Chapter 142 - Something Is Wrong

Chapter 142 - Something Is Wrong
Chapter 40 - Something Is Wrong

Lucien Virell POV

I knew something was wrong the moment Raelith looked at Seraphyne instead of me.

Not the usual wrong. Not the charmingly homicidal, blood-drunk goddess I had worshipped and followed into war.

This was… unhinged. Childlike and feral. A creature acting like it remembered how to be Raelith but didn’t understand why. All she focused on was drinking blood and sex. She seemed obsessed with the twins and I couldn't figure out why.

Seraphyne giggled at something Raelith whispered.
Giggled. The woman hadn’t giggled in her entire immortal existence.

I watched them from my corner of the chamber. The twins and the dragon princesses were in their cage behind me, protected only by the strength of their own bones and the futile fury of youth.

Raelith draped herself across Seraphyne’s shoulders.
“Lucien,” she singsonged. “Why does she tremble more for me than for you, mm?”

Seraphyne flushed scarlet, her breath hitching, and her body reacting with humiliating immediacy.

A spell...thick and lust-heavy, dripped down the air like honey gone rancid, it rolled off Raelith’s palms.

“Because you’re manipulating her,” I snapped.

Raelith froze. Then her face twisted into something grotesquely childish. A wide smile. Teeth too sharp. Eyes too bright.

“Manipulating? Me?” She stomped her foot like a toddler denied a sweet.

“How dare you accuse me. I am a goddess.”

She wasn’t. Not anymore. She felt… hollow inside. Wearing Raelith’s power like poorly fitted skin.

“Where is she?” I asked quietly. “What have you done with the real Raelith?”

Seraphyne whimpered, leaning into her, drugged by whatever spell coated the air. Raelith cupped her chin, breathing her in like a wine she meant to drain in one swallow.

“Do you love Lucien, my little pet?” she cooed, tilting Seraphyne’s face toward mine.

“Or do you love me? I can give you what he never could.”

Seraphyne’s pupils dilated. Her lips parted involuntarily.

Raelith laughed, a high, broken sound that made my spine crawl.

She whispered something into Seraphyne’s ear, something foul and sweet at once, and Seraphyne’s knees buckled in a way that made my stomach turn with fury.

Not jealousy. Rage. This wasn’t Raelith. And if it was… she had become something worse than dead.

“Stop it,” I hissed. “If you want to punish me, then do it directly. Leave her out of..”

“NO!” she shrieked.

The walls shook. The blood wards rippled. Her power cracked like glass around us and Seraphyne gasped, pinned in place.

I stared.

“You aren’t her,” I whispered.

And for the first time, something flickered in her stolen eyes. A twitch. A glitch.

A creature wearing the goddess’s skin like a dress it hadn’t earned.

She leaned down, kissed Seraphyne’s throat lazily, then lifted her head just enough to give me a smile that chilled my undead marrow.

“You still don’t know what I am,” she purred. “But you will.”

The twins behind me growled from their half-shifted forms. Nyxaria stepped forward, scales rippling over her arms, her voice shaking with fury.

“What do you want with us?” she demanded.

I couldn’t blame her. We were all one wrong breath away from slaughter. I looked at her. Really looked.

And for the first time since this nightmare began, I told the truth.

“Honestly? I don’t fucking know.”

Her eyes widened.

I tore my gaze away from her and back to the corridor where Raelith dragged Seraphyne, the sound of her delighted laughter echoing like something out of a corrupted nursery rhyme.

“I don’t think that’s Raelith,” I said softly. “I think… I think I’ve made a mistake.”

Nyxaria swallowed. “What kind of mistake?”

“The kind,” I said, rising, “that ends worlds.”

I slipped into the shadows to follow the creature wearing my goddess’s face, dread pooling like ice behind my ribs.

Whatever she was…

…she wasn’t finished with us yet.
_______________________

Lyrielle POV

The cage stank of old blood and rotting metal, and the kind of corruption that crawled under your nails and sat heavy on your tongue.

Every bar hummed with Raelith’s poison magic, thick and pulsing like a heartbeat.

Nyx and I crouched close together, our shoulders brushing, and our breaths still shaky from the healing our mother sent through the ley lines. Her magic lingered faintly under my skin, soft and cool like moonlit water.

We weren’t alone, Lucen and Rhaen were pressed to the opposite side of the cage, half-shifted wolves trembling with fury. Their claws curled around the edges of the bars, scraping uselessly.

“Can you break it?” I whispered.

Rhaen slammed his shoulder into the cage again. The bars didn’t even tremble.

Lucen snarled. “It’s blood-forged. She made it strong enough to cage gods.”

Nyx exhaled shakily beside me, her violet-gold hair tangled from the scuffle. “Then we’re screwed.”

“Not necessarily,” I murmured.

Seiryn uncoiled in my mind, restless and hissing.

"Break it. Tear it. Burn it. Let me OUT and I will destroy this filth."

Vhalra’s mental roar echoed from Nyx’s side, hot and furious.

"Let us shift fully. We can rip our way free."

“They want out,” Nyx whispered with the same tightness in her jaw that I felt in mine.

“They always want out,” I muttered. “But the cage is designed to hold divine blood. If we go full dragon, Raelith will notice instantly.”

Nyx closed her eyes, her breathing slowing.

“So what do we do?”

I stared at the bars. At the seams. At the magic woven between them like black sinew. Something tugged at my memory... a lesson from Verenya, whispered in the grove beneath the temple.

