Chapter 146: The Last Barrier

Shina’s voice dropped like steel.

“Then come, sister. Take your victory. Step through.”

Dina didn’t move. But her smile never faltered.

“Oh no, Shina,” she whispered. “I don’t need to cross the gate. The moment Leo begs for me…” She leaned in closer.

“The gate will open itself.”

“You don’t want the throne anymore,” Shina said, watching her. “So what do you want? Why are you really here?”

Dina’s smile widened. “Oh, I just came to say hello… here too.”

Shina narrowed her eyes. “Here too? Where else have you been?”

Dina tilted her head like a mocking doll. Her voice dipped into a sing-song pitch that twisted the air.

“I’ll never tell.”

Shina’s fists flared with soft blue fire.

“Whatever you’ve started,” she said, “it ends here. With you and I.”

Dina chuckled. “You really think you can stop what’s already begun? The King is spiraling into madness, your palace is bleeding faith, and your people whisper that the Priestess of Light has already failed.”

“You’re wrong.”

Dina leaned in, the silver glow of the threshold searing the edge of her cloak. “Oh, am I? Because I hear the King tried to kill a servant yesterday. Ripped out the wall searching for an escape. Called your name. But not in prayer.”

Shina said nothing.

Dina’s grin curled into something crueler. “Soon, this entire kingdom will know their king is broken. Their protector is now their doom. And there’s nothing their priestess of light can do about it.”

Shina took one calm step forward. The silver glow of the barrier shuddered between them, but she stood tall, chin lifted like moonlight defying shadow.

Then… she smiled.

Not warm.

Not kind.

A quiet, cold thing. Like the stillness before the strike.

“You’re right about one thing,” she said evenly. “I am tethered to the Alpha king.”

Dina’s expression sharpened, hungry for the crack she thought she’d caused.

But Shina’s voice remained steady, edged like crystal.

“I know that his father bound my light to his bloodline. I let him.”

Dina blinked.

“I offered myself,” Shina said, calm as ice. “Not because I was tricked. Not because I was used. I stepped into that storm with open arms and sealed my fate with my own hands.”

Dina’s lips parted, but no sound came.

Shina tilted her head slightly, fire flickering at her fingertips. “The only mistake I made was not seeking Mother’s guidance before she passed. If I had, maybe I’d know how to burn brighter. Maybe my light wouldn’t flicker every time the shadows rise.”

She let that settle.

“But make no mistake,” she said, voice like iron sliding into a scabbard, “I was never used. I am no victim. I chose to bind my light to his ruin, because I believed—even then—that light does not abandon the lost.”

Her blue flame flared higher, casting a glow across the stones, painting her in holy fire.

“I stand in the shadow by choice, Dina. You drowned in it.”

Dina’s jaw tightened.

And Shina’s smile deepened—just a notch. Just enough to sting.

“You keep telling yourself you were discarded. That you were betrayed. That you were the storm. But storms pass. Light endures.”

“You think that makes you stronger?” Dina spat.

“No,” Shina said simply. “It makes me dangerous.”

The air trembled. The torches along the courtyard wall flickered as if caught in a silent gasp.

And for a heartbeat, it was Dina who looked like the child again—on the outside looking in, fingers pressed to glass, desperate to be let in.

But the gate held.

And Shina didn’t break her gaze.

“I am the only one keeping the shadows from swallowing Leo whole,” she said quietly. “The only thing between you and this kingdom. So let’s be clear…”

Her voice dropped like frost.

“If I fall… I won’t fall alone.”

Dina’s eyes flared. “You’re bluffing.”

Shina’s eyes shimmered with quiet fury. “Why are you here, sister? To gloat?” Shina asked, voice low and cutting. “What are you afraid of?”

For the first time, Dina’s eyes flickered. Just once.

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Then step through the gate. I know you really want to.”

Silence.

The threshold pulsed. The palace groaned in the distance, as though feeling the weight of the confrontation.

Dina’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “I didn’t come to fight. Not today. That day will come. And when it does, you and your stupid little rules won’t stop me from stepping past this threshold and setting fire to your holy walls.”

“Then bring it on,” Shina whispered. “Because no matter how deep the dark, light always conquers.”

Dina’s smile vanished. Her voice became a guttural growl.

“You’ve never met this kind of darkness… sister.”

The torches around her died in a breath. And then—Dina was gone, a mocking laughter echoing through the now empty space.

Shina stood there for a long time, her heartbeat like war drums in her ears.

Dina’s final words faded into the night like smoke. The courtyard remained still—but something had shifted. The air felt thinner, wrong.

Shina turned slowly back toward the palace gates, but her eyes caught it.

A hairline fracture.

Barely visible.

Like a silver thread splitting down the invisible barrier that separated light from shadow.

Her breath hitched.

She moved closer, heartbeat pounding, and lifted her hand to hover just above the place Dina had stood. The barrier’s energy pulsed unevenly, flickering like a candle about to die.

“No,” she whispered, eyes wide. “No, no, no—”

This was why she had been here! To check the barrier.

Her magic flared from her palm in a desperate attempt to reinforce it, but the light sizzled weakly, dimmer than it should have been. She felt it now—not just the weakening of the barrier, but the drain in herself. The hollowness. The aching fatigue in her soul.

Leo’s darkness was consuming more than just him.

It was pulling her with him.

Her bond to him—the desperate solution she and the late king had forged in secret—was unraveling. They had tied her light to his shadow years ago, believing that balance could tame the curse. That if she remained close, if she fed enough of her strength into Leo’s soul, he might survive it.

But now she saw the truth.

Her light wasn’t balancing him anymore.

It was feeding the darkness.

Sustaining it.

And the moment Leo was fully gone… she wouldn’t just lose him.

She’d fall with him.

Shina stumbled back from the fracture, chest heaving, her stomach coiling with nausea and terror. Her knees hit the cold stone, and she forced herself not to cry.

There was no time for grief.

Only truth.

And the truth was—

Dina might win.

The curse wasn’t breaking.

It was evolving.

Her voice was hoarse when she spoke to the air. “I need to do something that I should have done a long time ago.”

She moved on shaking legs and turned toward the palace gates, whispering to Zane as she stepped inside. “Prepare the séance chamber. Call the sun-keepers. I want the veil opened by midnight.”

Zane’s voice came behind her, frantic. “Shina! What happened? Is she gone?”

But she didn’t answer.

Her eyes were fixed ahead, searching for guidance that no longer came so easily.

“I need to speak to my mother,” she said, this time with steel beneath the fear. “I need to know if she saw this coming. If there’s anything left she didn’t tell me.”

She paused, then added with hollow finality:

“And if she says there’s no way out…”

She glanced once more at the crack, her light flickering across it like a dying flame.

“…then I’ll make one.”