Chapter 61 Leo
The air changed the moment I crossed the threshold.
It did not feel like stepping into another place. It felt like stepping out of myself.
The Realm always announced itself with pressure, with vibration, with the hum of power folding around my bones like armor. Purgatory did the opposite. It stripped. It thinned. It peeled sensation away layer by layer until even my heartbeat sounded too loud in my ears.
The world on the other side of the veil was gray. Not dark. Not light. Just drained. Color bled out of everything like someone had turned the saturation down until only ash remained. The sky was a pale smear of cloudless nothing. The ground beneath my boots was stone that looked like it had never been carved and never would be.
Time did not move here the way it did anywhere else.
It hung.
I took one step forward and felt it instantly. The weight I always carried in my veins was gone. No hum of metal answering my pulse. No edge of gravity bending at my will. No echo of the Realm’s living energy under my skin.
My power fell away like peeling skin.
Not violently. Not painfully. Just suddenly absent.
My hands clenched at my sides on instinct. My jaw tightened.
This was what the Bloodhounds trained for. Neutral ground. Mortal vulnerability. No gifts. No weapons except the ones you brought in your head and your fists.
I forced myself to breathe slowly and kept walking.
He was already there.
Orryx sat at a circular stone table in the center of the expanse like he had been waiting a long time. Or like time meant nothing to him here.
He looked human.
That was the first thing that unsettled me.
No wings. No talons. No shifting illusion of skin folding over something inhuman. Just a man in dark clothes, dark hair pulled back at the nape of his neck, posture relaxed, hands folded loosely in front of him.
He could have been anyone. A scholar. A diplomat. A criminal boss. Someone you might pass on a street and never look at twice.
But the air around him felt wrong.
Dense. Heavy. Old.
I stopped a few feet from the table, eyes locked on him.
“You’re not a gargoyle,” I said flatly.
His mouth curved into a faint smile, amused and almost gentle.
“I am whatever the world requires me to be,” he replied. His voice was smooth, cultured, and threaded with something ancient that did not belong in a human throat. “Today that happens to be this.”
I did not sit.
“I didn’t come here to admire your choice of disguise.”
“Of course not,” Orryx said calmly. “You came because curiosity and duty are both poisons you cannot stop drinking.”
I said nothing.
He tilted his head, studying me with open interest.
“You look smaller without your gifts,” he observed. “Not weaker. Just… less inevitable.”
“Get to the point,” I said.
His eyes glittered faintly.
“Straightforward. I like that.”
I folded my arms across my chest and waited.
“You killed Rhaz,” Orryx said.
“Your monster tried to take a girl I protect,” I replied. “He failed.”
Something flickered behind Orryx’s eyes. Not anger. Not grief.
Pride.
“Rhaz was loyal,” he said softly. “Fiercely so. He would have followed me into annihilation without question.”
“I didn’t come here to mourn your monsters,” I said.
Orryx laughed.
It was a genuine sound. Warm. Almost fond.
“I will miss him,” he admitted. “He was born into a dying race and still chose devotion over despair. That kind of loyalty is rare. Even among my own kind.”
I stepped closer to the table, the stone grinding faintly under my boots.
“You sent him because you couldn’t come yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Why now,” I pressed. “Why risk exposure. Why escalate.”
Orryx leaned back in his chair, folding one ankle over the other.
“Because the bleed has begun,” he said. “Because the fabric is thinning. Because the Kyro walks again.”
My jaw tightened.
“So that’s it. You want her.”
“I want what she is,” Orryx corrected gently. “And what she will become.”
“You don’t get her.”
He smiled wider.
“You already know that is not how this ends.”
“I don’t care how you think it ends,” I said. “I care about how far you are willing to push before I end you.”
He regarded me in silence for a long moment.
Then he said, “You felt it, didn’t you.”
I did not answer.
“You felt the distortion when she awakened,” Orryx continued. “The wrongness. The rupture. The echo across realms. Even sealed as she is, even blind to her own nature, she shook the fabric like a dying star.”
My fists clenched.
“You have felt it too,” he said softly. “You just pretend you haven’t.”
I stepped closer, stopping on the edge of the table.
“You don’t get to talk about her like she’s a cosmic resource.”
“She is not a girl,” Orryx replied, his voice sharpening slightly. “She is a convergence point. A failsafe. A weapon and a seal and a catastrophe wrapped into one human shell.”
“She is a person,” I snapped.
“So was the first Kyro,” Orryx said. “And look what that compassion bought your worlds.”
The name burned in my skull.
“You are standing on a knife edge, Bloodhound,” he said. “The tear will widen. The gargoyle realm will bleed into yours. The safeguards will fail. And when she awakens fully, she will either seal reality or unmake it.”
I stared at him.
“Give her to me,” Orryx said calmly. “While you still can. While she is malleable. While she still trusts you. Spare your world the cleansing I would bring if I have to take her by force.”
“Over my dead body,” I said.
“That is a possibility,” he agreed mildly.
“You think this is diplomacy,” I said. “But it’s extortion.”
“It is mercy,” Orryx countered. “I do not need her alive. I need her blood and her essence. I need what she is, not who she thinks she is.”
The word blood made my vision sharpen.
“You touch her,” I said slowly, “and I will tear you apart molecule by molecule even if it costs me my soul.”
Orryx’s smile never wavered.
“You are very loyal,” he observed. “Just like Rhaz.”
“Don’t compare yourself to him,” I said. “He died screaming.”
“Did he,” Orryx murmured, almost thoughtfully. “How tragic.”
“You don’t scare me,” I said.
“That is not true,” he replied gently. “If I did not scare you, you would not be here.”
Silence stretched between us.
The air felt heavier.
“You know what she is,” Orryx said quietly. “Even if you lie to her about it. Even if you lie to yourself.”
My teeth ground together.
“You are standing between a god and its destiny,” he continued. “And you think your affection changes the outcome.”
“I think you’re underestimating how far I’ll go,” I said.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.
“Then let us speak plainly,” he said. “You can hand her over. I will extract what I need. The tear will be sealed. Your worlds will stabilize. Your precious girl will be spared the agony of becoming something that will devour her sanity.”
“And if I refuse.”
“I will send another Rhaz,” Orryx said. “And another. And another. I will peel your Bloodhounds down to bone. I will turn your academy into a feeding ground. And eventually, I will take her.”
My hands shook with contained violence.
“You want her?” I said, stepping closer until we were face to face. “Come fucking get her.”
The words came out low and lethal.
“I will bury every creature you send. I will collapse your gateways. I will burn your realm to ash before I give you a single drop of her blood.”
Orryx studied me for a long moment.
Then he laughed softly.
“Good,” he said. “I was hoping you would say that.”
“Why.”
“Because it makes this far more entertaining.”
I straightened.
“This meeting is over.”
“I agree,” he said. “For now.”
I turned and walked away without waiting for a response.
The veil shimmered faintly at the edge of the gray expanse.
Behind me, Orryx’s voice carried, smooth and dark.
“You cannot protect her from herself, Leo Moretti.”
I did not stop.
“You cannot stop what she is becoming.”
I passed through the veil.
The Realm slammed back into my body like a tidal wave. Power roared into my veins. Metal answered my pulse. Gravity bent around my steps.
My knees buckled for half a second.
Then I stood.
Edward was waiting just beyond the threshold, eyes sharp.
“Well,” he said quietly. “How bad is it.”
“Worse than we thought,” I replied.
“Did he make demands.”
“Yes.”
“And.”
“I told him to go to hell.”
Edward closed his eyes.
War had not begun.
But it would.
And when it did, it would be fought over one girl who had no idea the universe was already sharpening its teeth around her.