Chapter 131: Soil of Side A - Leah
When the falling stops, my back slams into rock.
Not gravel—solid granite, worn down into sharp edges. The impact knocks all the air out of my lungs, a metallic sweetness rushing up my throat. I curl up, coughing, dark red bloody foam spraying onto the gray stone.
My silver-white wings are ruined. Not broken bones—the wing membrane is ripped, the left wingtip completely bare, pink flesh showing through. The Primogenitor bloodline churns inside me, like a flock of panicked birds with nowhere to go.
But two streams of energy stay steady.
Deep in my belly. Faint, but stubborn. Like two tiny drumbeats, out of rhythm with my heartbeat, yet woven into my pulse.
I'm pregnant.
This fact got confirmed by the Bloodbond during the void fall. Kael's emotions exploded from Side B—shock, then fear, then some kind of fury he forced down. He wanted to come to me, but the Exile Door blocked him.
Now I'm alone.
I pull myself up. Look around.
Side A's northern edge. Outer ring of the Spiral Spire ruins. The ground is covered in gray-white moss—not plants, but what's left of dead Light-Eaters, crunching like broken glass under my feet. The sky is dark purple—not sunset, but an eclipse from the Moon-Eater's shadow.
The black hole hangs above, ten times bigger than I remember. It's still coming down, like a branding iron slowly pressing toward skin.
"Leah!"
A voice from the left. Xiao Qi. She's hiding between two fallen stone pillars, UV pistol in hand, wrist wrapped with black tendon—a tourniquet. She's covered in dust, a scrape on her left cheek.
"You made it," she gasps. "I thought the void would rip you apart."
"Almost." I wipe blood from my mouth. "Where's the Moon-Eater?"
"Twenty seconds till it's overhead," she points at the sky. "It's crossing the barrier. Faster than we thought. White Box must've given it a boost."
I spread my wings, trying to fly. The torn left wing membrane leaks air, my body tilts in the air, then crashes back down. It hurts.
"Can't fly," I say.
"Then run." Xiao Qi pulls me up. "Into the tower base! There's a leftover barrier Ophelia left behind. Can block detection for ten seconds!"
We run.
Not flying—on foot. The ground is rough, broken stone and Light-Eater remains mixed together, every step could trip us. Xiao Qi runs faster than me, dragging me like a sack of rice.
The Moon-Eater makes a sound.
Not ultrasound. Low-frequency vibration, traveling straight through the ground. My knees buckle, almost giving out. The two heartbeats in my belly suddenly speed up—they're scared, or more like, protesting.
Silver light shines from my belly.
Not my doing. The twins' instinct kicking in. The Primogenitor bloodline senses a deadly threat to the mother and automatically releases a protective field. The light spreads out from my navel, like ripples, turning all the gray-white moss within fifteen feet silver-white.
The Moon-Eater's descent suddenly stops.
It hovers about fifteen hundred feet above ground. Its black vortex body spins, but doesn't come closer. It—hesitates.
"It stopped?" Xiao Qi notices too, looking up. "Why?"
"Not because of me." I look at my glowing belly. "Because of them."
Xiao Qi's eyes shift over. She stares at my stomach, pupils shrinking.
"You... you're pregnant?"
"Twins," I say.
She freezes. Then swears in human.
"Fuck. If White Box finds out, they'll lose their minds even more. Fetal blood is purer than the mother's—it's prime material for building the door."
Her words make my belly clench. Not physical—mental. My hand moves to cover my stomach on its own.
"Don't even think about it," I say. "Anyone touches them, I kill them."
"Stay alive first." Xiao Qi drags me forward. "The Moon-Eater's just hesitating, not backing off. It'll recalculate. Once it figures things out, it'll still come down."
We rush into the Spiral Spire's base.
The tower base chamber is still standing. Most runes on the walls are dead, but a few blood-crystals still glow in the corners—Ophelia's backup power. Xiao Qi kicks rubble aside, revealing a metal plate. She lifts it—there's a pit underneath, just big enough for two people curled up.
"Get in," she says.
I crawl in. The pit is cold and damp, smelling like rotting corpses. Xiao Qi climbs in after me, puts the metal plate back, leaving just a crack for air.
Darkness swallows us.
I lean against the stone wall, wings folded, but my belly still glows. The silver light shows Xiao Qi's pale face in the dark.
"Now what?" I ask.
"Wait," Xiao Qi says. "Wait for the Moon-Eater to pass. Or wait for Kael to activate the Exile Door. The Side B end needs him to work it manually, open the door, before the Moon-Eater can get bounced in."
"How long does he need?"
