knife from the male’s grip. The blade trailed after him through the air as he strode towards the bodies lying across the ritual ground—the ones who had done this to her.
He walked, rage simmering behind his eyes, every step fuelled by it as his hands curled into fists.
When he reached them and saw they were still alive—alive and breathing while she was gone—a molten fury tore through him. With a flick of his will, he lifted Winifred’s body from the ground and hurled it against a tree.
Before it could even drop, he caught it again, slamming it into another. When Winifred’s body finally hit the ground, he coughed wetly, blood spilling from his mouth and mixing with the rain.
Thrax didn’t give him a second. He lifted him once more and flung him towards a burning lantern. Winifred fell with it, the fire bursting and spreading across his chest.
He screamed, slapping at the flames as they scorched through his robes before the rain hissed them out.
But Thrax wasn’t done.
He raised him again, suspending the body mid-air as Winifred spat out broken curses. And harder this time, he threw him, his body slamming into another tree before he pounced on him.
Winifred’s face was a ruin of blood and rain, crimson rivulets snaking down his features. Thrax seized the collar of his robe, his fists trembling with the sheer effort it took not to tear him apart instantly.
He stared into Winifred’s eyes, fighting to contain the storm inside him, to stop himself from snapping his neck and ending it too soon. No, he didn’t want mercy.
Thrax wanted him to feel it. To feel every ounce of the torment burning through his chest. He wanted him to know how pain could take root and bloom inside the body, curling through the veins like barbed vines, choking until breath itself became agony.
Letting go of his robe, he seized his leg—the one he’d broken weeks ago.
Regret stabbed through him. He should have killed Winifred then.
He should have hunted him down and finished it.
If he had, maybe she’d still be alive. Maybe she’d be in his arms, alive and laughing, instead of lying cold and lifeless in that cave.
With one motion, Thrax snapped the bone in two. Winifred’s scream echoed around, ugly and nearly deafening. He broke the other leg next, the sound lost beneath the thunder’s crash.
“I warned you to stay away from her,” he said hoarsely, twisting his ankle until the bones splintered beneath his grip. “From us. She’s dead now. Are you happy?”
It took a while, but Winifred’s voice came out as a broken rasp. “We…failed…you…you won.”
A smile flickered across Thrax’s lips, dry and lifeless. “You think I won?”
Not needing a response because the way he felt didn’t quite feel like victory, he grabbed Winifred’s wrist, twisting until the old bones dislocated with a pop. Winifred screamed again and again, until his voice gave out, until he couldn’t scream anymore, only wheezed and gurgled.
That was when Thrax summoned the hovering knife, bringing it down hard. The blade sank into Winifred’s chest, right where the heart beat.
Blood erupted, dark and steaming in the rain.
Thrax didn’t stop there. He dragged the knife down, slicing through flesh and cartilage. The blade split skin and muscle until the chest cavity opened wide, exposing ribs and glistening organs beneath the rain.
His eyes were void of light, stripped of all humanity as he cut deeper, hand pressing into the cavity, fingers sliding through warmth until they found the organ that had no right to still be beating.
With a single motion, he tore it out.
The heart pulsed faintly in his hand, blood seeping through his fingers as the storm drenched them both. The world had gone quiet...except for the thud of rain hitting the earth and the sound of someone throwing up behind him.
He remained there, soaked and empty, the heart dying in his grip.
Standing to his feet, Thrax tossed the useless thing aside. It hit the mud with a dull, wet sound before the rain quickly swallowed it. He turned towards the other men lying unconscious on the ground and began driving the blade through them—once, twice, again and again and again.
His hand was slick with blood—thick, warm, and dark—and not even the heavy rain could wash it away. He relished the sound of steel breaking flesh, the wet crunch and gasp that came after.
By the time he reached the last man, the elder was awake, dragging himself backward through the mud, eyes wide with terror.
Thrax crouched, gripped his leg, and plunged the blade into his thigh. The man’s scream tore through the downpour, sharp and beautiful in its agony. Thrax twisted the blade, then spun him around using the same leg, forcing him onto his knees before plunging the knife into his neck.
The cries stopped, but his fury didn’t. It gnawed at him still, screaming louder in the hollow where his beating heart used to be, demanding more blood.
More blood.
He tossed the knife aside and straightened. The world swayed, his hair clinging to his face, plastered by rain. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, leaving streaks of red across his skin.
And then, he began to walk away. From death, from the carnage that now painted the ground.
He could barely see where he was going. The world was a blur of rain and darkness.
Still, he walked, stumbling and pausing to lean against trees whenever his body refused to move, his mind finding it hard to register that she was gone. Truly gone.
As much as the pain festered inside him, it was the only thing pushing him forward.
