I felt the familiar, hollow coldness settle over my heart, the one that turned a man into a weapon. My duty was clear. To Thalor, I was an extension of his will; to August, I was a traitor; to this girl, I was the end.
"I'm sorry, August," I whispered, the words like shards of ice in my throat. I raised my hand, and the air around my fingers coalesced into a blade of pure Darkness Aether—a jagged shard of the void designed to sever the thread of life once and for all.
August lunged, a desperate, human cry tearing from him, but I was faster. I was an executioner. I brought the blade down.
And then, the world stopped.
The blade didn't hit flesh. It hit a wall of blinding, searing warmth. A sound like a thousand bells ringing at once shattered the hospital windows. Esme's eyes didn't just open; they burned with the terrifying, golden clarity of an awakened sun.
The "dormant force" that had protected her soul through eons of rebirth finally snapped its chains. Her essence surged outward, a tidal wave of Light so pure it scorched the shadows of my reaper form. I was thrown back against the wall, my blade evaporating into smoke.
POV: August D
I watched, paralyzed by a mixture of terror and awe. Esme wasn't just a victim anymore. She was rising from the bed, her feet barely touching the linoleum, as the Elarin fire—the very power Thalor had spent eons trying to extinguish—began to knit the air around her into a shimmering tapestry of fate.
"No more," she said. Her voice didn't sound like the fragile woman I'd been protecting. It was layered with the echoes of every woman she had been before—the ones who had died of "fate or illness" to keep the status quo.
She looked at Kael, and for a moment, the golden light in her eyes softened into a look of profound, agonizing recognition. "Kael... brother of the Great Collapse. Why do you still wear the chains of the one who broke us?".
Kael let out a choked sound, a raw, "visceral pain" finally breaking through his mask of "ruthless" loyalty. He fell to his knees, his hands clawing at his chest as if trying to rip out the immortality he had traded his soul for.
I realized then that this was the "realm-shaking power" Thalor feared. She wasn't just healing herself; she was altering the "threads of fate," rewriting the memories we were never supposed to have.
The hospital room was dissolving into white light. The "celestial balance" was tilting. And far above us, in the zenith of the Divine Realm, I knew the Creator had felt the shift. We weren't just hiding anymore. We were at war.