Chapter 162 Hundred and sixty five

Chapter 162 Hundred and sixty five

"Sienna, wake up." The voice wasn’t a voice, just a ripple of cold air brushing along her skin, curling under her ribs, dragging her out of sleep as if someone had gripped her spine and yanked. Her eyes snapped open, breath catching painfully, because the first thing she felt wasn’t fear, it was absence. A hollow space beside her where warmth used to be. Where he used to be. Where Ryder had lain only hours ago, counting breaths he struggled to keep steady, whispering her name like a prayer he didn’t deserve. And now, nothing.

She pushed herself up so fast the blanket tangled around her legs and nearly threw her back down. "Ryder," she whispered, because saying it louder would make the truth too real. Her voice cracked anyway, thin as smoke. "Ryder, answer me."

The ruins didn’t answer. The hall around her, broken pillars, cracked stone, vines threading through ancient carvings, felt colder than they had when she’d fallen asleep against his shoulder. The air tasted wrong. Too thin. As if something sacred had been ripped out of it.

She slid off the stone slab they’d used as a bed and stumbled across the floor, her hand brushing the shattered wall for balance. Moonlight spilled through the broken archway, pale and sharp, flooding the floor with silver light. It cut across the jagged rocks like a blade. She stepped into it and felt a jolt of panic slice straight through her chest.

His scent was gone.

Ryder never vanished without a trace. Even when he tried to hide, he carried himself like a storm, impossible to ignore, impossible to forget. His presence always wrapped around her, rough and steady, like hands pulling her closer even when he didn’t touch her. But now the world felt too still. Too silent.

"Ryder!" Her voice shot through the ruins, echoing off the stones and coming back to her as if mocking her desperation. She ran to the far corner where he’d last collapsed in her arms, his body shaking so violently she’d thought something inside him would break. She’d held him, whispered to him, begged him not to give in to the curse tearing at him. He’d quieted only after she rested her forehead against his, promising she wouldn’t leave him.

She had kept her promise.

He hadn’t kept his.

Her palms hit the stone wall with a force that made dust rain down. "Why did you leave me?" She didn’t ask the ruins, she asked the universe. She asked the goddess. She asked the curse that wouldn’t stop until it destroyed them both.

The air shifted behind her.

She spun around so fast her hair whipped across her face. "Ryder?" It wasn’t. She knew it before she finished saying his name. The shadows along the corridor didn’t move like him, didn’t breathe like him, didn’t tremble with the uneven heartbeat she’d memorized these past nights.

Still, she stepped toward them, her pulse slamming against her ribs. She raised her hand, fingers glowing faintly, light gathering along her skin in small pulses she no longer tried to hide. "Come out," she warned, voice low, rough, dangerous. "If you’re here to die, keep hiding."

The shadows shifted again, and something crumbled. A small piece of black stone fell from the archway near the entrance. She moved toward it, slow but relentless, like a predator stalking its prey. Her hair fell across her shoulders in dark waves, catching the moonlight as her eyes narrowed and her breath steadied into something razor-sharp.

She reached the doorway, pressed her hand against the stone, and leaned forward.

Stillness.

Nothing.

The silence taunted her.

She inhaled deeply, testing the air again. Not him. Not even remotely close. Just dust, old stone, and the faint metallic scent of her own rising anger.

Her hands curled into fists. "You said you wouldn’t leave," she whispered, voice shaking now, softer, too human, too raw. "You said we would face this together."

She backed away from the door and pressed her hands to her face. The moment she shut her eyes she saw him again, his head in her lap, his fingers clutching her wrist as if she were the only thing preventing him from slipping into darkness. She remembered the sound he’d made when the last wave of pain hit him, the whispered apology he’d breathed against her skin. She’d thought it was because he couldn’t hold back the tears.

But now she realized it had been a goodbye.

Her eyes snapped open, burning with fury. "Coward," she muttered. Not because she believed it. But because she needed to say something that might keep her from falling apart. "You think you can disappear and spare me the pain? Do you even know what you’ve done?"

The ruins didn’t answer. The silence felt like punishment.

She turned sharply and walked back toward the center of the hall. The moonlight caught the edges of something on the ground. She froze. Slowly, she crouched, reaching for it with trembling fingers.

It was a mark burned into the stone.

A smear of shadow shaped like a handprint, darker than death, colder than night. Her breath hitched. She touched it, and agony shot through her arm, up her spine, into her skull. She jerked back, gasping, her entire body bending under the force of it.

And then she heard it.

A scream.

Not hers.

His.

Ryder’s voice tore through her mind, broken and distant, as if echoing from another world. She collapsed to her knees as the sound ripped through her chest, each syllable shaking her bones.

"Sienna, "

She clutched the floor, her nails scraping against stone. "Ryder? Ryder, where are you?" Her voice cracked into something unrecognizable, part rage, part terror.

The scream faded.

Silence swallowed her again.

She tilted her head back, breathing hard, sweat sliding down her temples. "No," she growled. "You’re not gone. You’re not dead. You wouldn’t leave without, "

A sudden pulse tore through the ruins. The ground shuddered beneath her feet. Moonlight thickened, brightening until it poured across the floor like liquid silver. The mark on the stone flickered, then vanished.

Fear crawled up her spine.

"Ryder," she whispered, barely audible. "Where did they take you?"

She stood slowly, every muscle trembling with fury and grief. Her chest felt too tight, her heart pounding as if trying to break free. She lifted her hands, and light exploded from her fingers, shooting across the hall, crackling against the broken walls.

The ruins answered with a roar of collapsing stone.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" she screamed, her power shattering a section of the temple wall, sending rocks crashing to the ground. Her voice echoed through the night, wild and frantic, carrying her desperation out into the world.

The dust settled. The ruin quieted. The silence returned, heavier than before.

She dropped to her knees again, tears finally sliding down her cheeks. She didn’t bother wiping them. She let them fall, each one burning against her skin like sparks.

She bowed her head.

"Ryder… don’t disappear," she whispered. "Don’t make me search the world alone."

A faint breeze brushed her cheek.

Not a response.

Not him.

Just the wind moving through a broken temple.

But she felt it anyway.

A pull.

A tug deep in her chest, soft but undeniable, pulling her toward the eastern side of the ruins. Toward the shadowed corridor where moonlight didn’t reach. Toward something she couldn’t see yet but already feared.

The heartbeat she felt wasn’t hers.

And it wasn’t human.

She stood slowly, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Her voice was steady when she spoke again, quiet but deadly.

"I’m coming for you."

She stepped into the darkness, unaware that the last glimmer of moonlight behind her flickered, long enough to cast her shadow twice on the stone.

One was hers.

The other wasn’t.