Towards The Crater, towards the one who had started all this.
Selvanyra.
It took hours. By the time he reached the mouth of The Crater, the rain had stopped, and the pale edge of dawn brushed against the clouds.
He climbed the jagged steps leading into the hills as he had countless times before, the hills that had never changed in all the centuries he’d walked it.
He’d rushed out of the house earlier, uncaring about his coat or gloves, and for the first time, he felt the hills’ cold unfiltered against his skin, biting and cruel.
He couldn’t bear to return home to get them. Not to that house where her presence still clung to every corner.
The higher he climbed, the colder it grew.
At first, it was bearable. But then, the air turned into something else. It wasn’t cold anymore; it was...alive, almost as though the wind that howled through these hills had claws.
When he reached the midpoint, frost clung to his lashes.
His breath came in shallow bursts, each exhale forming clouds that immediately froze into dust. His skin stung with every step, burning and freezing all at once.
His veins felt sluggish, like ice water was crawling through them instead of blood.
Then the cold began to eat deeper. It ran beneath his skin, sinking into the marrow, until he couldn’t feel his limbs properly.
His fingers stiffened, curling inward until they wouldn’t straighten.
His jaw ached when he tried to clench it, his lips cracked, the cold making sounds as the frost formed on his sleeves and spread like roots up his arms.
When he crossed the invisible line—the point where he always stopped—the air itself seemed to change density. It thickened, heavy with an unnatural chill that went past flesh and into the brain.
Thrax gasped as the cold sank its talons into his scar, burrowing deep.
His chest burned from the inside, as though ice and fire had joined hands inside his ribs.
His muscles trembled violently. He could feel nothing below his elbows.
His fingers had become glass, a lifeless dead weight hanging beside him.
He fell once, face-first into the stone, the impact jarring. The world tilted, his vision dimming. But even then, he pushed himself up. He couldn’t stop.
He wouldn’t stop.
Every inch forward felt like dragging his body through shards of glass. The frost cracked on his back as he moved, his hair stiff and clumped with ice. His heartbeat slowed, each thud echoing faintly in his ears, distant and fading.
At one point, he collapsed again—fully this time.
His body refused him, paralysed from cold.
Frost had taken him entirely; it was plastered to his eyelashes, his brows, his throat.
His skin had turned a marble shade of grey, his lips nearly blue.
He lay there, unable to move, eyes half-lidded as he stared at the grey mist swirling above.
A sweet, merciful, and eternal sleep called unto him, but he couldn’t take its hands. Not yet.
He had to fight it. Fight the cold, fight the exhaustion, fight death itself. And though his vision of Sanora behind his closed eyes tempted him to surrender—to die and follow her—it also drove him to crawl back to his knees.
He dragged himself forward.
Daylight had come and gone, meaning he’d walked for almost a full day. His body was ruined, his mind a haze, but his will remained. Until, at last, through the blinding frost, he saw a dark space ahead, and beyond it, there was nothing but blackness.
He knew what that darkness was.
The Crater.
He had spent centuries studying the terrain, spent years sending drones, sketching his own maps, memorising the patterns of magnetic shifts that destroyed every machine he sent. He had walked these same hills so often that he could navigate some paths with his eyes closed.
And for the first time, he had reached the final path.
Unable to stand, he crawled to the small opening in the rock wall, disbelief shaking through his frozen body. He didn’t know why that entrance existed, not like any human could get even halfway here without dying. Perhaps she had anticipated his visit one day.
With chest dragging over the frost-coated stones, he closed in on the narrow opening, putting a hand through.
Warmth.
That heat called to him, and desperately, he crawled through the hole, feeling the warmth seep into his frozen skin, thawing him just enough to breathe. Once his torso was inside, he opened his eyes—and found only darkness.
It was vast, endless, and silent. The air vibrated faintly, filled with an unseen pulse that wrapped around him. He could feel the power beneath the surface of that void. It slithered along his arms, coiling around his chest.
Shoving his whole body through, Thrax finally lay flat, chest facing upward, staring into the darkness that stretched forever.
He knew where he was.
Next to The Crater.
His insides might be frozen, his heartbeat might be faint, his mind might be distant, but he had made it. He was the first man to ever reach The Crater.
He’d expected the moon’s wrath to swallow him whole the moment he arrived, but it only watched silently.
And him?
He was dying.
He couldn’t feel anything. Not his limbs. Not his heartbeat. He’d always wanted to die where it all began—and now, he would.
If only.
As his mind drifted into the dark, one thought clung to the edge of his fading consciousness.
If only everything he had could be taken from him—his powers, his life—and she could be given back.
If only.
It was the first thing he had ever truly begged for.
If only.