Chapter 75 BLOOD AND MIRRORS
As the mirrors in the room continued to crack, the cold barrel of Valeria’s gun rested against Dorian’s temple like a piece of ice. Kael tried to keep his rifle steady as he looked at his own sister, but the terror in his eyes was unmistakable.
"Valeria... what are you doing?" Kael said, his voice trembling. "We were fighting for us. For the Pack!"
"The Pack?" Valeria laughed mockingly. Her pupils were covered in a black mist, just like Serra’s. "Kael, why do you think our father sent you to the military and me to the academy? You were just a heap of muscle. I was the final piece needed for Valerius’s awakening. Marcus is telling the truth; we are just experiments."
Dorian looked at Valerius beside him. The ancient, decayed scent radiating from the old king’s armor filled the room.
"Did you kill my father?" Dorian asked, his voice deathly calm.
"Your father became a victim of his own fear, Dorian," Valerius said, directing his steps toward Serra. Serra was cowering against the wall with Atlas in her arms; the black veins on her skin had now reached her neck and jawline. "He wanted to use Atlas as a weapon. I, however, just want to... bring him back home."
"You’re going to kill him!" Serra screamed.
"No, my sweet daughter," Valerius said, reaching out to touch Serra’s face. She recoiled. "I won't kill him. I will consume him. That poison in your body was the final line of defense your father prepared against me. But your father failed to calculate how I would turn that poison into honey in your veins."
Dorian understood in that moment. The choice was an illusion. The "either your wife or your son" scenario Marcus had described was a trap designed to paralyze Dorian.
"Marcus!" Dorian roared. "Are you on his side too?"
Marcus struck his cane against the ground. "I am simply... on the winning side, son. Your father hid this world behind mirrors. But when the mirror breaks, only the truth remains."
(DESTRUCTION AND AWAKENING)
Just then, as Valeria was about to pull the trigger, the transparent display case in the center of the room shattered. But it wasn't Dorian who broke it.
In the chest beside Atlas, Lyra, who had remained silent until that moment, opened her eyes.
Lyra’s eyes were not silver. They glowed with a bright, dull purple. When the small baby raised her hands, the room was suddenly plunged into silence. All sounds, all breaths, even the metallic click of Valeria’s gun, froze.
"The Guardian," Marcus whispered, backing away in terror. "She wasn't supposed to wake up!"
The energy Lyra radiated began to absorb the blackness in Serra’s veins. But this wasn't a healing; it was an imprisonment. Lyra was vacuuming the poison from her mother and the power of her brother Atlas into her own small body.
"Stop this, Dorian!" Serra shouted, collapsing to the floor in pain. "She’s killing us!"
Dorian lunged forward, ignoring the gun at his temple. Valeria pulled the trigger, but the bullet hung suspended in mid-air within the field of silence Lyra had created.
Dorian swung his sword at Valerius’s chest. The sound of steel hitting gold echoed throughout the vault.
"Your father was a king, Dorian," Valerius said, catching Dorian’s sword with his bare hand. "But you... you are just a victim."
With a single move, Valerius threw Dorian into one of the mirrors. As Dorian was buried in shards of glass, he saw his reflection in the mirror smiling back at him. But the reflection wasn't him. It was the version of him wearing the fiery mask.
"Put on the mask, Dorian," his voice in the mirror said. "Or you will lose them all."
Dorian stood up, covered in blood. He reached out his hand toward the mask of fire in the display.
"Don't!" Marcus shouted. "That mask won't save you; it will end you!"
Dorian didn't listen. The moment his hand touched the mask, a storm of flames beginning from his fingertips engulfed the entire room. But these flames weren't orange; they were black.
Dorian put the mask over his face.
At that moment, everyone in the room stopped. Even Valerius.
Because the mask on Dorian’s face wasn't just a power source. It was a seal.
"You don't understand," Dorian said. His voice no longer sounded human; it was like the screams of a thousand souls. "My father didn't build this room to protect Atlas. My father built this room to suppress the true Valerius inside of me."
Marcus’s face turned white with horror. "No... it can't be."
Dorian dropped his sword. He gripped his own mask with his hands. "Valerius isn't outside, Marcus. Valerius is a curse my father carved into my genes. I didn't marry his daughter... I am him."
Dorian looked at the old Valerius standing before him. The man in golden armor began to turn to dust and dissipate. Because he was just a projection, a memory.
The real Valerius was Dorian, wearing the mask.
Dorian saw the pure terror in Serra’s eyes as she backed away with the children. His own wife, his own children, were now running from his true face.
"Now," Dorian said, turning toward Valeria amidst black flames. "Let’s see who is the experiment, and who is the king."