"Don't know. Depends on if he can find the control room, if he has power, depends on—"
She doesn't finish.
The ground shakes. Not the Moon-Eater. Something closer, more rhythmic—footsteps.
Coming from the stone chamber entrance. More than one. Many. At least a dozen.
Xiao Qi puts her eye to the crack in the metal plate. She looks for one second, and her face changes.
"Not the Moon-Eater," she whispers. "It's White Box's ground troops. Humans. In protective suits, carrying UV cannons."
"How did they get to Side A?"
"Dr. Chen opened a small passage. East of the tower base," Xiao Qi's voice is barely there. "They're searching the ruins. For your body. Or for you alive."
A footstep stops above the metal plate.
Boot grinding on gravel. Breathing—through the protective suit, heavy and filtered.
"Heat signature detected," a male voice says, muffled through the metal plate from above. "Something down here."
"Dig it out," another voice says.
The sound of the metal plate being pried. Screws turning.
Xiao Qi raises her UV pistol. Four rounds left. She aims at the gap in the metal plate.
I try to dim the light from my belly. Cover it with my hand, forcing down the Primogenitor bloodline's leak. The light fades, but doesn't go out—the twins protest, resist.
The metal plate lifts a crack.
Outside light pours in. Dark purple daylight. A human male face appears in the gap above—clear face shield, behind it an ordinary brown-eyed human face.
He sees me.
"Target confirmed," he says, his voice coming through the communicator, mechanical. "Leah Vane. Vital signs active. Abnormal energy concentration in abdomen. Suspected—"
Xiao Qi fires.
The UV round punches through the face shield, into his left eye. He falls back, screaming.
"Get out!" Xiao Qi lifts the metal plate, drags me crawling out.
Six people stand in the stone chamber. All in white protective suits, carrying UV cannons. They see us and raise their weapons right away.
I spread my wings on instinct, shielding Xiao Qi.
UV beams hit my wings. Silver feathers smoke, burn, fall. Pain like a hot iron. But I don't move back.
"She's pregnant!" Xiao Qi shouts behind me. "Don't use UV! It'll kill the babies!"
The White Box people pause for one second.
Then the leader—a woman, red stripe on her suit—says coldly: "Perfect. That's what we need. Living samples."
She presses the UV cannon's switch. The beam gets thicker, shifts from burning to cutting.
My wing membrane gets sliced open. Bone showing. I drop to my knees, but still block the way.
The two heartbeats in my belly speed up like crazy. Silver light bursts out again, brighter, hotter than before. Not a protective field—some kind of... attack.
The light explodes from my belly, like a shockwave, spreading everywhere.
The White Box people get thrown back. UV cannons fly from their hands, smashing into stone walls. Their protective suit face shields crack in the silver light, showing terrified faces.
The woman leader hits the ground, staring at my belly like she's looking at a bomb.
"What is that..." she mumbles.
I don't answer.
Because the Moon-Eater moves.
It's drawn to the silver light. Its hesitation is over. It recalculates priority—the mother's threat is less than the babies' purity. Its descent speed jumps tenfold, like a meteor crashing down.
"Run!" Xiao Qi drags me again.
But it's too late.
The Moon-Eater's shadow swallows the stone chamber entrance. A black tentacle reaches out from the vortex—not physical, an energy extension, like a whip, lashing toward my belly.
I close my eyes, both hands covering my stomach.
The moment the tentacle hits—
No pain.
There's light.
A dark red light stabs out from the void, blocking between me and the tentacle.
Not Kael. He's still on Side B.
It's a knife. Thrown from the void, a dark red blade, covered in de Noct family runes—the Kin-Slaying Blade.
The blade sticks in the ground, forming a barrier that deflects the Moon-Eater's tentacle.
A voice comes from the void. Ancient, tired, but clear:
"The Gatekeeper is not yet gone."
It's Adrian's voice. Or rather, the final recording she left after death—a fragment of consciousness anchored in the crystal.
The Moon-Eater's tentacle pulls back. It seems to recognize that blade, recognize the Gatekeeper's presence.
Xiao Qi takes the chance to drag me, and we squeeze through a crack on the other side of the stone chamber.
We stumble into the depths of the ruins. Behind us, the Moon-Eater's roar shatters the tower base's dome, rubble falling like rain.
I look back.
The Kin-Slaying Blade still sticks in the ground, dark red light like a dim lamp in the Moon-Eater's shadow.
It's protecting me. Or rather, protecting what's in my belly—
The future.
But the blade can't hold for long.
The Moon-Eater is only pushed back for now. Once it adjusts to the Gatekeeper's presence, once it figures out that blade has no owner—
It'll come again.
And faster.