Brute 295

Atasha’s POV 

97 

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I did not need to be told twice to understand what I was seeing, because it had already happened to Rio and then to Grace, and the pattern was now carved into my nerves with the kind of certainty that makes thinking feel pointless. 

If a Shadow could crawl into a vessel and wear it, then Celeste was not a hostage anymore. She was an opening. 

The moment the black liquid poured into her mouth, the beasts around her began to fail. 

It did not look like an injury. It looked like something inside the clearing decided they were no longer worth keeping alive. 

One beast that had been circling close to the embedded bodies stumbled mid–step and dropped to its knees, and then its plates dulled as if the life under them had been switched off. 

Another tried to retreat, claws scraping the stone, but its legs folded under it and it collapsed face–first, twitching in short 

spasms. 

A third opened its mouth as if to roar, but the sound died halfway, replaced by a wet choking noise as its throat tightened and its body shrank inward, as if something unseen was pulling the strength out of its muscles and draining it through the 

air. 

The pull was not subtle anymore. 

The air around Celeste thickened, and the beasts closest to her began to look wrong, their bodies dimming in real time as if their blood had been replaced by sand, their movements slowing until they became heavy, stumbling shapes that could not keep their limbs aligned. 

My stomach turned as I realized what it meant. 

They were being used. 

Not as targets, not as enemies, but as fuel. 

I looked at Xylas. “Handle the beasts,” I snapped, because if I let myself hesitate I would start thinking about Grace again and I would lose time I did not have. “I am taking Celeste before she opens her eyes.” 

His head turned sharply, his gaze followed mine to the embedded bodies. He did not argue, but his expression changed the moment he understood what I was about to do, and that understanding made his mouth tighten like he wanted to refuse and could not find the right lie fast enough. 

“Do it,” he said anyway, because he was King and because he knew what the core was doing to our world. 

I gripped my sword until my knuckles ached, then ran. 

I used the cave wall as leverage the way I had done in fights where speed mattered more than elegance, boot striking stone, body pushing off hard, and my momentum carried me in a brutal are toward the clearing because the ground between us was too open and too exposed to cross slowly. 

As I closed the distance, I saw Celeste’s face change. 

It was not a dramatic transformation. It was worse than that, because it was subtle and gradual, like rot creeping under skin, like a sickness choosing where to settle, and the gray around her mouth darkened into something deeper while her jaw slackened just enough to look less like unconsciousness and more like a body making room for a new occupant 

I refused to stare at it. 

10:04 Thu, Feb 19 MO 

Chapter 295 

97 

55 vouchers 

I refused to negotiate with the part of my mind that still wanted to remember her as my sister, because Rio had been a friend to some of these men once, and Grace had been real, and none of that had stopped what the Shadows did to them. 

I landed. 

My boots hit stone hard enough to send pain up my legs, and I was already swinging before my balance fully settled. 

The blade cut through Celeste’s neck in a single committed motion. 

It did not feel like beheading an enemy in the middle of battle. It felt like cutting a cord that had been tied around the world’s throat. 

Her head separated cleanly enough that it rolled, and her body, still embedded in the ground, jerked once as if the core itself reacted to the loss. 

I landed in a crouch a few feet away, close enough to smell the beasts dying around me, close enough to hear their bodies making those wet, failing noises as they lost whatever force had been holding them upright. 

Then the scream hit. 

It did not come from a throat. 

It did not come from air pushed through lungs. 

It came from the space itself, from the wrong liquid that had been inside Celeste, and it tore through the clearing like a sound made of pressure and hatred, high enough that my ears rang instantly and my stomach lurched as if my body wanted to vomit the noise out. 

I clapped both hands over my ears, but it still stabbed through bone. 

My vision flashed, and I tasted metal again. The beasts around me reacted like they had been whipped, some collapsing faster, some twitching as if the scream had snapped whatever weak stability they had left. 

The black liquid erupted out of Celeste’s severed neck. 

It did not spill like blood. It surged like something trying to escape a trap, stretching into a thick ribbon that slapped against the ground and then pulled itself forward with violent urgency, and for a heartbeat it looked almost frantic, as if it had not expected to be forced out so quickly. 

It lunged toward the next body. 

Toward one of the Nightfall men embedded beside her. 

I did not give it the chance. 

I pushed off the stone, sprinted two steps, and swung again. 

