Chapter 22 When Blood Spills #2
Her scream broke mid-breath, a choked, hollow sound.
The glow in her eyes dimmed, and for a moment, she seemed to look past him, past me, into something only she could see.
But then her body fractured and crumbled to dust that spiralled upward on a phantom wind before scattering to the floor in a heap.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Atlas lowered his sword slowly, his chest rising and falling with measured breaths. As for me, I stayed where I was, the faint smell of potent power still burning in my nose, the image of the witch’s disintegration burned behind my eyes.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The storm had passed, but its ghost still hummed in the air between us.
His shoulders slumped as he took a moment after the fight to compose himself.
However, it was in that small reprieve he gave himself that neither of us saw the threat we never expected, and we both realized too late that the fight was far from over.
I gasped as the witch's ashes began to stir.
At first, I thought it was just the breeze again, but the air was eerily still.
The pale dust shifted in defiance of nature, gathering like storm clouds before slowly gliding toward me.
As it crept closer, a darkness stretched across the ground, moving with intent, with hunger.
I would have blamed it on the sun, on branches reaching across the forest floor, but there were no trees left standing around us. And that shadow, slithering across the dirt, was coming straight for me.
“Atlas,” I whispered, his name escaping me in a breath of terror.
He turned just as the darkness reached my boots, spreading like ink beneath me. I tried to step away, but something unseen seized my ankles in a freezing grip. The second time I said his name, it was a scream, strangled by fear, as a blade of pure shadow pressed against my throat. “Atlas!”
Time seemed to slow, each heartbeat stretching into eternity as death’s icy fingers wrapped around my throat.
The witch’s return defied logic. I had watched her die, seen her body crumble to dust, yet here she was, risen from the grave, a nightmare given form again.
I couldn’t see her, not with her decayed body pressed flush against my back, but the cold edge of steel kissing my skin told me enough.
“Impossible,” Atlas breathed, and that one word, laced with disbelief and fear, made my stomach drop. I had never heard that tone from him before. The unshakable General, the stoic King, looked afraid.
The witch’s voice hissed from the air itself, distorted and hollow, yet dripping with malice.
“Nothing is final. When you have been touched by the Kátharsi your soul is marked forever. Though the same cannot be said for your precious mortal. Now, lower your weapon, or I will slit her throat and you will be forced to watch her bleed.”
Atlas’s sword faltered. His chest rose and fell sharply, his eyes fixed on me with an expression I had never seen before…
He was finally afraid of something.
My lungs seized. I tried to steady my breathing, but it came out ragged, shallow gasps scraping at my throat.
When I met his eyes, I saw something worse than fear, helplessness.
His hand was white-knuckled around his sword hilt, but I shook my head at him, silently begging him not to move. The smallest misstep could end me.
I had faced death before, more times than I could count, but this was different. This time, it wasn’t just my life on the line. I was the key to the Rift, the only hope of sending Atlas and his people home, of stopping the chaos. If I died here, that hope would die with me.
The witch’s voice coiled around me like smoke, rasping against my ear.
“It is simple,” she hissed, her tone dripping with malice. “I can kill her now and you can watch her bleed out at my feet, or you can allow me to take her with me. One holds a chance, the other, certain death. Your choice, false King.”
Her words slithered under my skin. The blade pressed deeper, a single bead of blood sliding down my neck, hot and thick.
But it wasn’t the pain that made me tremble, it was the venom in her voice, the way she said, ‘false King’.
I didn’t understand the insult, but Atlas’s jaw tightened, his nostrils flaring, and I knew she had found his weakness.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low and lethal, the kind of calm that came before a storm.
“I have a third option,” he said, each syllable dripping with command. “Let her go, and I may spare you your wraith form. Your dark soul may continue, though it is clearly not meant for the afterlife.”
The witch screamed, a shriek that split the air. The sound was wrong, layered, inhuman, like the cries of a hundred tortured souls echoing through one mouth. The forest vibrated with it. My knees buckled. I wanted to cover my ears, but her grip pinned me still.
And then, the pain.
The blade bit deeper, not a quick slash but a deliberate, punishing drag, just enough to let the warmth of blood spill freely. My breath hitched in a strangled sob. The sound, that single, helpless sound, shattered the last thread holding Atlas together.
Something in him broke.
Hell’s Monster made an appearance.