Chapter 173 Faced with the Shadows
Chapter 173 Faced with the Shadows
Author's POV
The academy had descended into absolute, unmitigated pandemonium.
The crimson warning lights embedded in the stone walls pulsed rhythmically, casting long, bloody shadows across the vaulted hallways.
Alarms wailed like dying beasts, their screeching frequencies rattling the heavy glass display cases and throwing the remaining crowds of unaligned students into a state of sheer, blind panic.
Abby was stumbling, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps as Amaya violently dragged her forward by the arm.
The two girls were moving as fast as their boots could carry them over the cold stone floors, heading directly toward the library.
"Hurry up, Abby!" Amaya hissed, her sharp amber eyes frantically scanning every shadowed alcove they passed. "The enforcers are locking down the upper levels. If we don't get into the restricted archives right now to anchor the linguistic matrix from these scrolls, Principal Wolffur’s containment units are going to vaporize the anomaly—and Kathy’s real core will go down with it!"
"I'm trying!" Abby sobbed, wiping a mix of sweat and tears from her flushed face.
The weight of her own guilt was a crushing force inside her chest. She had helped Madame Vespa. She had let the darkness into the school. If Kathy died because of the entity she helped unleash, Abby knew she would never survive the execution order—or her own conscience.
They rounded a sharp corner, entering the long, wide gallery that led directly to the library's grand mahogany doors.
The gallery was completely deserted, illuminated only by a single row of overhead gas lamps that flickered weakly against the encroaching darkness.
Suddenly, the air in the corridor died.
The frantic, echoing sounds of the campus alarms outside seemed to instantly muffle, as if a heavy, soundproof blanket had been dropped over the entire sector.
The ambient temperature plummeted into a sub-zero freeze within the span of a single heartbeat.
Amaya skidded to a halt, her boots sliding across the polished stone. Her tracking senses violently flared.
At the far end of the long gallery, right beneath the dim glow of a flickering gas lamp, a pool of pure, ink-black shadow began to warp and bubble upward from the floorboards.
The darkness didn't just expand; it pulled the light straight out of the air, twisting and solidifying into a human silhouette.
The shadow receded, peeling away to reveal a physical form standing in the center of the corridor.
It was Kathy.
Abby let out a sharp, breathless gasp, her hands flying to her mouth in a wave of absolute, unadulterated relief.
"Kathy!" she cried out, taking a frantic step forward.
The girl standing before them looked devastatingly real. She was wearing the exact same clothes she had been wearing in the Alpha suite, but her appearance was profoundly unsettling.
Her hair was soaking wet, clinging to the sides of her pale face and dripping cold water onto the stone floor with slow, rhythmic taps.
Her posture was completely rigid, her arms hanging dead at her sides. She didn't blink. She didn't move. She just stood there, staring through them with a blank, hollow expression.
"Kathy, oh my god, why did you leave the medical suite?" Abby pleaded, her voice trembling with desperation as she tried to walk toward her. "You have to come with us, Amaya and I found the—"
"Abby, stop!" Amaya suddenly shrieked.
Her hand shot out, grabbing Abby by the shoulder and violently yanking her backward with a terrifying strength.
Amaya’s face had turned completely translucent, her amber eyes wide with a primal, instinctual horror as she stared at the figure at the end of the hall.
"Amaya, what are you doing?" Abby cried, struggling against her grip. "It's Kathy! She's hurt, she's freezing—"
"That isn't Kathy," Amaya whispered, her voice cracking into a terrifying, paralyzed freeze.
Amaya could read the vital frequencies of every soul in the academy. And the shape standing in front of them didn't have a human signature. It was an absolute void.
A perfectly replicated, physical projection of flesh and bone, but entirely hollowed out, vibrating with the catastrophic voltage of a first-era god.
Before Abby could even process the words, the shadow double of Kathy acted.
She slowly raised both of her hands toward them, her fingers splaying wide.
The air in the gallery violently detonated. A wave of pure, dark kinetic energy and an oppressive, gravity-defying weight slammed down upon Abby and Amaya simultaneously.
The force was so sudden and absolute that they both dropped to their feet, their knees violently crashing into the hard stone floorboards.
The shadow walked forward. Her heavy steps made no sound against the marble, but the ground beneath her boots cracked, thin lines of fracture radiating outward.
She stood directly before the two trembling girls, looking down at them like an apex predator evaluating insects.
Her eyes shifted. The gentle, familiar gray of Kathy’s irises vanished entirely, swallowed by a deep, pitch-black darkness that seemed to actively devour the ambient light of the corridor.
An invisible, agonizing vacuum suddenly latched onto Abby and Amaya’s chests.
The shadow double was actively devouring their cores.
Amaya let out a strangled, high-pitched scream, her fingers clawing at the stone floor as she felt her energy being violently ripped from her sucked straight into the dark vortex of the entity's presence.
Beside her, Abby was twisting in pure agony, her eyes rolling back as her core was systematically shredded and consumed by the parasite.
They were completely rooted to the ground, paralyzed by the sheer, crushing magnitude of the first-era pressure.
Their screams were hollowed out.
"Leave them alone!"
A thunderous, terrifying growl echoed from the far end of the gallery, shaking the very foundations of the stone walls.
Zayden burst around the corner, his massive frame radiating a blinding, furious wave of pure golden energy.
He didn't just advance; he transformed. His golden eyes burned with the wild, lethal fire of his true Alpha form, his fangs elongating past his lower lip, his massive shoulders tensing as his aura expanded into a dominant, shield that smashed right through the entity’s suffocating pressure.
The shadow double paused, her dark eyes shifting away from the weeping girls to lock onto the approaching Alpha.
She smiled. It was a sickening, unnatural expression that stretched Kathy’s perfect features into a terrifying, demonic mask.
When she spoke, Kathy’s soft voice was completely drowned out, layered over by a deep, echoing, and ancient baritone that vibrated straight through the marrow of Zayden’s bones.
"Not today, boy," the demonic voice hissed.
Before Zayden could close the distance to launch his attack, the shadow double’s physical form violently fractured.
Like a cloud of ink caught in a sudden vacuum, she collapsed in on herself and completely disappeared into the air, leaving behind nothing but the faint scent of ozone and a puddle of cold, freezing water on the floor.
The crushing pressure vanished instantly.
Amaya and Abby fell flat onto the floorboards, violently coughing and gasping for air as their damaged, depleted cores desperately tried to stabilize in the aftermath of the drain.
Zayden rushed to them, dropping to his knees and slamming his large hands onto their shoulders, instantly channeling a stabilizing current of his own Alpha mass into their shivering frames to keep them from slipping into shock.
"Amaya! Abby! Look at me, are you alright?"
Amaya choked, pressing a hand to her chest as she looked up at him with pure terror. "It's…it’s getting stronger..."
Before Zayden could answer, the cell phone in his leather jacket pocket began to buzz violently.
He pulled it out with a shaking hand, his golden eyes scanning the screen. It was Riven.
Zayden quickly pressed the receiver to his ear. "Riven! We just —"
"I can't find Kathy, she's gone."
Zayden froze, his phone raised to his ear, the words echoing through his brain as the final, catastrophic reality of the nightmare clicked into place…