Chapter 61 The Traitor in the Skin
I stared at Kael. My heart stopped. The boy who had bled for me, the boy I had jumped through fire to save, was gone. He stood tall, his back straight, and his eyes burned with a red light that made the shadows dance. His hand on my wrist felt like a band of hot iron.
"Kael?" I whispered. "What are you saying?"
"Kael is a name for a doll, Eara," he said. His voice was no longer soft. It sounded like grinding stones. "I was never the glitch. I was the guard. I am the one who makes sure the 'strongest soul' actually makes it to the end of the line."
I tried to pull away, but he didn't budge. Outside the bridge window, the giant shadow with a billion teeth was pulling the ship deeper into the void. The designer lay dead on the floor, her body already turning into grey dust.
"You lied," I said. The realization hit me harder than any physical blow. "Every kiss. Every time you said you loved me. It was all just to keep me moving."
"It worked, didn't it?" He smiled, but it wasn't the smile I knew. It was empty. "You broke the glass. You survived the trash heap. You even killed your own mother’s shadow. You are perfect now. You are the perfect meal."
I felt a surge of hot, stinging tears, but I pushed them back. I didn't have room for sadness anymore. I only had room for the fire.
"I’m not a meal," I hissed. "And you’re not my Kael."
I slammed my free hand into his chest, letting the purple fire explode. He flew backward, hitting the control panel. The ship jolted as his body smashed into the buttons. Red lights began to spin.
"Warning!" the ship's computer screamed. "Core instability! Hull breach in five minutes!"
Kael stood up, wiping red dust from his chin. He didn't look hurt. He looked excited. "That’s it, Eara! Feed the anger! That’s what the Buyers want. They don't want a peaceful soul. They want the spice of revenge!"
He lunged at me. He didn't use a weapon; he used his bare hands. We crashed into the floor, rolling over the shattered glass of our old world. He was stronger than me, faster than me. Every time I struck him, it felt like hitting a wall of solid metal.
"Why?" I yelled, catching his arm before he could strike my face. "If you’re a guard, why let the ship be attacked? Why let the buyers in?"
"Because I’m tired of being a guard!" Kael roared. He pinned my shoulders down, his red eyes inches from mine. "The Buyers offered me a deal. I give them the Weaver, and they give me a real life. A life where I don't have to die in every chapter just to wake up in a new tank!"
My heart broke for the last time. Even the villain had a story. Even the monster wanted to be free. But he was trying to buy his freedom with my life.
"We could have found a way together!" I cried.
"There is no 'together' for us, Eara," he said. "There is only the buyer and the product."
He reached for the "Reset All" button on the console. If he hit it, the ship would lock down. I would be frozen, ready for the harvest, and he would walk away free.
I couldn't let him win. Not after everything.
I channelled every bit of the purple fire into my legs. I kicked upward, sending Kael flying into the air. Before he could land, I scrambled toward the dead Designer’s console. I didn't go for the "Reset" button. I went for the "Release All Jars" command.
"Eara, don't!" Kael screamed in mid-air. "If you release them, the ship will lose power! We’ll all drift into the void!"
"Then we drift together!"
I slammed my fist into the screen.
Outside, a thousand clicks echoed through the hull. I watched through the window as the thousand jars, the thousand other worlds, were ejected from the ship. They drifted away like tiny bubbles of light, carrying a thousand versions of me into the dark. They weren't free yet, but they were out of the harvest.
The ship groaned. The lights died, leaving us in the red glow of the emergency power. The giant shadow monster outside let out a frustrated roar. Its meal was scattered.
Kael landed on his feet, his face twisted in a mask of pure hate. The red light in his eyes flared. "You fool. You just killed us both."
"At least I died making my own choice," I said.
I picked up a shard of the broken glass from our jar. It was long and sharp, still glowing with a bit of the world we had lived in.
Kael walked toward me, his hands turning into black claws. "I'm going to make sure your end is very, very long."
He moved to strike, but the ship suddenly jerked. A massive explosion rocked the bridge. The giant shadow monster had finally broken through the hull. A black tentacle, thick as a tree, smashed through the ceiling and wrapped around Kael’s waist.
"No!" Kael screamed, his claws scratching at the metal floor. "Not me! I have the contract!"
The shadow didn't care about contracts. It began to pull Kael upward, toward the billion-toothed mouth in the sky.
I stood there, holding my glass shard. I could run. I could find an escape pod. But then I saw something falling from the hole in the ceiling.
It was a small, black book. The author's book. It landed at my feet, open to the last page.
I looked at the page. It wasn't empty. It had one sentence written in fresh, wet ink:
"To kill a god, you must first become the ending."
I looked at the shadow monster. I looked at the glass shard in my hand. Then, I looked at the "Self-Destruct" lever behind the broken console.
A shadow fell over me. I looked up. It wasn't the monster.
It was my mother. The real one. She was standing in the fire, her body made of pure, white light.
"Eara," she said. "The book is a lie. The only way out is to stop reading."
She held out a hand, but behind her, the dead designer's body began to stand up. Its head snapped back into place, and its eyes glowed with a cold, blue light.
"The tutorial isn't over," the designer's body said in a hollow voice. "Phase Two: The Executioner."
The designer's arm turned into a long, silver blade, and she lunged for my heart.