Chapter 112 LYRA’S DEATH SPELL
LYRA'S POV
I knew what I was becoming the moment I knelt before the priest.
The Shadow Chapel stank of rot and old prayers gone sour. Places like this do not die. They wait. The stone floor was slick beneath my knees, damp with something darker than water, and the air pressed against my lungs like a warning I chose to ignore.
The priest did not ask my name.
He already knew why I was there.
“You want her ended,” he said, voice thin as a blade. “Not defeated. Not dethroned. Ended.”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
He smiled. A knowing smile. That should have stopped me. But I was past stopping.
He carved the sigil into my palm himself, slow and deliberate, letting the blood drip into the basin between us. It burned. I welcomed it. Pain was honest. Pain did not lie to me the way fate had.
“You will carry death,” he murmured. “Not just hers. Do you understand that?”
“I don’t care,” I said.
And I meant it.
Selene had taken everything from me without ever touching me. My place. My future. My right to be chosen. She wore power like it belonged to her, like the moon itself bent willingly around her throat.
I would tear it out of her hands.
Whatever the cost.
Now, standing alone in the mountain chamber, I press that same scarred palm against the cold stone circle. The markings flare instantly, hungry, recognizing me as their architect. This spell is not borrowed. It is not improvised.
I built it to kill a goddess-made-flesh.
And to make the world scream while doing it.
Kael’s presence lingers at the edge of my awareness, bound and weakened in the lower vaults. I took him because I could. Because he was useful. Because watching his pride fracture under my command pleased me more than I expected.
He thought he loved Selene.
I showed him what devotion really costs.
The moonlight above is wrong and thick. The Blood Moon has risen exactly as the priest promised. The sky itself feels strained, stretched thin like skin before it splits.
Good.
I raise my hands and begin.
The words rip out of me sharp and violent, nothing like the soft incantations Selene favors. This is not harmony. This is dominance. I feel the spell latch onto the moon’s fracture instantly, sinking in like a hooked blade.
Power floods me.
It tears through my veins, burning everything it touches, and I laugh aloud as it does. This is what I was denied. This is what she hoarded while pretending to be merciful.
“Break,” I command the world. “Break for me.”
The curse spreads outward in a violent surge. I feel forests shudder. Wolves scream through broken bonds. The lunar rhythm fractures like glass, sharp and unforgiving.
Somewhere far away, Selene feels it.
I know she does.
That knowledge is exquisite.
“Look at me now,” I whisper. “Look at what you made me become.”
The circle brightens, lines blazing red-white-hot. The air screams. Stone cracks beneath my feet. The spell is working.
Then it resists.
I feel it hesitate, subtle but undeniable, like a beast stiffening before turning on its handler.
I snarl and push harder.
“No,” I hiss. “You obey me.”
The power surges again, but wrong this time. It buckles. Twists. I feel pressure build behind my ribs, sharp and invasive. The markings beneath my feet begin to change, lines shifting, symbols bleeding into one another.
I stare down in horror.
The priest warned me.
The curse does not kill gods cleanly.
It chooses vessels.
“No,” I say, breath hitching. “No, no, no.”
The magic turns.
It snaps back along the channels I carved, racing toward the nearest anchor with terrifying speed.
Me.
Agony detonates inside my chest. I scream, the sound tearing my throat raw as the spell slams into my core. It is not a wound. It is an invasion.
My body convulses.
Power pours into me faster than I can contain it, ripping through muscle and bone, shredding the fragile boundaries of flesh. I feel myself tearing apart from the inside, every nerve alight with screaming fire.
I fall forward, hands clawing uselessly at the stone.
“This isn’t how it ends,” I gasp. “This isn’t—”
The spell does not care.
The curse completes its inversion with brutal precision. Instead of spreading outward, it collapses inward, folding the world’s fracture into me like a closing fist.
I feel everything.
Every dying crop. Every wolf driven mad by broken rhythm. Every prayer snapped in half by silence.
My veins glow beneath my skin, dark light racing through me, burning paths it cannot sustain. Blood pours from my nose, my ears, my mouth. I choke on it, sobbing now, not in regret but rage.
“I did everything right,” I scream at the ceiling. “I paid the price!”
The ceiling answers.
The mountain groans as the backlash tears upward, light spearing into the blood-red sky. The moon flares violently, then stabilizes, dimmer but intact.
The world does not end.
I do.
My strength drains rapidly, power bleeding out of me into the stone, into the bones of the mountain, into the scars I carved into the earth. The spell devours its creator without mercy.
My body begins to fail.
Heart stuttering. Lungs seizing. Vision collapsing inward.
I think of Kael then, bound and helpless below, and laugh weakly.
“At least,” I whisper, choking on blood, “I took you with me.”
Darkness creeps in at the edges of my sight.
The last thing I feel is the curse locking itself permanently, sealing the damage, preventing further spread.
The world will suffer.
But it will survive.
Selene will live.
That knowledge is the cruelest punishment of all.
As my body finally gives out, as power drains me hollow, one thought claws through the pain.
If I could not destroy her…
I made damn sure she would never be alone again.
The light dies.
Lyra of the Broken Crown collapses in her own circle, body scorched by the power she stole, blood soaking into the stone she desecrated.