Chapter 79 Elena Heart- POV
"They were gone by the time I breached the door," Xavier said, walking toward me, the Indigo light casting long, jagged shadows behind him.
He looked at me with a mixture of gratitude and grim frustration. "They knew I was coming. Your 'storm' moved faster than we anticipated, or perhaps... someone told them the King was no longer sleeping."
I gasped, my hand flying to my mouth. In my desperation to save him, I had become the variable that tipped them off.
I had sent the message to my parents, I had whispered to James, I had not confronted Grace. I had left a trail of breadcrumbs right to the King's hidden intent.
"Elena, I know you were trying to help," he said, reaching out to steady me as my knees wavered. "And yes, every name, every detail of the intel was correct. But somehow, they were one step ahead of my shadow."
I looked around the room, my eyes frantically searching the dark corners, the pillars, the carvings.
My gaze caught on a faint, rhythmic flicker deep within the masonry of the far wall. A cold dread washed over me, the kind of dread you only feel when you realize you haven't escaped a trap, you've just walked into a bigger one.
Then…
The world didn't just explode; it shattered.
One second, I was staring at the wall, my fingers inches away from a faint, glowing etched sigil, the mark of the Silver Sun—that was pulsing with a rhythmic, frantic light. It wasn't a hidden door or a map. It was a fuse.
The "BOOM" wasn't a sound you heard with your ears; it was a physical force that hit my chest like a battering ram. The sickly yellow light of the Sanctum was swallowed by a blinding, white-hot flash that seared my retinas.
Everything went into slow motion. I saw the shockwave ripple through the air, turning the ancient obsidian blocks into lethal shrapnel. I saw James, loyal, instinctive
James—throwing his entire body toward Xavier, his hands reaching out to shove the King into the alcove of the weeping eye.
Then, the heat found me.
The roar of the collapsing ceiling drowned out my own scream. I felt the floor disintegrate beneath my feet, and for a terrifying moment, I was weightless, tossed like a ragdoll into the dark. Dust, thick and tasting of pulverized stone and ancient death, filled my lungs.
When the world finally stopped shaking, the silence was more painful than the noise. It was a heavy, ringing vacuum.
I was buried. Not deep, but enough. My left arm felt numb, pinned under a slab of marble, and my face was pressed into the cold, gritty dirt. I coughed, and every rib in my body protested with a sharp, stabbing heat.
"Xavier..." I tried to call out, but it came out as a pathetic, wet wheeze.
I pushed against the debris, my fingernails tearing as I clawed my way out of the rubble. The Sanctum was gone.
The grand, terrifying chamber had been reduced to a jagged crater. High above, through the gaping hole in the Cathedral's foundation, I could see the midnight sky—beautiful, indifferent, and flecked with the orange glow of fires starting in the city above.
"Elena!"
The voice was ragged, desperate. I turned my head, my vision swimming.
A few yards away, a massive pile of stones shifted. Xavier emerged from the dust, his royal robes shredded, his face streaked with blood and soot.
He wasn't looking at the destruction. He wasn't looking at the palace. He was scrambling toward me on his hands and knees, his eyes wide with a raw, human terror I had never seen on the face of the King.
"I'm... here," I managed, finally heaving the slab off my arm with a cry of pain.
He reached me in a second, his hands shaking as they cupped my face. "You're alive. Gods, Elena, stay with me." He pulled me against his chest, his heart hammering so hard I could feel it through his ruined tunic.
I looked past his shoulder, searching for the man who had jumped first. "James? Where is James?"
Xavier’s grip tightened, and he didn't look back. My eyes followed the trail of rubble to where a single, bloodied hand lay motionless beneath a mountain of black obsidian. James had made his choice. He had protected the King, just like he had in the timeline that was supposed to be erased.
"They knew," I whispered, the realization hitting me harder than the blast. "Xavier, they didn't just run. They used me. They knew I’d tell you. They knew you’d come. This wasn't a meeting... it was an execution."
"The North Gate," Xavier hissed, his voice trembling with a mixture of grief and rage.
We both looked up. From the city above, the sound of a massive, low-frequency horn echoed, a sound that vibrated in the very marrow of my bones. It wasn't a signal for the guards. It was the sound of the palace being forced open.
The sky above the crater began to swirl, the clouds turning a bruised, unnatural purple.
The storm hadn't been delayed by my interference. By trying to save the King, I had accidentally cleared the path for the traitors to move faster.
I had pulled the King out of the palace and into a hole in the ground, leaving the throne, and the North Gate—completely wide open.
"We have to go," I said, grabbing Xavier’s collar, forcing him to look at me despite the blood dripping into his eyes. "The rebels... they aren't coming in three days. They're coming now."