Brute 173

 

Chapter 173 

ATASHA’S POV- 1 day before testing 

“For centuries, the Stone of the Goddess has been kept where the previous king rests,” Cassian said, his voice echoed across the chamber. He stepped to the far wall and pressed his palm to a shallow crest carved into the rock. “Do you know why that is?” 

I tightened my grip on my chest as I stared at that wall. I didn’t know about the stone of the goddess but I knew that a corrupted stone must be in that wall, somewhere. “Why?” I mumbled as I tried to control that suffocating feeling that was trying to overwhelm my senses. 

“Because it was a corrupted stone,” he answered. “Only the royal bloodline is taught this. We learn it as children. The stone was moved to the mausoleum to keep witches away. They can sense corruption. It repels them.” 

“I’m not a witch,” I said. 

“I know,” Cassian replied, his tone steady as he looked over his shoulder. “You’re reacting to corruption, not because you’re a witch, but because of your ability.” 

I swallowed hard, forcing myself to stand straight. The pressure in the air was getting heavier, thicker with every second. The walls seemed to hum, faint but relentless, like something alive was breathing beneath the stone. It crawled over my skin, pressing against my ribs until every breath scraped. 

My body reacted before I even thought to move. The same reflex that mended wounds, that closed cuts before I could bleed, was now working against the very thing that wanted to swallow me whole. I could feel it, my own power tightening inside me, forming a barrier under my skin, pushing back. 

The corruption pressed closer. 

My vision dimmed for a heartbeat, and I felt that pulse again, the same one from the stone he’d made me touch earlier, pulsing with something old and angry. It wanted to drag me into it, drown me in the same grief that lived in every corrupted stone. But my ability wasn’t just healing, it was suppression. It was defense. Every time that darkness reached for me, the warmth in my chest flared, sealing the cracks before they could spread. 

It was like my body refused to let me feel it fully. The pain, the sorrow, the fury, it burned for a second and then vanished, erased as quickly as it came. My ability wasn’t letting it stay. 

I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling the faint heat under my palm. I frowned. “Explain.” 

Cassian drew back his fist and drove it into a narrow seam in the stone. The impact cracked the surface. He struck again, and a wedge of rock split away, falling in a dull clatter. Behind it, a rough pocket glowed with a sick, pulsing red. He reached in and pulled out a fist-sized shard. Its light crawled along the veins like spoiled blood. 

He held it up between us. “Your ability heals. Everyone says that and stops there. Healing isn’t only closing cuts and mending bones. It forces things back to what they’re supposed to be. If something is damaged or wrong, your power pushes against it until it breaks or yields. That’s why corrupted stones ‘lose’ around you. You’re not absorbing them. You’re forcing the corruption to die.” 

My mouth went dry. “Elder Agape was certain I was fae.” 

“He could be wrong,” Cassian said. “Witches react to fae stones too. They feel the pull. But they can’t use them. They can’t shape them.” His eyes met mine. “And you are not a witch.” 

“Then what are you saying? If I am not a fae or a witch then… why do I react to the stones? Why can’t I use it?” 

He stared at me. “Someone who can purge corruption,” he said. “Someone who can make a bad stone clean. Someone who can purify the corrupted.” 

“Purify?” The word felt strange on my tongue. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used it. 

Cassian stepped closer and set the shard in my hands. Heat pricked my palms at once, followed by that knife- edge pressure behind my ribs. 

“Purify this stone,” he said. 

“I- but I don’t- ” 

“That’s an order,” he added. 

I blinked and stared at the stone. 

The stone pulsed in my hands like a living thing. It wasn’t the same faint hum as the sleeping fae stones the elder had given me, it throbbed unevenly, like a heartbeat gone wrong. 

The veins of red light twisted and coiled under its surface, moving like smoke trapped in glass. Every time it flared, pain rippled up my arms, sharp and deep, cutting through my chest before fading just as fast. My body was healing it before I could even register it fully, patching over every burn and sting the instant it came. 

But it didn’t stop. 

The pain came again, stronger. The closer I held it, the heavier it became, like it wanted to drag me down. My breath hitched. The pressure pressed behind my eyes, in my ribs, under my skin. It wasn’t just pain anymore -it was anger. I could feel it pouring off the stone, dark and suffocating. It wasn’t just broken; it was furious. 

I swallowed hard, forcing myself to stay still. For a moment, I thought I could almost hear it whisper, a sound without words, only emotion. It gave me rage, despair and loneliness so deep it felt endless. 

The same thing I’d felt that night I ‘absorbed’ the stone. 

I remembered the same heaviness filling my chest then, the pull that nearly tore through me. 

“Let it in,” Cassian said. 

I looked up at him. He didn’t explain, but he didn’t have to. I understood. 

To purify it, I had to stop fighting it. I had to open myself up to whatever it was, whatever it carried. 

My fingers trembled as I loosened my grip. I stopped resisting the pull and let it wash through me. 

It hit all at once. 

Grief, sharp and endless, poured through the cracks of the stone and into me. I saw flashes in the dark behind my eyes, faces, screams, a hand reaching out before fading into nothing. My throat burned. My knees nearly gave out, but I forced myself to stand. 

“Trust me,” he said. “You can do it.” 

I drew a breath and pushed into the stone. 

The pull hit like a drop into deep water. My vision narrowed at the edges, then went gray. The chamber fell away. The cold on my skin vanished. 

There was only weight and sound, metal on metal, boots slamming mud, men shouting names they never finished. I saw the ground split under a blast of red light. I smelled blood so strong it coated my tongue. Bodies pressed close, then were gone, ripped through like paper. The air burned. Something screamed inside the stone and tried to drag me under with it. 

My chest heaved. The old panic climbed my throat. It felt exactly like drowning, the kind that comes with no surface to break. 

You can do it. 

Cassian’s voice cut through the noise just as the bond between us steadied like a solid point in a moving field. I clung to that and set my jaw. 

Then… I started pushing back. 

Not with force. Force only fed the pull. I pushed the way I heal, by setting a shape and making everything match it. 

I gave the chaos edges. I told it where the walls were. I told it what a heartbeat should sound like, what air should feel like in a whole lung, what skin should be when it isn’t torn. Every image I built, I held. 

Every time the stone shoved grief at me, my body tried to erase it, and I let it, only this time I kept the feeling long enough to name it, then I pressed it out. 

The screams dulled first. They didn’t vanish, they moved behind a door I kept shut. The smell of blood thinned. The heat eased off my face. The ground under my feet stopped sliding. I pulled each piece away from me and set it outside the line I drew, war to the left, death to the right, the taste of iron into the floor, the red light up into the walls. I didn’t argue with it. I filed it. 

The stone bucked in my hands. Heat ran up my arms, then snapped off as my power smothered it. A crack of pain split behind my eyes, but it faded as fast as it arrived. And… I kept going. 

“Breathe,” Cassian said. 

And that was when I felt it-something moving under my skin, crawling toward my heart.