Chapter 63 Chapter 63

Chapter 63 Chapter 63
AMINA

The elevator didn't just fall; it surrendered to gravity. The cables snapped with a sound like a titan’s spine cracking, and for five seconds, my stomach was in my throat, the world weightless and terrifying.

"Brace!" Silas screamed, clutching the silver box to his chest.

I didn't reach for the railings. I threw myself over Rian, my body a shield of meat and bone. I channeled every scrap of the Earth Pulse into the floor of the car, creating a localized gravity cushion. The impact hit like a physical fist, slamming us into the basement level. The metal floor buckled, the light fixtures exploded into glass rain, and then—silence.

The doors groaned, half-jammed. I kicked them open, the metal shrieking in protest. We weren't in the sub-levels. The elevator had jammed on a secondary security track—it had catapulted us, through some fluke of Rian’s fail-safe engineering, not down to the Nexus, but up toward the private bypass.

We were in the Penthouse.

The air here was different. Outside, the city was a graveyard of fire and screams, but the Penthouse was wrapped in reinforced, polarized glass that muted the apocalypse to a dull, distant thrum. The room smelled of expensive leather, sandalwood, and the lingering scent of Rian’s cedarwood cologne. It was the only place left in the world that felt like him.

"The conduits," Rian whispered, his voice a dry rasp.

He was right. The walls hummed. The Vale Tower was built like a spine, and the Penthouse was the skull. The built-in Ley-line conduits, thick copper-and-quartz veins embedded in the architecture, were drawing energy from the earth and channeling it here.

As I dragged him onto the massive, low-profile bed in the center of the room, the Ghost Link hummed. The jagged, sparking static in my brain smoothed out into a low, resonant throb. The "wasting" slowed. For a moment, the silence wasn't a scream; it was a sanctuary.

"Amina..." Rian’s hand reached for mine. His skin was still ashen, but the silver spiderwebs had stopped their crawl at his throat.

"I’m here. I’m right here, Rian." I sat on the edge of the mattress, pulling his head into my lap.

Silas stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the burning skyline. "The stabilization is temporary, Amina. The conduits are providing a bypass for his core, but the damage to his mind... the neurological decay has already begun. The Link is hungry. It’s eating the only thing left: his history."

I looked down at Rian. His eyes were open, but they were vacant, drifting across the room as if he were seeing ghosts.

"Rian?" I whispered, my heart hammering. "Look at me."

He blinked, his gaze finally settling on my face. There was a flicker of gold, a spark of the man who had torn the world apart for me, but it was buried under a fog of confusion.

"I know... the scent," he murmured, his brow furrowing in a way that broke my fucking heart. "Books. Old paper and... rain. Why do I know that?"

The air left my lungs. "The bookstore, Rian. Meridian Books. You came in on a Tuesday. You bought a first edition of The Odyssey just to hear me talk about the binding."

He tilted his head, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw. "A bookstore. Yes. But... who was the girl? The one with the light in her eyes?"

"It’s me, Rian. It’s Amina." I leaned down, pressing my forehead to his, tears hot and stinging against my cheeks. "I’m the girl. I’m your Balance. Don't you dare forget me. Don't you fucking dare."

"Amina," he repeated, the name sounding like a foreign word on his tongue. "It’s a beautiful name. Like a song I used to know."

I let out a sob, clutching him to me. This was worse than the silver spears. This was worse than Alarie’s gravity fields. The man I loved was being erased from the inside out, his memories sacrificed to keep his heart beating for a few more hours. The Ghost Link was a scavenger, picking the meat off the bones of his identity.

"We have to start the ritual, Silas!" I yelled, not looking away from Rian’s empty eyes. "Now! Before there’s nothing left of him but a body!"

"The Sanguine Shard needs a catalyst of pure intent," Silas said, stepping toward us and opening the silver box. The room was suddenly filled with a cold, metallic light. "You must reach into the Link, Amina. You have to be the anchor for his memories. You have to remind the Bond what it’s supposed to protect."

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my hands. I looked back at Rian. He was staring at the ceiling now, humming a low, wordless tune—a lullaby from the Vale that he’d once told me his mother sang. He was regressing. The Alpha was gone; the man was fading.

"Rian, listen to my voice," I said, my tone a desperate command.

