Chapter 42 #2
They were empty. The storm was gone. The male who had whispered against my skin, who had marked me and claimed me and loved me only hours ago, was gone. There was only the Void.
He looked at me, and there was no recognition. No warmth. Nothing.
"Cain," I whispered, stepping closer, my hand reaching out, trembling. "It's me. I'm here. It's Ophelia."
I tried to touch his arm, to find the male beneath the armour.
He recoiled.
He stepped back as if my touch were filth, his lip curling in a sneer that wasn't even angry—it was indifferent.
"Cain, please," I choked out, tears blurring my vision. "Don't do this. Look at me! I found it! I found your mother’s letter! You’re wrong! You’re not the end!"
He looked at me. And for the first time, he spoke.
"The Thresholds will fall," he said.
His voice was a stranger's voice. Hollow. Dead.
Before I could process the horror of it, he raised his hand. Viscous shadows erupted from the ground, wrapping around my ankles, my wrists, my waist. I screamed as they lifted me, dragging me back toward the house, away from him.
"No! Cain! NO!"
He didn't watch me go. He turned back to his horse, mounting it in one fluid, lethal motion, and rode toward the looming tower that housed the Alistair Threshold.
I was thrown back into our private suite, the shadows depositing me roughly onto the rug. The door slammed shut, the sound of the lock engaging like a thunderstorm. The windows sealed with black magic.
"Cain!" I screamed, hammering my fists against the door. "Listen to me! You’re not the poison! We’re the cure!"
Silence answered me.
“Poppy!” I thought, frantically reaching for the bond. “Poppy, find him! Bite him! Do something!”
Silence.
A sudden, paralysing horror seized me. I could no longer hear Poppy. I could no longer feel the comforting hum of her familiar’s core.
He had severed the bond.
"No," I whispered, sliding down the door. "He cut me off. He cut us all off."
But I couldn't stop. I had the letter. I had the truth. And I was not going to let us die for a lie.
I scanned the room. The door was sealed. The windows were reinforced. But there was a vent—a small, ornate grate near the ceiling used for airflow in the summer.
I dragged a heavy armchair under it. I climbed up, my fingers tearing at the metal filigree. It was bolted shut.
I didn't care. I channeled every ounce of Life Magic I had left. I poured it into my fingers, heating the metal until it warped and groaned.
With a scream of effort, I ripped the grate from the wall.
I scrambled through the vent, the narrow stone tunnel scratching my skin raw, the dust choking me. I emerged, panting, onto the cold marble of the main corridor.
I ran.
I couldn’t remember which direction the Alistair Threshold was, only that I needed to find the source of his power before it was too late. I followed the cold. I followed the feeling of the world ending.
I found the chamber. It was vast, dominated by the gothic archway of the Threshold. Cain stood in the centre, his back to me, his arms raised. The air was a tangible, raw scream of Death Magic, ready to shatter that veil-looking membrane.
He was entirely consumed by the power, his profile broken, his control frayed by the sheer magnitude of the task.
“Cain!” I shrieked, running across the massive chamber.
He turned, slowly, his now obsidian eyes black with the consuming agony of the world. He was lost inside the power, his face contorted in pain and the chilling conviction of his actions.
I reached him. I brought my hands up to his face, my palms flat against his cold, hard cheeks, channelling the raw, powerful heat of my Life-Wielder core directly into his pain-eaten consciousness.
"I'm here, Cain. This isn't freedom. This is a graveyard. You cannot unmake reality just because you are terrified I might get hurt by it. That isn't mercy, it's annihilation! If you love me, don't try to save me. Ruin me with life, but do not leave us in the nothingness!”
He closed his eyes, his immense power seizing, momentarily stalled by the counter-force of my Empathy. He was completely vulnerable.
I surged upward, wrapping my arms around his neck, and kissed him with a desperate, fierce, life-affirming violence. I poured every ounce of my conviction, my remaining strength, and my horrifying, dark love into the act, trying to reach the broken boy and smother the monster with compassion.
Cain roared—not with a sound of anger, but with a sound of agonising, pure reaction.
For one painful second, he kissed me back. His lips, cold but desperate, met mine with a corresponding, consuming hunger. The world tilted, magic pulsed, and I felt the raw, terrifying truth that I might have won.
Then, with a devastating final assertion of self-preservation, he snapped out of the trance.
Cain shoved me away from him, the force of his push sending me sprawling onto the cold stone floor. His face was a contorted mask of pain and blinding, feral rage.
"You are too late! I did this for the both of us. Now we can be at peace," he screamed, the sound echoing off the vaulted ceiling, his voice thick with raw agony.
I looked up, my heart shattered, my lips stinging. I reached for the familiar voice in my mind, but there was only silence.
Cain did not look at me. He didn't dare.
He turned back to the Threshold archway, his body rigid, a silhouette of obsidian against the pulsating grey light of the end.
The Veil shuddered.
It wasn't a rumble; it was a sickness in the air.
A sudden, nauseating drop in pressure that sucked the breath from my lungs.
A long, catastrophic crack, soundless and deadly, ripped across the structure of the Threshold, splitting the black, shimmering veil like a wound opening in the fabric of the universe.
The Void bled through. Cold. Absolute. Hungry.
Cain lifted his chin, his eyes locking onto the widening fissure. He didn't look afraid. He looked like someone who was finally, tragically, going home.
"The price of your compassion," he grated, his voice a low, raw whisper that carried the absolute finality of death.
He lowered his head, his shoulders shaking with the force of a sob he refused to release. He spoke to the darkness, but the words were a eulogy for me.
“You deserve flower fields bathed in the summer sunlight,” he whispered, the memory of our differences hanging heavy in the air.
“You deserve life. You deserve to breathe without the weight of a thousand years of sorrow pressing on your chest. And all I can give you... all I have ever been able to give you... is the coldness of the night.”
I tried to speak, tried to scream his name, but the magic of the collapsing Threshold stole my voice.
“You deserve to feel only love, and warmth, and…” His voice broke, a jagged shard of humanity cutting through the monster. “You deserve to never know the feeling of being broken.”
He slowly raised his hands, spreading them wide as if to embrace the oncoming annihilation.
“That is why I have to do this,” he said, his tone turning terrifyingly gentle. “So you will never feel pain again. I am scrubbing the world clean for you, Ophelia. I am giving you the silence. Just like you did me.”
He looked into the abyss, and for the first time, I realised he wasn't destroying the world out of hate. He was destroying it out of a love so warped, so consumed by everything in his past, that it looked like mass-murder.
“The Thresholds are already falling.”