Chapter 161: Splitting Vessel

For several agonizing seconds, nobody breathed.

Then, the panic broke.

Benches capsized with violent, echoing clatters against the stone floor as students scrambled backward, falling over their own boots just to put distance between themselves and the center of the mat.

They huddled against the far walls in a dense, vibrating mass, their eyes wide, their breathing frantic.

In the center of the wreckage, a low, guttural groan cut through the dust.

Professor Halloway shifted against the base of the wall. The masonry behind her spine was deeply cracked, a web of shattered stone radiating outward from where her shoulders had made impact.

She slowly lifted her head, her chest heaving as she fought for breath, her gray instructor’s coat torn at the seam. When her eyelids finally fluttered open, there was no human gray left in her gaze.

Her eyes were burning a bright, fierce, defensive amber.

It was the raw, instinctual reaction of her inner wolf—a primal surge of pack energy triggered by a mortal threat. She didn't look at the class. She didn't look at the shattered plaster.

Her glowing, predatory eyes locked directly onto me, her teeth bared in a silent, terrified snarl as she tried to force her broken posture upright.

My knees shook so violently I could barely keep my balance. I slowly lifted my hands, my chest heaving in short, erratic gasps as I stared down at my own palms.

They looked perfectly normal. The pitch-black, twisted veins had receded; the jagged, bone-white fangs had melted back into ordinary fingers.

But beneath the pale skin, I could still feel it.

A strange, terrifying power was humming through my muscles—a cold, heavy, and entirely alien current that felt like liquid iron circulating through my bloodstream.

It didn't feel like magic. It didn't feel like a wolf. It felt like a weight, an ancient force that had just used my bones as a conduit to shatter a trained vanguard instructor.

"What…what did I do?" I whispered, my voice cracking, a hot, frantic tear spilling over my lower lid.

Suddenly, the heavy doors at the back of the hall slammed open.

The wood hit the stone casing with a violent bang, and Riven stepped through the threshold. He was breathing hard, his dark hair messy, his jacket unzipped as if he had been running across the high marble bridge at a full sprint.

He looked like he was hunting for an explosion, his eyes scanning the space with a frantic, lethal intensity.

Then, he froze.

His round, wide gaze took in the entire scene in a single millisecond—the capsized benches, the terrified, screaming huddle of students, the shattered masonry, and Professor Halloway struggling to stand with her wolf eyes glowing. Finally, his eyes snapped to the center of the mat.

He locked onto me.

The color completely drained from Riven’s face.

"Kathy..." he breathed, his voice a low, horrified whisper that barely carried across the room.

The sight of him broke the last of my composure. The strange, alien heat inside my chest suddenly clashed with a massive, crushing wave of pure, human terror.

"I'm sorry," I stammered, the words bursting out of my throat in a broken, sobbing rush. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean to... I don't know what happened..."

I couldn't stay there. I couldn't let them look at me like I was a monster.

Turned around by pure panic, I bolted toward the exit. Riven was standing directly in the center of the doorway, his massive frame completely blocking the frame, but I didn't care.

I lunged forward, my hands coming up to strike his chest. The moment my palms made contact with his leather jacket, that same, terrifying current flared beneath my skin.

Even though he was an Alpha, the sheer force of the impact sent a visible shockwave through his posture. He gave a sharp grunt, his boots skidding back a full foot across the stone threshold as the momentum forced him aside, his hands reaching out blindly to catch me.

"Kathy, wait! Stop!" he roared, his deep voice echoing down the corridor.

I ignored him. I burst through the gap and ran straight into the long, vaulted hallway.

The corridor was a blur of gray masonry and flickering gas lamps. My chest was rattling, the metallic hum in my ears starting to rise again like the sound of a distant swarm of insects.

I could hear his footsteps behind me—heavy, rhythmic, and impossibly fast. He was an Alpha; his line was built for the hunt, and no matter how much distance I tried to put between us, the sound of his boots was closing the gap with terrifying speed.

"Kathy!"

I reached the heavy iron doors of the western stairwell, my hand wrapping around the cold handle, but before I could throw my weight against the wood, a massive, warm hand closed around my upper arm.

Riven’s grip was firm, but he didn't slam me against the wall. With a single, fluid sweep of his arm, he spun me around, his large body instantly blocking the rest of the corridor, trapping me between his chest and the heavy iron door.

"Look at me," he commanded, his breathing rough, his face inches from mine. "Kathy, stop running. Look at me."

