Chapter 66
LXVI.
DANTE
His shadows had never left her.
They'd been on her since the first touch, a protective instinct he hadn't acknowledged until it was too late to stop. Threads wrapped around her wrist, woven through her hair. Barely visible, but there.
When Caelum's transport circle activated, those shadows went with her.
Dante felt it instantly. The pull. Her being ripped from his realm. From his side. The bond snapping taut like a fishing line caught on something massive and sinking fast.
Hours ago she'd been in his arms. He'd tasted her, felt her come apart beneath him, held her while she fell asleep.
And now she was gone.
The stone circle still crackled with residual magic. The other Death Lords converged.
"The transport signature is scrambled," Thessa whispered. "Layered. Hidden beneath—"
"I know where she is."
His voice came out flat.
He could feel her through the connection. Her terror. Her confusion. The way her heart raced when she was trying to be brave.
Seraphina moved closer, understanding the danger in his stillness. "We'll help you—"
"No." His shadows darkened. “Go back to your realm. He'll use the chaos to expand if we all leave."
"Reaper—"
"If I'm not back in a couple of hours, assume I've failed." He turned toward the portal. "Then burn his paradise to the ground."
He didn't wait for agreement. Just followed the thread connecting him to her, tearing open a pathway through reality.
The transition fought him. Reality buckling, twisting, trying to keep him out. Not a normal passage between realms. Something hidden, fortified, built in the spaces between spaces.
When he finally forced his way through, the refinery slammed into him like a fist.
Extraction chambers stretched endlessly. Souls strapped inside, screaming as golden light was torn from their chests. The machinery hummed, processing them one after another.
This was what Caelum meant by peaceful paradise. This was where he'd been taking them. All those contented souls. This was what he'd done to make them that way.
His shadows recoiled from the concentrated despair before surging outward, feeding on it. But the thread connecting him to Brynn was what mattered. That was what pulled him forward.
Alarms shrieked.
Figures poured from the processing chambers, shells in armor. His shadows tore through them without slowing. More appeared. Dozens, then hundreds. He carved through them, but they kept coming. Each wave more organized than the last.
Victims, not soldiers. Souls Caelum had erased and turned into weapons. And Dante was destroying what remained of them to reach her.
The facility sprawled endlessly. Levels stacked on levels, corridors branching in every direction. Processing floors filled with chambers. Shell soldiers guarding every passage.
The thread pulled him deeper. Stronger with each level he descended.
A blade found his shoulder. Another his ribs. Minor wounds, but accumulating. Dark ichor welled against his skin before his shadows surged to compensate.
His power was draining, the army learning with each wave, finding the hairline gaps that widened as exhaustion mounted.
Then the thread pulled harder. More insistent.
He moved faster, abandoning caution. His shadows exploded outward, clearing entire corridors. The facility groaned under the weight of his power—metal buckling, support beams cracking.
The thread blazed with pain.
Her pain.
Then he heard it.
Her scream.
The sound of her being tortured.
The thread flared with her agony, sharp enough to make him stagger. Last night, that voice had been gasping his name, laughing against his chest.
Now she was screaming because he wasn't fast enough.
Exhaustion didn't matter. Nothing mattered but getting to her.
He tore through the next door and found himself facing a massive chamber. Thousands of shell soldiers in perfect formation, stretching beyond sight.
And beyond them—
Brynn.
Strapped to a chair, arms locked in glowing restraints. Blood on her wrists where she'd fought them. Her face was pale with pain.
And Caelum standing over her with a twisted ward-tool pressed to her arm, golden light pulsing as it tore at her abilities.
While she screamed.
Their eyes met across the distance.
Relief flashed across her face. Then terror. Then Caelum's hand tightened on the tool, and her back arched with fresh agony.
Another scream. Weaker this time, her voice breaking.
The army flooded forward, thousands of shells moving to block his path. To slow him down while their master continued torturing what belonged to Dante.
Every bit of restraint. Every ounce of control he'd maintained while searching, while conserving power.
It meant nothing now.
Dante stopped holding anything back.
His shadows exploded outward with enough force to crack the floor beneath him. The temperature plummeted to impossible depths, frost spreading across every surface. His form flickered between solid and something else entirely.
