Chapter 213 213.Killing the Guardian

Chapter 213 213.Killing the Guardian
Tirianna

Pain is white.
Not red. Not sharp. White.
It explodes behind my eyes as Elira’s beast slams into me, claws tearing through fur and flesh. My Lycan roars inside me, the sound reverberating through bone and blood.
Up! she snarls. We do not fall!
I twist, barely missing the second strike. The creature’s limb bends wrong—too long, too jointed—three talons carving trenches into the earth where my throat had been.
A monster to match the true nature of Elira and the violations of the Sliver Fang.
The barrier around us hums like a living storm. Yellow and black energy crackles overhead, sealing us inside a cage of magic and madness. Beyond it, I can sense them—our wolves, our mates, our pack—slamming against the walls, their fury shaking the ground.
But they can’t reach us.
Not yet.
Elira’s laughter slides across my mind like oil over water.
You’re slower than I expected, Guardian.
Her voice is layered now—hers and something else beneath it. Something hungry.
I bare my teeth and lunge, my Lycan’s jaws snapping for her exposed flank. My fangs sink into twisted muscle, and I taste rot and iron.
She shrieks—but it’s not pain. It’s delight.
You think you can wound me?
She swipes her paw mid-bite, lifting my back legs and causing me to release my hold.
The force sends me skidding across the dirt. I crash into the barrier, and it flares violently, burning my back.
My Lycan howls.
The magic tastes wrong. Corrupt. Tainted with old rituals and forbidden transmutation.
I push to my paws.
Elira stands across from me, her body a grotesque parody of what we are meant to be. Limbs overextended. Fingers reduced to three digits, curved claws glinting like obsidian. Her jaw strains against teeth too large for her mouth to close. Patches of hair bloom randomly across scar-knitted flesh.
She isn’t a wolf.
She isn’t human.
She’s a wound given form.
You should have given me the Heart, she hisses into my mind. You were never worthy of guarding it.
My Lycan rises taller inside me, her presence fierce and ancient.
We were chosen, I growl. Not bred in a laboratory of madness. Not a slave to a power that was never mine to begin with.
I circle left. Elira mirrors me, her spine arching unnaturally.
“You feel it, don’t you?” she taunts. “The barrier is tightening. Your allies can’t save you. Neither can the Lycan male.”
At the mention of Riven, my chest tightens.
Through the hum of magic, I feel him. Outside the barrier. Slamming against it. Desperate.
My… I can’t even complete the thought. I can't give myself hope when I’m not sure I’ll make it out.
“Let me in!” his roar echoes faintly through the dome.
My heart twists.
Focus.
Elira lunges.
I meet her head-on.
We collide in a fury of claws and teeth. Our Lycans slam together in a violent clash of power and instinct. I rake my claws down her malformed arm, tearing open flesh that tries to knit itself back together even as I shred it.
She bites for my shoulder.
I twist, but not fast enough. Her oversized teeth sink into muscle.
Agony detonates down my leg.
My Lycan screams—but not in fear.
In her mind! she commands. Break her there! If she can get in your then you can follow her voice and get inside hers.
I shove past the pain and shove into Elira’s consciousness.
The connection snaps tight.
Suddenly I’m not just fighting her body—I’m inside the storm of her thoughts.
It’s chaos.
Memories flash—cold stone tables, ancient symbols carved into skin, her grandfather’s voice chanting over her as a child.
“You will be stronger,” he had whispered.
“You will surpass them all.”
The beast snarls inside her mind, massive and malformed.
You are prey, it tells me. You guard what you cannot keep.
I shove back.
“And you were nothing but a tool. A useless one at that. Tell me Elira, how many times do you have to fail to understand your place,” I spit.
Outside, our bodies crash through a cluster of shattered stone. The barrier pulses violently as our combined power slams against it.
Cracks flicker across its surface—thin, spiderweb fractures that vanish as quickly as they appear.
Elira feels it too.
Her eyes flick upward.
They’re trying to break it, she growls.
Another pulse rocks the dome.
Riven’s presence flares bright and frantic.
