Chapter 177 Spreading
Darkness didn’t fade.
It cracked.
Like glass under pressure.
And then I gasped.
Air slammed into my lungs so violently it hurt, my body jerking upward as if I’d been dragged back from somewhere too far, too deep, too wrong. Pain followed immediately. Not sharp like before. Not tearing. But heavy. Every inch of me felt full, like something had been poured into my bones and hadn’t settled yet.
My fingers twitched.
My chest rose and fell too fast.
Everything felt too loud. Too bright. Too much.
“Seraphine—”
Dante’s voice. Close. Right there.
I turned my head toward him, but even that felt delayed, like my body wasn’t entirely synced with itself yet.
“I—” My voice cracked. “I’m—”
I didn’t know what I was.
Okay wasn’t the word.
Alive, maybe. Barely.
My skin burned, not violently like before, but like heat was trapped beneath it, rolling slow and steady instead of exploding.
“Easy,” Dante murmured, one hand coming up to steady me as I tried to push myself up.
I didn’t listen.
I forced myself upright anyway.
The second I did, the world changed.
Not shifted. Not moved. Changed.
I froze.
“What the hell…”
The room was still there. Dante. Lucian. Amara. Lukas. All exactly where they had been.
But layered over it was something else.
Threads.
Everywhere.
Faint at first, then sharper. Lines of light stretched through the air like veins beneath skin finally exposed. Some glowed soft blue around Lucian. Some burned gold and heat around Dante. Others flickered with softer, quieter hues.
And then my breath caught.
Because not all of them were glowing.
Some were wrong.
Dark.
Not just dim. Rotting.
It looked like something had seeped into them and was spreading outward in slow, creeping veins of black, cracking through the light like mold through glass.
I blinked hard.
They didn’t go away.
If anything, they became clearer.
“What is that…?” I whispered.
“Seraphine?” Dante’s tone sharpened.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
Because I wasn’t looking at him anymore. Not really.
I was looking at what ran through him.
Fire. Alive. Strong. Unbroken. Clean.
My gaze snapped away from him to the wall behind him.
A thread ran through it. Faint. Flickering.
And along it, blackness crawled. Slow. Hungry. Cracking the light apart piece by piece like something eating through it from the inside.
My stomach dropped.
“No…”
“Hey, look at me,” Dante said, his hand coming up to cup my face, grounding me, forcing my eyes back to his.
I blinked again, but the threads didn’t disappear. They just shifted, adjusting around him.
“I’m looking,” I said quickly, but my voice trembled now. “I just… I’m seeing something.”
That got everyone’s attention.
Lukas stepped forward immediately, his gaze sharp. “What kind of something?”
I shook my head slowly, my eyes darting again despite myself.
“They’re everywhere,” I said. “Around you, around all of you, around everything.”
Lucian frowned. “That doesn’t help.”
“Threads,” I said, more urgently now. “Lines, like energy, but not just magic. It’s… it’s like the world is built on them.”
Amara tilted her head slightly. “Okay… that’s already unsettling.”
“But that’s not the problem,” I whispered.
Silence followed.
“What is?” Dante asked quietly.
My eyes moved again, slower this time, more focused. Because now that I had seen it, I couldn’t unsee it.
“Some of them are wrong,” I said.
Lukas went very still.
“Define wrong.”
“They’re breaking,” I said, my voice tightening. “Or rotting. I don’t know. Something is spreading through them. It’s not natural. It looks like…”
I swallowed hard.
“Like decay.”
Lucian straightened slightly. “That’s not possible.”
“It is,” I snapped, my eyes locking onto his. “I’m literally looking at it.”
I turned again, pointing weakly toward the far wall.
“There. Do you see that?”
They all looked.
Saw nothing.
Of course they didn’t.
“It’s dark,” I continued, my breathing picking up again. “Like something is eating through the thread. It’s cracking the light, breaking it apart.”
Amara’s expression shifted from curiosity to unease. “That sounds… bad.”
“That is bad,” Lucian muttered.
Lukas stepped closer, his voice quieter now. “Can you see where it’s coming from?”
I tried.
God, I tried.
But the moment I focused too hard, the pressure slammed back into my skull.
I winced, grabbing my head. “Shit… okay… no, that’s too much…”
Dante was there instantly, his hand gripping mine tighter. “Hey. Pull back. Don’t push it.”
“I’m not trying to,” I snapped. “It’s just there, everywhere.”
“Then stop looking at it,” he said firmly.
“I don’t know how.”
That was the problem.
It wasn’t something I turned on.
It was just on.
Lukas’s voice cut through, calm and controlled. “Anchor yourself. Focus on something solid.”
I sucked in a breath, forcing my gaze back to Dante. Just Dante. Not the fire. Not the threads. Just him.
It helped. A little.
The darkness at the edges of my vision dulled slightly. The pressure eased just enough to breathe.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Dante’s thumb brushed against my hand. “You with me?”
“Barely,” I muttered. “But yeah.”
I glanced around again, more carefully this time.
The threads were still there. The rot was still there. Just quieter. For now.
“They’re not supposed to look like that,” I said quietly.
“No,” Lukas agreed.
My gaze snapped to him. “You believe me?”
“I do,” he said simply.
That sent a chill down my spine.
Lucian frowned. “Okay, so what does that mean?”
I looked around again. At the glowing. At the breaking. At the slow, creeping dark eating through something that felt fundamental.
“It means something is wrong,” I said.
Amara huffed softly. “Yeah, we got that part.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, my voice dropping. “You don’t understand.”
I looked at Lukas again. Then at Dante. Then back at the threads stretching beyond the walls, beyond the room, beyond everything.
“It’s not just magic,” I said quietly. “It’s deeper than that. Whatever is happening in Shadow territory…” My throat tightened. “It’s spreading.”
Silence hit the room like a blow.
“And if it keeps going,” I whispered, my eyes locking onto one of the darker threads as it cracked just a little more,
“It’s not just going to break territories.” My voice dropped even lower. “It’s going to break everything.”