Chapter 29 When Healers Break

Chapter 29 When Healers Break
I caught Luna before she hit the ground, but her body was already going cold.
"No, no, no," I whispered, pushing my healing magic into her. But nothing happened. My power that had fixed broken bones and closed wounds for years suddenly felt useless.
Because Seraphina wasn't hurting Luna's body. She was stealing her soul.
Through the glowing link between them, I watched the Nexus power—that beautiful silver-white energy that made Luna special—flowing from her chest into Seraphina's outstretched hand. It looked like liquid stars being drained from a bottle.
"Marcus, do something!" Damon roared beside me, his Alpha power bursting outward uselessly. He tried hitting Seraphina again, but she swatted him away without even looking.
"I can't," I said, my voice breaking. "My healing magic works on physical problems. This is... she's taking Luna's soul. Her very life."
And I was supposed to be the healer. The one who saved people. But I couldn't save the woman I loved from having her soul ripped away.
"There has to be something," Damon argued, struggling back to his feet. Blood ran down his face from where he'd hit the ground. "Use the soul-bond. Channel power through it."
I tried. God, I tried. But our three-way soul-bond was incomplete—we'd never finished the rite that would fully connect us. Right now, it was like having a bridge that was missing the middle part. I could feel Luna and Damon's feelings, share some power, but I couldn't reach deep enough to stop what Seraphina was doing.
"The bond isn't strong enough," I said desperately. "It's asleep, remember? We never finished the final binding ceremony."
"Then complete it now!" Damon shouted.
"We can't! The ceremony needs all three of us to be conscious and willing. Luna's asleep, and even if she weren't..." I looked at the chaos around us—realities still tearing apart from Luna's broken merge, void creatures swirling, Seraphina glowing with stolen divine power. "Completing the bond while things are this unstable would kill us. All three of us."
Seraphina laughed, the sound echoing from various timelines at once. "Listen to the doctor, Damon. He knows death when he sees it. Luna has maybe two minutes before I drain her fully. You have even less time to say goodbye."
Two minutes. Luna had two minutes to live.
Unless...
A memory flashed through my mind. Something Elder Sage Moonwhisper had said months ago, when she first explained our soul-bond: "The ritual can be finished under any circumstances, but unstable conditions make it dangerous. The bond will try to anchor itself to whatever reality is stronger at that moment. If reality is collapsing, the bond might anchor to the breakdown itself."
At the time, I'd thought she meant we'd die. But what if she meant something else? "Damon," I said slowly, an insane idea building. "What if we complete the bond anyway?"
"You just said it would kill us."
"It would kill us in normal circumstances," I corrected. "But these aren't normal situations. Seraphina is taking Luna's Nexus power—the thing that anchors realities. If we complete our soul-bond at the exact moment she finishes the theft..."
Understanding lit Damon's eyes. "The link would anchor to us instead of to Luna. We'd become the new center point for reality."
"And Seraphina would have stolen power that's no longer connected to anything," I finished. "She'd have a battery with no charge. Useless divine force with no reality to control."
"That's brilliant," Damon breathed. Then his face fell. "But you said we need Luna conscious and ready. She's dying."
I looked down at Luna's pale face. Through our incomplete bond, I could barely feel her consciousness—just a tiny flicker of awareness sinking in darkness.
"We don't need her fully awake," I said, making a choice that terrified me. "We just need her to choose. Even asleep, even dying, Luna can still make a choice. I've seen it in coma patients—the soul knows what it wants even when the mind is gone."
"How do we reach her?"
"Through the bond." I grabbed Damon's hand, putting it on Luna's chest beside mine. "We push everything we feel through the link. Every memory, every feeling, every reason we love her. We make her remember why she needs to live."
"And pray she chooses to complete the bond instead of letting go," Damon said grimly.
"Seraphina will feel what we're doing," I warned. "She'll try to stop us." "Let her try. " Damon's Alpha power flared, protecting and fierce. "I didn't spend three years searching for Luna just to lose her now."
We pressed our hands against Luna's chest, right over her heart. Through our incomplete link, I felt Damon's consciousness joining mine as we dove deep into Luna's fading awareness.
"Stop that!" Seraphina shrieked, finally noticing our plan. "You can't finish the bond! It's impossible in these conditions!"
She tried to pull her hand away from Luna's chest, to stop taking the Nexus power and attack us instead. But she'd already taken too much—the link between them had become a two-way bridge. If she stopped now, the power she'd stolen would flow back into Luna naturally.