“Again!” someone shouts outside.
The barrier shrieks under the assault.
Elira’s beast turns its full attention back to me, enraged.
“You will not stall me,” she snarls.
She drives forward with terrifying speed. One elongated limb hooks around my back, claws digging in, while the other slashes across my ribs.
Warm blood pours down my side.
My legs buckle.
No, my Lycan growls. Stand.
Blood is pooling out of several wounds. The control over my limbs is loosening.
I push forward.
Elira’s mind presses against mine again.
You are weakening, Guardian. When you fall, I will tear the Heart from your chest myself.
I lunge, sinking claws into the macabre flesh and tearing.
A sharp snap proceeds blinding pain. I drop on a scream knowing my leg is broken.
The pain forces my shift back into my human skin.
Her creature hovers over me, dark, wild glee in her eyes.
Were are your smart words now? She gloats.
I laugh.
It surprises both of us.
“You know, your old age is starting to show in your foolishness,” I say.
Her grip falters for half a second.
It’s enough.
Roll away from her, fire blazing in my bump limb.
The barrier flickers violently now. Each external strike reverberates through the ground beneath my paws.
She is running out of time.
Elira steadies herself, her scarred muscle knitting grotesquely.
In brute strength, in raw destructive power, she has the advantage.
So I don’t fight her strength.
I fight her certainty.
“You were never meant to carry it,” I tell her, pushing the words into her mind as much as speaking them aloud. “ Your clan was never meant for the power your forefathers wanted. That's why he turned you into this disgusting creature. To try and give you an advantage you’ll never have. You're a failure. You failed your grandfather, you failed your daughter…”
Rage explodes through our mental link.
“You die tonight!”
She lunges blindly this time.
The barrier splinters.
Good.
I don't try to dodge, I'm too weak, and there is no point.
The barrier flares violently on impact, dark energy lashing over her distorted body as her claws sink into my soft stomach. They pin me to the ground…..
A blast shakes forcefield around us and the tiny cracks expand and merge into a spiderweb.
She howls—this time in real pain.
The unstable magic inside her reacts badly with the barrier’s corruption.
My Lycan grins savagely. She burns from within.
I cough and blood coats my tongue.
Another massive blow slams into the barrier from outside.
Cracks spread wider this time.
I feel it—the magic weakening.
Elira feels it too.
Panic flickers. She turns to me with a wild look and rushed over.
Her mind lashes against mine, desperate now.
She punches her claws into me and rips and tears, digs under my skin.
My scream reaches my ears from outside myself and I turn my face as the sounds hush into a disoriented buzz.
I see him.
Riven.
My second chance.
He bangs against the barrier the sound of his growl filled with anguish for me, for what we’ll never have.
And I quietly say goodbye, refusing to let the last thing I see be anything but him.
“Where is it?” she demands. “I can feel its echo on you!”
Of course she can.
For years I carried it. Guarded it. Bled for it.
The Heart’s magic lingers like a scent.
But scent isn’t possession.
The barrier gives a deafening crack.
Light bursts through widening fractures.
Riven’s roar pierces the night.
“Tell me where it is!” she screams inside my skull.
Without meeting her eyes I smile.
“You were so obsessed with killing the Guardian,” I say softly, “you never stopped to question whether the Guardian could change.”
Her mind stutters.
“What?”
Outside, the barrier splinters further.
I shove deeper into her consciousness one last time, forcing her to see what I want her to see.
The transfer.
The moment before he left to get back the children, when I gave him my blood and my rights to guard the heart with it.
“No,” she screams.
“Looks like you failed, again,” I choke out through the blood.
My body is not my own, it sinks into the ground as life bleeds from me.
“Mom!” Lilith screams.
I’m sorry, sweet girl. You deserved a better mother.
The final crack splits the dome from top to bottom.
Light explodes inward.
The barrier shatters.
Magic slams through us in a violent shockwave.
Elira staggers back, her mind reeling—not from the impact, but from realization dawning in horrifying clarity.
Wolves pour into the battlefield.
I close my eyes against the vibrations of pounding feet.