A spell of undoing. Not destruction. Not force. Unmaking.

“Nyx,” I breathed. “I have an idea.”

Her eyes snapped open. “Tell me.”

I leaned closer so Raelith wouldn’t hear, she was still in the other chamber tormenting Seraphyne, Lucien’s low growls vibrating through the walls.

“There’s a spell Verenya taught me. A divine one. A spell of unraveling, meant to unmake tangled or corrupted magic. It… frees things from being shaped.”

Nyx’s brow furrowed. “Like undoing a knot.”

“Exactly.” My heart pounded against my ribs. “But it takes two. Balance magic. Earth and water. Twin channels. And it requires perfect synchronicity.”

She hesitated... for one breath, then two.

Then: “We can do it.”

Lucen’s ears perked. “What are you planning?”

Nyx shot him a look. “Saving your grumpy ass, maybe. Let us work.”

His jaw flexed, but he nodded.

Rhaen scooted closer, his eyes glowing molten gold. “Tell us what to do.”

“You protect us,” I said. “No matter what.”

Nyx and I clasped hands. Seiryn surged at once, thrilled.

"Yes. Yes, hatchling. UNMAKE THEIR CHAINS."

Vhalra’s voice braided with hers.

"I will burn the cage’s bones."

The magic between Nyx and me thickened instantly, threads of violet, blue, gold, and silver weaving between our fingers. My skin tingled. Her breath hitched.

The air shifted.

“What is that?” Lucen whispered.

“Divine magic,” Nyx murmured.

“No,” I said softly. “It’s older.”

We rose to our knees. Pressed our palms to the cold metal. The bars hissed in protest.

I lowered my voice to a breath.

“Verel asthira… unbind…”

Nyx matched me perfectly.

“Unravel… undo…”

A faint cracking sound rippled through the cage.

Rhaen’s breath hitched. “It’s working.”

The bars vibrated, black veins glowing like heated cracks in stone. The spell pulled at us, hard, like something ancient trying to take a piece of our souls in exchange.

Nyx grimaced. “Lyri… this feels...”

“I know. Don’t stop.”

Power surged through our arms, divine and wild, woven with dragon fury and moonlight. The bars groaned.

Then...One seam split. A thread of Raelith’s magic snapped like a severed tendon.

Lucen jolted forward, his eyes widening. “Do it again. Do it again!”

Nyx and I tightened our grip and chanted faster, the words dissolving into raw feeling, into instinct, and into the very force of creation and undoing that Verenya whispered to us.

Seams cracked. Bars shuddered. The cage shook.

Rhaen growled in triumph. “Keep going!”

Nyx squeezed my hand harder. Her voice trembled.

“Lyri… she’s going to feel this...”

“I know,” I whispered. “But she won’t get here in time.”

The final seam began to glow.

The cage trembled violently, the metal screaming as the spell of undoing crawled through every bar, unmaking Raelith’s corruption strand by strand.

Nyx leaned her forehead to mine.

“Ready?”

“Always.”

“Then let’s break her fucking toy.”

We unleashed the last surge together, and the cage exploded outward in a storm of shattering magic, the bars dissolving into glittering dust.

Lucen and Rhaen leapt in front of us instantly, half-shifted, snarling, and shielding us.

Nyx squeezed my hand, breathless.

“We did it.”

Seiryn purred in my bones.

"Now let us kill something."

I swallowed hard, staring at the corridor where Raelith would surely come running.

“We’re not free yet,” I murmured. “We need a plan.”

Nyx nodded grimly.

“And fast.”

Because the blood goddess... or whatever was wearing her face, had definitely felt that.

And she was coming.
____________________

Lucien POV

I rounded the corner at a dead sprint, ready to drag Seraphyne out of whatever feral tantrum Raelith had launched herself into this time, when I froze.

The cage was gone. Not opened, not bent, and not cracked.

Gone. Unmade. Reduced to glittering dust across the floor like someone had shattered a star.

Lyrielle and Nyxaria stood in the center of the wreckage with their hands still clasped, magic crackling over their skin in colors I didn’t have names for. Rhaen was in front of them, half-shifted, his chest heaving.

My breath punched out of me.

“You...” I hissed, disbelief slicing through my voice. “You broke out?”

Lyrielle lifted her chin. “We’re done being caged.”

A pulse of power rolled off them. My instincts screamed. Footsteps thundered behind me. Raelith’s shriek tore through the stone.

No time. I bared my fangs and snapped, “GO.”

Nyx blinked. “What?”

“Run!” I snarled. “Now, before she...”

Raelith’s presence crashed into the hallway like a tidal wave of blood and rot.

Lyrielle didn’t hesitate again. She grabbed her sister’s hand, and their magic surged violently, colliding, twisting, and ripping reality apart. A tear in the air split open in front of them, a raw, unstable portal.

Rhaen and Lucen lunged toward them, but the girls dragged them in first, stumbling through the tear in space with gasps and choked cries.

Nyxaria locked eyes with me for a single heartbeat, something furious and terrified shining there, and then the portal swallowed them whole.

I roared and threw myself after them, claws outstretched...Too slow.

The portal slammed shut in my face.

Raelith screeched, “NO!”

Her power detonated outward.

The blast hit me like a divine meteor, ripping me from the ground and slamming my body into the stone wall so hard the world went black around the edges.

Her footsteps stalked away, and her fury shook the entire lair.

And she left me there, bleeding and half conscious, as everything spiraled into chaos.