Chapter 187: Cassian: Blood in the Middle
The rain tasted metallic as it slid down Cassian’s face. He stood at the far edge of the forest, where the flames didn’t quite reach, where the shadows whispered louder than the storm. The fortress still smoldered in front of him. The walls had come crumbling down and the illustrious banners shredded. The seat of the most powerful werewolf heirloom and power had become a pyre, and his name was scrawled somewhere among the ashes.
Marcus, his father, had been taken. He couldn’t quite place the sensation that had taken over his body. It all seemed surreal. All he felt was the echo of the chains snapping and a hollow ringing in his chest. Cassian’s hands curled at his sides. He had betrayed them all or maybe they had betrayed him first.
He leaned against a cracked pillar, listening to the slow rumble of unrest gathering beyond the hills. Something in him had ultimately shifted.
Marcus had fallen, yes, but not alone. With him had gone certainty and command. The last clear shape of the war they thought they were fighting.
Cassian’s pulse was ice. He didn't know anymore. He didn’t know where he stood. He believed he was doing the right thing, after what he had been told and the forbidding pull of the Umbrazin blood.
A soldier passed him, he was young, bruised and too thin. “General Maedor has requested your presence in the inner circle,” the boy said, then vanished into smoke.
Cassian didn’t move immediately.
Maedor. That name still made something bitter rise in his throat. Once, the man had stood on ceremony and principle. The last of the Wardens, they called him. Sanctified by the old tongues. Until he became corrupt, just like all of them, defending his choice. They all did. He even realised he had begun to do so now too. It was a means of survival, to overcome the unbearable guilt that was stitched into his very being. Cassian felt hollow. Maedor had once offered Cassian a seat at the round table beneath the Convergence Tree. Said he could be the bridge between bloodlines.
Cassian spat into the mud. A bridge always breaks first. He despised him, but he went.
The war room was a gutted chapel now, columns cracked, stained glass shattered. Maps lay pinned beneath knives. At the head of the table, Maedor stood in silent command. His dark skin was streaked with dried blood. A fresh cut ran from his temple to his jaw, but his spine remained straight as ever.
Around him sat others, amongst them there were allies to the Elders and many other forms who had an unimaginable thirst of ambition, power and beyond all need to control with the pathetic excuse of saving them all.
Cassian entered like a shadow clinging to the edge of something broken. Maedor didn’t turn.
“You’re late.”
“Am I still invited?” Cassian asked bitterly.
Maedor’s eyes met his. “You’re still in the war, aren’t you?”
Cassian said nothing. He took a seat, though not too close. He didn’t belong here. Not since he despised what he had become. Seeing his father falling into their hands had not shaken him to his core as he expected. It has actually made him wake up at his core.
The maps shifted as Maedor rolled up the parchment. “The factions are dividing faster than we can chart them.“ As Maedor was talking a quiet voice stirred from behind. “Maedor wants your head for your wrongdoing. You just stood there. Pathetic.”
The speaker was Serel, wrapped in loose leathers and bearing the faint mark of the Veyra, now faded, scarred over where a brand flared brightly across her shoulder which bound her indefinitely to the Elders. Now, she was one of their fiercest warriors, or what he saw it as, slaves.
Cassian didn’t answer. He just stared onwards at the maps. Maedor unrolled a parchment stained with soot and old blood. “We’ve confirmed movement in the Veyran Wastes. The surviving Wardens are gathering.”
Vesryn’s voice cut through. “What’s left of the three bloodlines is trying to revolt against us. What we managed to control by fragmentation or enslavement is now trying to rebel against us. Ungrateful filth.”
Maedor nodded grimly. “Let’s make this clear for all of you. Our control is gone. The Elders rewrote the world and we were at their side because the bloodlines no longer knew themselves.” He pointed to three sigils etched in flame.
“Sombrosi. Veyra. Umbrazin.” Maedor grew an ugly grimace on his face. “Then came the other beings. Chaos and tragedy. They still don’t understand that we are saving them from the abyss of their own darkness.”
Cassian’s throat tightened.
Maedor continued. “The Sombrosi, once memory-keepers, have been turned into fragmented cults. Some sell identity like coin. Others hunt their own, rewriting bloodlines for sport. Vesryn survived a purge herself.”
Vesryn’s mouth curled, half in contempt. “My siblings don’t remember I exist. Because someone sold our ancestral thread to a Hollow-Tongue Scribe. I found my memory buried in a ledger.”
Cassian blinked. “They… rewrote you?”
Vesryn didn’t look at him. “Erased. Then repurposed. I was made to forget I ever cared because that is how I will reach my purpose. I no longer feel.”
Cassian looked at her. She met his eyes. “We were taught that pain purified. That to suffer was holy. We absorbed others’ agony until we forgot our own. That is how it is meant to be.”
Then Maedor spoke of the bloodline Cassian knew best and feared most.
“The Umbrazin were sealed. Not merely hunted and erased. Your father helped lead that charge, Cassian.”
Silence fell. The weight of it hit like a black tide. Cassian nodded slowly. Maedor’s voice dropped. “Your father was one of their architects, Cassian. A sleeper among us. He helped convince the world that the Umbrazin were too dangerous to survive.”
“And maybe they were,” Cassian whispered.
“You want to fix what your father did? Then we need to unlock the last bastion: Hollow Ridge. That’s where the Sealed Memory Vaults are and where the final key may rest.”
Vesryn nodded. “We’ll need someone who understands Umbrazin encryption. Someone who’s been inside.”
Cassian’s gut twisted. “He trained me. He trusted me. I was supposed to continue his work.”
“And now,” Maedor said, “you must destroy it.”
Serel stepped forward. “There are rumors that Veyra slaves are being conditioned as emotional triggers, used to detonate cities through psychic overload. Sombrosi mercenaries have infiltrated even Sanctuary’s outer circles. They are rewriting names, faces and entire bloodlines.”
Vesryn’s voice chilled. “And all of this is to stop one thing: the convergence.”
Cassian met her eyes. “The child.”
“Yes. She carries all three bloods. The Veil is thinning and when it breaks, the Elders lose everything, we all do.”
Maedor turned to Cassian. “You want to walk the other way now?”
“No.”
“Then lead the Hollow Ridge strike. You’ll take Vesryn, Serel and our most trusted warriors. You’ll carry your father’s sins into the place where he buried the truth.”
Cassian nodded slowly. For the first time in weeks, his path felt clear. It wasn't easy but at least it sounded noble.