Chapter 73: Residual Poison

Chapter 73: Residual Poison

The next moment.

Kyle's spine arched violently backward. The chaos runes still smoldering in his chest ignited like a fuse, racing up through his veins from where the tube had been inserted.

Black lines crawled over his collarbone, up his neck, and spread across the left side of his face.

"Stay back——" Kyle snarled. "It's burning through my blood... every drop of it..."

Cole took a step forward.

Kyle threw his hand up, palm out. "Don't come near me! I don't know how much longer I can hold on."

Odin's voice came down from the vaulted ceiling of the altar chamber.

"You didn't actually think it would be that simple, did you? Just walk in and undo everything I built into Kyle?"

Odin looked down at them the way an old teacher looks at a student who's made a stupid mistake. "The chaos toxin fused with his bone marrow twenty-two years ago. It's bound to his crystal core. Every morning your father woke up, the first thing he felt was chaos gnawing at his spine. Every night he closed his eyes, the last thing he felt was chaos licking at his cerebral cortex. Twenty-two years. Over eight thousand days. Every single one of them like that. His marrow, his blood, every nerve in his body has been soaked through with chaos toxin. Right now, all he wants to do is tear you apart, drink your blood, and rip your heart out as an offering to me."

Cole went rigid.

"As long as the ritual is still running, he belongs to me." Odin let out a low laugh. "Oh, and one more thing. He knew you were coming. For twenty-two years, he's been holding on with the last scrap of his conscious mind, just waiting for you."

Kyle's left eye went completely black.

He threw his head back and let out a howl that crashed back and forth through the altar's inner chamber.

Burning through his own life force, Kyle's wounds began closing at a visible rate.

His wolf claws snapped out from his fingertips without warning, their dark gold sheen shot through with streaks of purple-black chaos toxin.

He spun and slashed at Cole's heart.

Cole twisted on instinct. The claws raked across his chest, shredding five clean lines through his tactical vest and carving five deep gashes into his skin, down to the bone.

Kyle didn't chase him. Without any wind-up, he launched himself straight at the nearest wolf warrior, claws leading.

The warrior reacted fast and raised a riot shield. The shield caught Kyle's left hand.

The claws punched straight through the alloy and five fingertips came out the other side, less than a fist's width from the warrior's face.

The impact sent the warrior skidding backward.

Kyle's right claw was already coming down toward the warrior's head.

Cole slammed into Kyle from the side.

"Father, look at me." Cole growled. "I'm Cole. Snap out of it. Don't let that bastard run you."

Kyle swung.

Twenty-two years of suppressed strength, twenty-two years of rage, all of it twisted by Odin into a single whip, and brought down on his own son.

Cole rolled to dodge the second swipe. He hadn't made it back to his feet when Kyle's knee drove into his stomach and launched him nearly five meters through the air. He hit the ground flat on his back.

Father and son. They were fighting again.

The chaos was reaching a breaking point when Odin snapped his fingers.

The floor around the altar cracked open in twelve places simultaneously, each gap about a meter across, evenly spaced around the outer ring of the altar in the shape of a Star of David, enclosing everyone inside.

Twelve black stone pillars rose slowly from the cracks.

Chaos runes covered every surface, and a purple-glowing liquid ran through the carved channels.

Each pillar held a person suspended inside it. Twelve of them. All with Kyle's face. They floated in the chaos fluid with their eyes closed, expressions calm, as if sleeping.

Then, all at once, they opened their eyes.

"Among the materials required for the ascension ritual..."

Odin spread his arms wide, like a collector showing off his prize pieces. "Kyle is the primary vessel. These twelve are the backups. You think I had all those clones made in Berlin and Greenland just for fun? Those were expendable. These are the ones I actually chose. Every one of them carries your father's complete genetic sequence. Every one of them has been pre-treated with chaos toxin in sync with Kyle himself. Even if he's finished, as long as these twelve pillars still stand, I can complete the ritual without him."

Cole lay on his back, dark gold blood still seeping from the corner of his mouth. The five gashes across his chest had soaked his tactical vest a deep, dark brown.

Kyle walked toward Cole.

Chaos runes covered his entire upper body, purple lines pulsing beneath his skin. He looked down at Cole on the ground and raised his claws high.

"No!"

Sophia threw herself between them, arms spread wide, putting herself in front of Cole and throwing up a phoenix fire shield.

Kyle's claws didn't stop. They came down on Sophia's hastily formed shield and shattered it. Gold fragments scattered everywhere.

The force knocked Sophia back a step. Her back hit Cole's chest, but she didn't fall.

She stood there, facing Kyle's face, twisted beyond recognition by chaos.

If this kept going, Cole was going to die.

She looked down at the phoenix talisman hanging at her chest, the one holding the last fragment of pure phoenix essence. She took a slow breath and ignited it.

Gold-red fire erupted from inside her. Her whole body became a burning phoenix.

Flames poured from her pores. Her hair lifted in the fire. Her eyes turned pure gold-red.

Sophia burned through her own life force and unleashed power far beyond anything she could normally reach.

She pressed both hands to Kyle's chest and poured every last drop of phoenix essence into him as a single beam of purifying light.

"Ahhh——!"

Kyle let out a scream of raw pain. Gold-red light swallowed him whole.

Black chaos energy poured from his pores like steam evaporating into the air, twisting and dissolving as it rose.

The chaos runes burned away one by one under the phoenix fire, exposing the skin beneath, skin that had been eaten away for far too long.

Sophia's hair turned white at a speed you could watch with the naked eye. It spread from her temples to the crown of her head, then from the crown down to the ends, every strand losing its color as the phoenix fire consumed her.

First gray-white. Then snow-white. Then something beyond white, a dry, lifeless white that had nothing left in it.

Blood the color of gold kept spilling from the corner of her mouth.

The purifying light held for a full minute.

The black runes finally faded from Kyle's body entirely. The black in his eyes receded. His pupils shifted back to molten gold.

He looked down at Sophia, her whole body still wreathed in dying flames, her hair completely white. Then he looked past her at Cole, collapsed in a pool of blood.

Two tears slid down from his molten gold eye.

"Cole..."

The moment the name left his lips, his body fell straight back. The chaos toxin had been soaking inside him too long. The toxin was gone now, but twenty-two years of damage had already hollowed out the foundation of his crystal core.

He was still alive. His crystal core was still beating. But he would never stand again.

He had nothing left to fight with.

Sophia's fire went out.

She dropped from the air, and Cole used the last thing he had to roll over and catch her.

She landed in his arms, light in a way that didn't feel like a living person.

All that white hair spread across his arm. No color left in her lips.

Cole held her. She forced her eyes open, saw him still looking at her, and the corner of her mouth moved.

"I'm okay." Sophia said softly. "He's back... that's enough."

Cole buried his face in her white hair and closed his eyes.

Every heartbeat came with a sharp stab of pain. Every breath dragged crystal core fragments across the edges of the cracks inside him.

But he wouldn't let go.

He was afraid that if he did, she would just come apart.