I lifted my head, my whole body shaking so violently my teeth were clicking together. The tears were coming fast now, hot and thick, blurring my vision as I looked up at him.

The crimson light in my eyes was practically blinding me, and as I watched his expression, I could feel the thick, black veins beginning to crawl back up the sides of my neck, rising in raised, pulsating ridges toward my jawline.

"Riven, please," I sobbed, my hands coming up to bunch into the fabric of his shirt, my forehead dropping against his chest. "Please help me... I don't know what’s happening to me. It hurts... everything is spinning. I think I’m losing my mind."

He let out a sharp, ragged breath, his arms instantly coming around my shoulders, pulling me tightly against the hard, solid warmth of his chest. He buried his face into the dark, tangled waves of my hair, his large hands rubbing my back in a desperate, frantic rhythm.

"I’ve got you," he muttered, his voice thick with a raw, intense emotion I’d never heard from him before. "I’ve got you. Just breathe. You’re not losing your mind. We’re going to fix this, Kathy. I swear to you on my life."

He tightened his embrace, trying to anchor me, trying to use his massive wolf heat to burn through the freezing, alien current inside my veins.

But the moment his warmth fully enveloped my core, the entity inside me didn't just flinch—it struck back.

A sudden, catastrophic surge of pure, icy power exploded outward from the absolute base of my spine.

It didn't feel like my anger anymore; it felt like a deliberate, hostile defensive maneuver from a parasite that had just been threatened by an apex predator.

My arms moved against my will. With a single, violent twitch of my shoulders, I shoved him back.

The force was immense. Riven was thrown completely backward across the width of the corridor. His spine hit the opposite stone wall with a heavy, echoing thud, his boots sliding out from under him for a fraction of a second before he managed to dig his heels into the tile.

I stood in front of the iron door, my posture straightening into a rigid, unnatural alignment that didn't belong to my body at all.

The tears on my cheeks instantly dried, my face setting into a cold, completely expressionless mask.

Inside my head, the crimson light went completely black.

Riven looked up from the wall, his eyes widening in absolute, paralyzed horror as he watched the transition.

The red in my eyes didn't just fade; it was swallowed whole as my pupils expanded, turning into two massive, pitch-black voids of absolute nothingness that filled my entire sockets from corner to corner. The twisted black veins on my neck pulsed violently, turning a deep, bruised purple.

I opened my mouth, but the voice that came out didn't belong to me.

It was a dual, layered, and utterly demonic distortion—a low, scraping register that sounded like two sheets of rusted iron grinding together over a wet grave, echoing off the stone vaults with a terrifying, suffocating resonance.

"STAY AWAY FROM US! "

The words hung in the freezing air like frost.

Riven froze for a single, terrifying second, the realization of the grimoire’s words fully breaking across his mind.

But the paralysis didn't last.

"Like hell I will," Riven growled, his face twisting into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.

He didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, crossing the tile floor in a fraction of a second. Before the shadow inside me could lift my arms to throw another shockwave, Riven’s massive hands clamped down onto my shoulders, his fingers digging into the gray wool uniform with a relentless, iron grip.

"Get out of her!" he roared.

His eyes snapped from amber to a brilliant, blinding, and completely overwhelming green—the purest manifestation of his Alpha dominance energy.

A massive, crushing wave of heavy, suffocating pack pressure exploded outward from his core, flooding the narrow corridor until the air felt as thick as wet cement.

He poured every single unit of his silver-line energy straight through his palms, forcing the raw, burning current of his wolf directly into my corrupted bloodline.

Inside my mind, a violent, chaotic war broke out. The green light of his alpha bond slammed into the pitch-black void of the shadow like a falling star hitting a dark ocean.

The entity bucked against the intrusion, my spine arching backward as a silent, agonized scream tore through my throat, the demonic voice scraping against my eardrums.

The black veins on my neck flared, then began to twist, turning erratic as Riven’s green light systematically crushed the parasitic frequency, forcing the darkness back down into the lower cells of my core.

The struggle lasted only a second, but it was more than my physical shell could handle. The absolute strain of two primeval forces tearing at my identity broke the final wire.

The black voids in my eyes instantly shattered, the pupils shrinking back to their normal gray size as the veins on my neck vanished completely. The room went perfectly still.

My knees went entirely out from under me.

The strength left my limbs in a single, sudden drop, my head lurching forward as my consciousness completely slipped away into a deep, merciful oblivion.

I fainted, my limp body collapsing forward, straight into Riven’s waiting arms.