Chapter 32
RAVENA
Darkness pressed in from every angle—vast, suffocating, endless. It wasn’t just the absence of light; it felt alive, like it was breathing, watching… waiting. The landscape beneath my feet had been swallowed whole, reduced to a nightmare of jagged stone and silence.
Above, the moon loomed—bloated and red, a blood moon bleeding across the sky. Its sickly glow draped everything in shades of crimson, washing over the twisted spires that clawed at the heavens like the bones of a dead world. Shadows moved where they shouldn’t.
Eclipsara.
A realm that had forgotten the sun, where day never came and the sky bled red without end. The air was heavy, pulsing with old, vengeful magic. And in the heat of it all, he stood.
King Draeven.
A shadow carved from dark itself, cloaked in black and gold regal as he was terrifying.
He didn’t need to speak to command. His soldiers were a silent wall behind him, steel and death wrapped in armour, their faces hidden, soulless.
But even among them, Magnus stood out—tall, unmovable, a walking executioner.
His very presence made my chest tighten.
But it wasn’t him that froze me.
It was her.
My mother. Selene.
She stood on the opposite side, facing them with fire in her eyes and blood on her hands. In her grip was the dagger, its purple blade catching the blood moon's light. The same one I carried, the last thing my mother gave to me to protect myself.
Her other hand hovered over the curve of her stomach—protective, possessive and desperate.
She was carrying me.
Even surrounded by death, standing before a King who has caused so much pain, she didn’t cower. She stood tall against him, showing no fear.
Only that fierce, quiet defiance glowing in her eyes like the last ember refusing to die in the endless dark of Eclipsara.
“Enough running, Selene.”
His voice slithered through the silence. “That thing inside you belongs to me. And I will have it—one way or another.”
He let the words hang there, thick and poisonous, before tilting his head, voice dropping to something colder.
“Even if I have to rip it out of you myself.”
Laughter rippled through his soldiers, drifting like smoke across the scorched earth, feeding the dread pressing in around her. Around us. But still, she didn’t move. Not even a flicker of fear crossed her face.
She just pressed her palm tighter against her belly. Against me.
A silent vow. She would die before she let him touch me.
“I will never let you have her.”
My mother's voice rang out, but the king just laughed. A low, cold sound, serrated with cruelty. It didn’t echo—it devoured. The soldiers around him followed like puppets.
Then he stepped forward, and I held my breath.
He was like a predator with all the time in the world. Each boot crushed the damp earth beneath him, and it felt like the ground itself recoiled in his wake.
And still—Selene didn’t move.
Not even a breath of hesitation as I moved closer just to be near her, even though this was just a memory.
“Funny,” he remarked, tapping the edge of his blade against his gloved palm, a hollow sound. “You speak as if you have a choice.”
There was no soul behind his eyes. No warmth or mercy. Only hunger.
The inhuman emptiness that whispered of what he was—something far worse than a monster.
“So, here’s what’s going to happen,” he said, his voice dropping into something soft—almost tender. A mockery of kindness.
“You come willingly. You give birth. You hand it over.” A pause. The blood moon caught the cruel glint in his eyes. “And I let you walk away with your spine intact.”
He stepped forward again, a cruel smile spreading across his face.
“Or I carve you open right here and now… and take what’s mine from the ruins of your body.”
His gaze, just as he spoke those words, slid to the dagger in my mother’s grip, his expression tightening just for a breath.
It was subtle—barely there—but I caught it.
A flicker of something… not quite fear, but close enough to crack his mask.
Recognition. Hesitation. The way his fingers twitched, curling slightly, told me everything.
He knew that blade. And it unsettled him.
Selene, of course, noticed too. Her stance sharpened, her grip on the hilt tightening like a promise.
“You’re pathetic,” she spat, each word like poison. “Torturing. Killing. Trying to create monsters because you hate the one staring back at you every time you look in a mirror.”
Her voice didn’t waver. Not once.
“You could’ve ruled a realm—had loyalty, power—but that wasn’t enough for you. It never is. You want to consume everything. Own everything.”
She exhaled sharply, hand instinctively drifting to the curve of her stomach again.
“But you’ll never touch my baby,” she hissed. “You power-hungry, egotistical, sadistic piece of shit.”
The air thrummed with tension because I knew that look on her face. That fire in her eyes. I’d seen it a hundred times growing up—when she stood between the helpless, when she went toe-to-toe with people twice her size, when death stared her down and she didn’t so much as blink.
Even now—outnumbered, outmatched, carrying me—she was a fortress. The amazing woman I looked up to all my life and always will.
A lump formed in my throat, the ache bringing tears to my eyes.
She had raised me to be just like her. Stubborn to the bone, reckless as hell, the kind of girl who met monsters with a smirk and raised a middle finger. And by the stars, I missed her. I miss her every damn day.
But in this moment, watching her stand her ground against the monster who would one day rip her from my life, without so much as a flicker of hesitation—I didn’t feel grief.
I felt pride.