The blade took the next head cleanly, and the moment it separated the black liquid recoiled as if it had been burned, then released that same scream again, the sound twisting into a harsher pitch that made my eyes water even as I fought to stay upright. 

The beasts around us began to weaken faster. 

Some that had been moving earlier dropped mid–step and scraped across the ground as it their limbs could no longer hold their own weight. Others tried to crawl away from the clearing, but their bodies kept sagging as it then bones had softened, as if whatever was draining them did not care whether they lived long enough to flee 

It clicked into place with brutal clarity, 

10:04 Thu, Feb 19 M 

Chapter 295 

97 

55 vouchers 

The core was still feeding, but now the Shadow was feeding too, and the beasts were being taken apart to supply it. The longer the Shadow stayed outside a vessel the more it seemed to drink from everything in reach to keep itself stable. 

I spun toward Xylas and shouted over the chaos, forcing my voice out even as my ears rang and my head throbbed from the screams. “We need to destroy the stone,” I yelled. “If it keeps shining, it keeps feeding them, and if it keeps feeding them, we will never stop this surge.” 

Xylas was fighting near the edge of the clearing, blade cutting through beasts that tried to circle in, and even wounded they were still dangerous because their bodies were built for killing, but the light had already begun to change them and he was forced to adjust his footwork every time one of them moved in a new way. 

He glanced at the floating stone, and something hard passed through his expression. 

“Fae stones,” he shouted back. “Use fae stones and collapse the core.” 

I nodded, already reaching toward the pouch at my belt, already feeling the weight of the stone against my palm like a promise and a threat, and then everything shifted in the space between breaths. 

The Shadow stopped fleeing from severed bodies. 

The black liquid snapped away from the embedded men and launched toward the King. 

It moved faster than I expected, not crawling now but flying in a low, whipping arc that slapped against Xylas’s chest and arms like tar thrown with intent, and he tried to slash it away, but the blade did not cut it the way steel cuts flesh, because the liquid split and then rejoined, and the part that touched him clung tighter as if it had found what it wanted. 

My eyes widened so hard it hurt. 

It was not going for an unconscious vessel. 

It was going for him while he was awake. 

It was going for him while he was fighting. 

That realization made my skin go cold, because it meant there were no safe conditions anymore, and anyone standing in this clearing could be taken. 

“Xylas!” I screamed, and my voice cracked on his name. 

He staggered as the black liquid climbed. 

It spread across his forearm and up to his shoulder, then latched onto the side of his face in a wet smear that looked like paint until it began to move with purpose, pulling itself toward his eyes. 

The King tried to wrench back, tried to cut at it again, but the Shadow clung like something alive and sticky, and the moment it reached his face it pushed. 

It forced itself into his eyes. 

Not as a clean entry, not as a smooth possession, but as a violent invasion that made his body jerk hard, because the black liquid sank into the corners of his eye sockets and slid under the lids, and his mouth opened in a sound that started as a shout and turned into choking when the liquid spread down across his lips. 

It poured into his mouth. 

It filled his throat, 

It made him gag, and then it made him vomit blood because his body was rejecting it and losing anyway. Blood spilled down his chin and splattered his armor while his hands clawed at his own face in frantic, failing motions. 

10:04 Thu, Feb 19 MD 

Chapter 295 

I did not move for a heartbeat. 

Then I ran toward him, forcing my legs to move. 

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Xylas dropped to one knee, shaking hard, and with the last of his control he drove his own sword down into the stone to hold himself upright, then lifted his head toward me with eyes that were half clouded by the black liquid still crawling under his lids. 

“Atasha,” he rasped, voice thick as if it had to push through something to exist, and blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. “Blow up the stone.” 

My chest seized. 

He did not sound like a King giving a command. 

He sounded like a man holding a door shut with his own body while something on the other side tried to break through. 

I fumbled the fae stone free, palm sweating around it. I was already lifting it, already preparing to trigger it, already calculating how far I could throw it and still survive the blast. 

Then something hit me from the side. 

It slammed into my shoulder and sent the fae stone flying out of my grip. 

My hand snapped for it, but another hand caught it first. 

A figure lunged through the chaos, fast enough that I only saw the motion in fragments, and the fae stone disappeared into their fist as they yanked back out of reach. 

My breath stopped. 

Because whoever it was, they moved like they knew exactly what I was trying to do, and they stole the only chance we had before I could even activate it.