I grabbed his hands, lacing our fingers together. I closed my eyes and dived into the Link.

It was a nightmare of fragmented images. I saw a young wolf running through the snow. I saw a throne made of cold iron. I saw the first time we kissed in the rain, the heat of his skin against mine. I grabbed that memory—that specific, electric moment—and I held it with everything I had. I wrapped my Earth Pulse around it, shielding it from the "wasting."

Remember us, I screamed into the void of his mind.

Rian’s body lurched. His eyes snapped back to mine, the gold returning with a sudden, violent intensity. "Amina!"

"Yes! I'm here!"

"I... I can't see the path," he gasped, his grip on my hands becoming bruising. "The shadows... they’re taking the walls. The bookstore is on fire, Amina. Everything is on fire."

"Then look at me! I'm the only thing not burning!"

I pulled him up, my lips crashing against his. It wasn't a gentle kiss; it was a collision. It was a desperate, primal attempt to anchor him to the present. The sensory overload was a physical blow—the taste of him, the scent of the cedarwood, the raw, unbridled power of the Sovereign’s Heart in my chest answering the call of his soul.

For a moment, the room vanished. There was no Tower, no Alarie, no war. There was only the weight of him against me, the way our energies spiraled together like two stars in a death dance. The Bond felt... whole. For one beautiful, lying second, the fracture closed.

I felt his hands slide down to my waist, his touch heavy and sure. The Alpha was back, if only for a heartbeat.

"I remember," he groaned against my mouth. "I remember everything."

But the stabilization was a lie. The conduits in the walls began to whine, the quartz crystals glowing a frantic, overheated orange. The Tower was reaching its limit.

"The Shard!" Silas shouted. "Amina, his blood! I need a drop of his blood to prime the relic!"

I pulled back, reaching for the silver fruit knife Rian kept on the bedside table. Rian was panting, the gray webs on his neck pulsing with a dark, rhythmic light.

"It’s okay," I whispered, taking his hand. "Just a drop, Rian."

I made a quick, shallow cut across his palm.

I expected the deep, crimson red of an Alpha. I expected the metallic scent of Lycan strength.

Instead, the liquid that seeped from the wound was a thick, viscous black, shot through with shimmering threads of violet fire. It looked like liquid starlight mixed with poison. As it dripped onto the white silk sheets, the fabric didn't just stain—it dissolved. The silk hissed, a plume of acrid, toxic smoke rising from the bed.

"What the hell?" I gasped, drawing back.

A drop of the black blood splashed onto the back of my hand. I braced for the burn, for the agony of the toxin.

Nothing happened. The blood simply sat there, warm and glowing, before sinking into my skin like a soothing balm. It felt... right.

But then a drop hit the floor, splashing onto Silas’s boot.

The Elder let out a blood-curdling scream. He collapsed to his knees, clutching his foot as the leather melted away. His skin where the blood touched began to blacken and blister instantly, the necrotic damage spreading up his leg with a terrifying, unnatural speed.

"Silas!" I lunged for him, but he waved me back, his face contorted in agony.

"Don't... don't touch it!" he wheezed, his eyes wide with horror. "The Sovereign’s Heart... it didn't just stabilize him. It mutated the wasting. His blood... it’s a pure kinetic acid. It’s the blood of the Ancestors."

I looked at Rian. He was staring at his own hand, at the black ichor flowing from his palm. He looked at Silas, then back at me.

"Amina," Silas choked out, his voice failing. "The ritual... we can't use the Shard. If his blood touches the relic, it will trigger a chain reaction that will vaporize this entire floor. He’s not just dying anymore. He’s a biological bomb."

I looked from Silas’s charred leg to Rian’s glowing, toxic hand. The sanctuary had turned into a death trap. 

"I can touch it," I whispered, looking at my own unmarred skin. "The Bond... it makes me immune." 

But outside, the glass of the penthouse shattered. A grappling hook slammed into the window frame, followed by another. Alarie didn't need the elevator. 

He was climbing. 

I looked at Rian, who was beginning to lose his focus again, his eyes drifting back into the void. 

"Silas, how do I stop the reaction?" I screamed. 

Silas didn't answer; he had lost consciousness from the shock. I was alone with a dying man whose very blood could level the city, while a god in black armor was stepping through the broken window.