I am my mother’s daughter. And I will make damn sure they never forget that.
King Draevens' face contorted with rage, fangs bared like a predator unmasked, and then—without warning—he hurled his word towards her.
I tried to scream.
But my voice caught in my throat, my body frozen, useless. I squeezed my eyes shut as my heart slammed against my ribs like it could break free. I knew this memory couldn’t touch her. I knew she’d survive this moment. But none of that mattered.
Watching her in danger felt like suffering a nightmare I’d never woken up from.
Metal tore through the air with a vicious whistle—then a crash, like thunder splitting the sky.
My eyes napped open.
A shadow had moved between them. Tendrils of smoke curled around the figure like it breathed night itself. In one impossibly swift motion, it caught the blade mid-flight and turned it back on the monster.
Steel flew like lightning—and struck.
One of the king’s guards went down with a sickening crunch, the sword burying deep in armour and bone.
My mother exhaled, and I saw the way her body shook. Her gaze shifted to the figure cloaked in shadow, and something crossed her face. Recognition. Wariness. Maybe even relief. It was gone before I could place it.
I saw the man fully as he turned.
He was tall. Towering, really. Not bulky, but carved from lean muscle, like every inch of him was built to move, to strike, to kill.
Black clothing clung to him like smoke made solid, merging with the night as if he had been born from it.
His hair was wild—white with streaks of black, like ink spilt across snow, wind-tousled and untamed.
But his skin had tattoos crawling up his throat and running around his hands like serpents, etched deep in lines that pulsed faintly beneath the moon's light. Not decorative—no, they were symbols of power. Spells. Curses. Whatever they meant, they hadn’t been inked—they’d been burned into him first.
His face was striking, in a way that didn’t feel remotely human. Beautiful, but wrong. Too sharp in places. A silver ring pierced one nostril, another on his lower lip gleamed when he smirked—an expression that felt like a warning rather than amusement. But his eyes rooted me in place.
Endless.
Black as a starless void, they devoured light, emotion, everything. No warmth. No glimmer of soul. Just a quiet, bottomless abyss with something deep inside… something that looked a lot like death.
A demon.
Even from here, I could feel it bleeding off him—the cold, crushing weight of something not born in this realm. He’s from Dravokar.
The King’s expression shifted—lips curling, eyes narrowing with recognition.
“You,” he spat, anger radiating from him.
The demon moved slightly, the smirk on his lips still there as he looked over the army of soldiers.
“Miss me?” he drawled, voice like velvet.
My mother didn’t move away from him. But I saw the shift—the almost-imperceptible tightening in her shoulders, the way her grip on the dagger twitched, ever so slightly. She was ready to fight with the demon, not against him.
The demon's gaze slid to Selene's stomach, and something softened in his eyes for a second. But then it was gone. Snuffed out like it had never existed. What took place was cold and vicious—lethal in a way that didn’t need fangs or claws.
He turned towards my monster, and the air around him shifted. His shadows slithered at his feet like they were alive—hungry things searching for death.
“Lay another finger on Selene and I’ll carve you open, string you up with your own entrails, and let the birds pick you clean while you’re still breathing.”
The soldiers reacted on instinct—blades drawn, boots shifting into formation—but it didn’t matter. They were already dead.
The demon didn’t lift a hand.
The shadows answered for him
They exploded outward like a living storm, tendrils coiling and lashing through the air, fast as lightning and twice as merciless.
Screams tore into the night, cut short as the darkness found flesh.
Limbs were torn violently from bodies, and steel armour crumpled like tin beneath the crushing weight of it.
One soldier barely had time to blink before a tendril punched clean through his chest, his sword clattering uselessly to the ground.
It was carnage.
Pure, brutal, beautiful in its horror.
Blood painted the earth, thick and steaming, pooling around the king’s boots as if the shadows were making him an altar. The metallic tang hit the back of my throat.
The demon didn’t blink. Didn’t smile.
When all the soldiers were dead, he stepped onto the bodies without pause, boots crushing the flesh beneath him.
“You’ll regret that, demon,” he said, his voice deathly calm.
But the demon laughed, like the whole thing was amusing. A low, rich sound that spread through the night like something blasphemous, something born from nightmares. His head tilted back, revelling in the carnage he created.
“Try me,” he drawled.
Then, with a single step, he was beside my mother—his hand curling around her arm carefully. Selene didn’t resist as she let him touch her.
“Better start cleaning up, Lucy,” the demon taunted.
He leaned in slightly, like he was about to share something intimately.
“But next time?” his grin spread wider—feral, all teeth. “I won’t miss. I will kill you. And the best part?” He winked. “I know how.”
King Draeven didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But the tension in his jaw, the slight flare of his nostrils—he felt that threat. Deep inside.
The demon didn’t wait for a response as his shadows swirled around him and my mother, rising fast and heavy. And in a blink, they were gone.
It reached me too.
I felt it drag me down, icy fingers curling around my lungs, pulling me under before I could breathe. And then, there was nothing.