The shells between them dissolved. Hundreds gone in seconds. The army tried to reform, tried to block his path, but they were hollow copies facing the genuine thing.
Through the gap his power had created, he saw her clearly now.
Tears on her cheeks. The tool was still pressed to her arm, still glowing.
She was still wearing his shirt under that coat. Still carrying pieces of him with her. And Caelum was trying to tear those away too.
But the shells kept coming. Wave after wave, synchronized to overwhelm through sustained assault. From every angle simultaneously. He met them with unleashed power, shadows tearing through dozens at a time.
Metal screamed. Armor shattered. Bodies dissolved.
But there were thousands.
For every dozen he destroyed, two dozen more stepped into the gap. The army was adapting, exploiting the fractures in his defenses that grew wider as his power drained.
More blades found marks through the gaps—his shoulder, his forearm, his thigh. Cuts were accumulating with each passing moment.
His power was still vast, still devastating everything close to him, but even he had limits. He'd never tested them. Never had reason to push this far.
Never had something he couldn't bear to lose.
A spear grazed his neck, just enough to draw blood.
The shells pressed closer, sensing weakness. More disciplined strikes, tighter formations. Learning that he could be worn down.
He was tiring, and Caelum, watching from beside her chair with that tool still in his hand, knew it.
"Ah, there we are." Caelum's voice carried across the chaos, calm through the carnage. "The Reaper, come to save his thief. How predictable."
He gestured casually, and the army shifted, creating a corridor between Dante and the chair. An invitation. Or a dare.
"Please." Caelum rested his hand on the back of her chair, dangerously close to her shoulder.
She flinched but couldn't pull away. "Let's discuss this reasonably.
You're powerful, Reaper, perhaps the most powerful of all the Death Lords.
But you're in my realm now. Fighting my army.
Destroying victims who've already suffered enough. "
"Each one was someone's beloved," Caelum continued, almost gently. "Someone's child, parent, lover. And you're unmaking them by the hundreds just to reach one mortal girl."
She wasn't just one mortal girl. She was everything.
His shadows writhed around him. The temperature dropped another ten degrees. Frost crept across the floor, climbing the legs of the nearest soldiers.
"Let her go." A growl more than words.
"Or what?" Caelum's smile widened. "You'll fight through my entire army? Destroy thousands more while I watch? You've already killed hundreds, Reaper. How many more will you obliterate before you admit you can't win through force?"
He spread his hands in a gesture of reason.
"Even the Reaper himself eventually tires. And I..." He gestured at the endless army, at the chambers humming above. "I have soldiers without end. All the time in existence. All the patience required to wait for you to exhaust yourself."
He was right. Dante could feel it: the drain, the wounds, the power that had been infinite an hour ago now scraping against its edges.
He couldn't fight forever. But he didn't have to fight forever. He just had to fight long enough.
The army stood motionless. Above, the chambers hummed and souls screamed.
Caelum's expression turned thoughtful.
"So let's be civilized. Find a solution that satisfies us both."
His eyes gleamed.
"We both want Brynn alive. Whole. Herself. The question is whether she remains that way... or becomes fuel for something greater. Her essence, purified, serving eternal paradise. Isn't that better than a brief mortal life?"
Caelum didn't understand. He couldn't.
Dante would trade every century of his existence for one more night with her.
Caelum touched the chair near her shoulder. She jerked away, and Dante's shadows surged forward before he forced them back.
"What do you say, Reaper? Shall we discuss terms? Your strength and her abilities could be valuable to my vision. If you'd only see reason."
His shadows expanded.
"There's no negotiation."
The temperature plummeted. Frost formed on everything—armor, weapons, the chair she was strapped to.
"There's only you. And me. And what I'm going to do to you for touching what's mine."
"Pity." Caelum sighed, genuinely regretful. He gestured.
The army moved.
They came in waves. Dante met them with unleashed power—shadows tearing through dozens at a time. But thousands more waited. The soldiers adapted, found gaps, pressed closer.
More blades got through, more cuts opening. His power flickered as weariness mounted.
She was watching. She needed to know he wouldn't give up on her.
Not ever.
The army pressed harder, surrounding him, forcing him to fight on all sides simultaneously.
He was tiring. Caelum knew it. He could see it in the bastard's smile.