Brute 296

Chapter 296 

Chapter 296 

Atasha’s POV 

“Cassian?” 

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I almost could not believe it when I saw him standing not too far away, water and dust clinging to his armor, a fae stone glowing in his hand like he had ripped it straight out of the mountain’s teeth. 

He was real. He was here. He had taken the stone. 

“What are you doing!?” I demanded, my voice breaking with shock and fury in the same breath, because a heartbeat ago I was about to activate that stone and now he was holding it like it belonged to him 

Cassian did not waste time answering. 

He looked past me, past the beasts, past the floating white stone, and his eyes locked onto the King. 

Then he cracked the fae stone. 

The sound was small, like a hard shell splitting, but the air reacted like it had been struck. 

Light bled out in jagged lines through Cassian’s fingers, and he threw the broken stone toward Xylas with the kind of force that meant he was not aiming to scare, not aiming to warn, but aiming to erase. 

Before I could even shout again, Cassian grabbed me. 

His arm hooked around my waist and he jumped back, pulling me with him so fast my boots scraped stone and my shoulder slammed against his chest. He dragged me behind the curve of rock, using his body as a shield, and the instant he wisted us away the fae stone detonated. 

The blast punched the clearing. 

Heat, dust, and rock fragments burst outward in a rolling wave. The floating white stone flared so hard it made the inside of ny skull ache. 

The beasts shrieked as the shockwave hit them, some thrown off their feet, others dropping low as if their bones had turned o water for a second. The ground bucked and my stomach lurched with it. 

Cassian kept me down until the worst of the debris stopped raining. 

stared at him, unable to speak for a moment because relief had slammed into the back of my throat like a chokehold. 

wanted to ask him how he got here. I wanted to ask him what happened behind the rubble. I wanted to ask him why he did not come sooner, and none of those questions mattered because he was here and he was alive and his hands were still noving like a man who knew the next second might kill us. 

‘What are you” I tried again, but the rest of the sentence died when the dust started to clear. 

Because Xylas was still standing. 

Or at least, something wearing his shape was standing. 

Half of his body was tainted with black, not like dirt or ash, but like a thick liquid that had fused with skin. 

It crawled up his throat and across his jaw in uneven patches, coating his collar and one shoulder as if someone had poured 

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tar over him and the tar decided it wanted to become flesh. 

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The blackness had a sheen that caught the light from the floating stone, and it moved even when he did not, stretching and pulling in slow ripples as if it was breathing through him. 

He looked down at his own chest as if checking the damage, and then he lifted his head with a grin that did not belong on that face. 

“Well,” he said, voice rough, almost entertained. “That was almost annoying.” 

My skin crawled. 

This was not Xylas’s tone. This was not Xylas’s rhythm. This was not the King who had been vomiting blood minutes ago, struggling to stay upright under pressure that even my healing could not fully cancel. 

He stood now as if nothing had touched him, shoulders loose, breathing steady, posture relaxed in a way that made the danger worse because it looked like he was not even trying. 

I swallowed hard. “What’s happening?” 

Cassian did not answer. 

He stepped in front of me before I could move, his sword already in hand, his body angling so that I was behind his shoulder and not in the line of whatever that thing might throw at us next. 

His voice cut through the clearing, low and furious. “Where is Xylas?” 

The thing in Xylas’s body laughed. 

It was still his mouth. It was still his teeth. It was still his face. 

But it laughed like it had been waiting for Cassian to ask. 

“When did you notice?” it said, head tilting, eyes narrowing with interest. “That you were not talking to him.” 

Cassian’s grip tightened on his sword. “Where is my brother?” 

My breath caught. I looked at Cassian’s back, then at the King, and the words came out of me before I could stop them because my mind refused to accept what my eyes were already confirming. 

“You are saying that it’s not—” 

Cassian did not turn to look at me, but his voice sharpened like a blade being drawn. “What did you do to the King of the Werewolves?” 