"You idiots," Seraphina growled. "Even if you finish the bond, the unstable realities will tear you apart. You'll die screaming as your souls are shredded across endless timelines."
"Maybe," I agreed. "But at least we'll die together. And you'll lose everything."
I pushed deeper into Luna's awareness, feeling Damon beside me. Luna's awareness was drowning in a dark ocean, sinking deeper with each second. But she was still fighting, still trying to rise.
Luna, I called through the bond. Come back to us.
Luna, Damon echoed. We need you. Aria needs you.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then Luna's awareness flickered, responding to our voices like a candle flame in the wind.
Hurts, her mental voice whispered. So tired.
I know, I said kindly. But we can make it stop. We can finish the soul-bond, anchor it to us instead of you. But only if you choose it. Only if you want to live.
Will it... save everyone?
It'll save reality, Damon promised. And it'll stop Seraphina. But Luna, it might kill all three of us. The bond is too dangerous in unstable situations.
Luna's mind wavered. I felt her weighing the choice—let go and die quietly, or fight to complete a bond that could destroy everyone she loved.
Aria, Luna whispered. If I die... who guards Aria?
We do, I said firmly. Together. As a family.
Luna's mind suddenly blazed brighter. Not much, but enough. Then finish it. Whatever happens... we face it together.
Relief and terror rushed through me. "She chose," I told Damon. "She wants to complete the bond."
"Then let's do this before I lose my nerve," Damon said.
We both pulled power from our incomplete bond, mixing Alpha strength with healing magic. The ritual words Elder Sage had taught us months ago came back, old and powerful:
"Three souls, one goal. Three hearts, one beat. Three lives, one fate."
The bond burst to life between us. Not the dormant connection we'd had before, but something live and blazing. It felt like lightning running through my blood.
But the unstable facts immediately attacked.
I screamed as my awareness was suddenly pulled in a thousand directions at once. The bond was trying to anchor itself, but with reality falling, it couldn't find stable ground. Instead, it grabbed pieces of us and spread them across dying timelines.
Through the chaos, I felt Damon's pain matching mine. Felt Luna's barely-conscious scream. We were being torn apart, just like Seraphina had warned.
"No!" Seraphina shouted. "If you die, the Nexus power dies with you! Everything I've worked for—"
She tried to free Luna, to stop the bond from completing. But she'd stolen too much power. The link was locked.
And that's when Aria's words cut through everything.
"Mommy! Daddy! Papa Marcus!"
My goddaughter appeared out of nowhere, her small three-year-old body sparkling with pure Nexus power. She shouldn't have been here—we'd left her safely hidden in a protected reality. But somehow she'd found us anyway.
"Aria, run!" I tried to shout, but my voice came out fractured across multiple worlds.
"No running," Aria said with a child's simple reasoning. "You're hurt. I fix it."
She put her tiny hands on the incomplete soul-bond, and her pure untainted power flooded through it like water filling a broken dam.
The bond stabilized quickly.
Reality stopped tearing at us. The link that had been scattering our souls across infinite timelines suddenly snapped into perfect alignment. I felt Luna and Damon's mind merge with mine—not replacing each other, but becoming one complete whole.
The soul-bond was finished.
And Seraphina's stolen Nexus power suddenly had nowhere to hold.
"What?" Seraphina gasped. "No, this isn't—how did a child—"
The holy energy she'd drained from Luna began dissolving, disconnecting from her as the bond redirected itself to anchor on all three of us instead. Seraphina's god-like form flickered and faded.
"You're losing," Damon said, his words coming through our completed bond with absolute certainty.
But Seraphina smiled. And it was the most frightening smile I'd ever seen.
"Losing?" she asked quietly. "Oh, Marcus. You sweet, stupid doctor. You really don't understand what you've just done, do you?"
"We stopped you," I said. "The Nexus power is attached to us now. You have nothing."
"I have everything," Seraphina amended. "Because your precious daughter just gave me the final piece."
She pointed at Aria, and my blood turned to ice.
"When Aria stabilized your bond, she connected it to her own power," Seraphina explained. "Which means your bond isn't just attached to the three of you. It's attached to her too. The purest Nexus child ever born."
"No," Luna whispered, waking up as the bond flooded her with new power.
"Yes," Seraphina said happily. "Your finished bond made Aria part of the anchor. And unlike you three, she's just a child. Unprotected. Vulnerable."
Seraphina's hand shot toward Aria.
"All I have to do," she whispered, "is kill her."