The thing snorted, the sound did not match the body that made it. It sounded like contempt forced through a human throat. 

“The King?” it repeated, and it leaned forward slightly as if the title itself offended it. “You call that… the king?” 

Then it moved. I realized it was not simply standing in Xylas’s skin. 

The black coating on his body began to shift. 

It peeled away from his shoulder in a slow roll, not dripping to the ground like liquid should, but folding and collapsing inward like wet cloth being crushed by an invisible fist. The skin beneath it did not look normal. It looked stretched, 

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Chapter 296 

strained, as if the blackness had been holding it together. 

His arm jerked. 

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Not like a man cracking stiff joints, but like something inside him tugged on the bones and tested the limits. The blackness slid down his ribs, gathered at his side, then climbed again as if it was deciding what shape it wanted next. 

Xylas’s posture twisted for a moment, the way a body twists when it is being rearranged without permission. His shoulder blade rose too high under skin. His neck lengthened by a fraction, then settled. 

The blackness pulsed once across his chest and the air around him tightened, heavy with that same pressure that had made me kneel earlier, except now it felt directed, intentional, focused. 

Then, with a casual motion that made my stomach turn, he reached up with his hand and hooked his fingers under the black layer on his jaw, as if it was a mask. 

He pulled. 

The blackness tore away from his face in a thick strip, stretching like sticky resin, and he tossed it aside. It hit the ground and moved for a second, crawling like it still wanted to live, before it went still as if it was waiting to be called back. 

My throat went dry. 

Cassian’s sword lifted a fraction, not attacking yet. 

The thing wearing Xylas smiled again. And for a moment, it felt like the clearing itself had lost the right to be safe. 

“But then again,” it said, and the voice carried something older than an insult, something like disappointment that had been sharpening for a long time. “This world has fallen so much.” 

Its head turned toward the floating white stone, toward the black passage, toward the bodies embedded in the ground, and when it looked back at us there was nothing human in the expression anymore. 

“The strongest no longer rule,” it continued, and the blackness on its body stirred as if agreeing. “The weak have taken over our world.” 

Xylas’s tongue slid across his lower lip as if he could taste the air, and the motion looked wrong on a face I had seen command armies and pass judgment without flinching. 

His gaze moved from Cassian to me. It did not feel like being looked at by a man. It felt like being measured by something that had been starving for a long time and had finally found a meal it believed could last. 

“Obviously,” he said, voice thick with amusement. “You two are different, aren’t you.” 

Cassian did not move, but I felt his stance shift in front of me, felt the change in his weight like he was preparing to take the first hit without letting it reach my skin. 

His sword stayed up, held at a height meant to cut, meant to end things fast if an opening appeared, but the opening never came because Xylas was not giving one. He was enjoying this. 

The thing wearing the King tilted his head again and smiled as if he had just solved a puzzle. 

“One of you,” he continued, eyes narrowing on Cassian. “Stands inside pressure that makes others choke, and he does not kneel. He does not tremble. He does not lose his breath like the rest of them” 

His 

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gaze slid back to me, my stomach turned hard enough that it made me swallow air. 

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Chapter 296 

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“And the other one,” he said, voice lowering. “Breaks apart and comes back together even when she should be dead. She gives and gives until her body falls, and something still drags her back from the edge like she is not allowed to leave.” 

The words struck too close to what I had just felt, my fingers curled against my palm behind Cassian’s back as if clenching could keep my nerves from shaking. 

Xylas’s smile widened. 

The black residue he had torn from his face twitched on the ground near his boot as if responding to his mood. The sight made my skin crawl because it looked less like discarded flesh and more like a piece of him that had been set down only because he wanted us to see he could pick it up again. 

“You are not just survivors,” he said, and the excitement in his voice made it worse because it sounded like a man speaking about treasure. “You are not just a bonded pair with an inconvenient amount of stubbornness. You are resources. You- are my–food!” 

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