Chapter 57 THE FRACTURE
KAI’S POV
The moment Zara’s scream ripped through the mind-link, I knew something was wrong.
Not physically wrong cosmically wrong.
Like the fabric of whatever threads held, the two of us together had been slashed open with a blade I couldn’t see.
I jolted upright in my room, chest heaving, the metallic taste of deja vu burning the back of my throat. For a second, I saw her strapped to that obsidian chair, needles draining her soul, her eyes going dim as I stood there, powerless.
Except… that wasn’t real. Or was it?
My breathing staggered.
Ever since I’d come back from Voss’s office, my mind had been… off. Like someone had rewired my memories and forgotten to stitch some of them together. I could not remember parts of the day. The whole chunks were empty.
But Zara’s panic?
That was real.
“Zara, where are you?” I threw the thought into the link like a flare into darkness.
No answer.
Just a static crackle, like something else, someone else was pushing between us.
The lights in my room flickered.
Then, the entire building shuddered.
Luna’s voice cut through my mind like a blade.
“Kai! She ran, something’s wrong, she’s stuck in wolf form, her aura is unstable, get to her, NOW!”
I was already out the door before she finished.
The hallways were chaos.
The academy alarms blared in a dissonant loop...
"Student Zara Night, return to your quarters immediately."
"Hazard protocol initiated."
Hazard protocol.
They only triggered that when a student lost control of their wolf… or when something non-human breached the compound.
I sprinted past terrified first-years scattering to their dorms. Shadows flickered down the long hall, the overhead lights stuttering like they couldn’t decide whether to stay alive or die.
Every breath I took tasted wrong.
Sharp. Metallic.
Like ozone after lightning, but darker....older. Zara’s scent. But twisted.
No.......
Contaminated.
I skidded to a stop near the rear stairwell, where her scent grew thicker. Luna and Rex came charging from the opposite end, faces pale, eyes wide.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
Luna swallowed hard.
“The woods. She bolted. She didn’t respond to any of us.”
“She blocked me out,” Rex added, chest tight.
“She never blocks me out.”
“She blocked me out too,” I managed.
“I don’t, I don’t understand.”
Luna’s expression softened.
“Kai, something is happening inside her. Something she can’t control....”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest.
I shifted mid-stride, bones cracking, skin tearing, fur exploding from my body faster than I’d ever shifted in my life.
My wolf roared to life.
We sprinted into the night.
The forest swallowed me whole.
Night wind knifed through the trees, pelting my fur with cold rain. The ground trembled under my paws, and my lungs burned, but I didn’t stop.
Zara’s scent streaked through the woods in jagged patterns, fast, erratic, terrified. She wasn’t running like her usual self.
She was running like prey.
My wolf growled at that.
Not Zara.
Never Zara.
Lightning ripped open the sky, illuminating claw marks carved into tree trunks, deep ones, too deep for a normal shift. The bark was melted along the edges.
My blood went cold.
Devourer energy.
Still fresh.
The storm roared, thunder vibrating through my ribs as I pushed harder.
“Zara!” I projected into the link again.
A faint whisper came through.
Not a voice....
a growl.
A layered, ancient one.
Then it vanished.
My paws stumbled. That… wasn’t her wolf. Or not the wolf I knew.
The forest suddenly dead-stilled.
No wind.
No birds.
No heartbeats.
Except one.
Hers.
And it was everywhere.
Like the forest itself was exhaling her name.
I approached an open clearing, rain pounding the dirt around me. And there she was.
Zara.
Her wolf form crouched at the far end of the clearing, drenched in storm rain, fur rising and falling with sharp breaths. Except....
She wasn’t her normal silver wolf.
She was… larger.
Darker.
Her fur rippled with moving shadows, like a living night sky. Her eyes..... normally burning gold glowed with fractured violet rings.
Broken rings.
Devourer rings.
My chest caved in.
“Zara…”
I shifted slowly back into my human form, hands raised.
“I’m here. I came. Just look at me.”
Her head snapped toward me, so fast water sprayed from her fur.
She growled, low, primal, vibrating through the ground.
But beneath the monster’s sound, I heard something else:
Fear.
She was terrified.
A bolt of lightning cracked behind her, and she flinched, Zara never flinched, and then her body convulsed, legs trembling, breath coming in sharp, painful bursts.
She wasn’t stuck in wolf form.
She was stuck between forms.
Her bones kept shifting under her skin without completing the shift. The Devourer side was fighting the wolf side. Violently.
She howled, a desperate, agonized sound, and collapsed onto her side, claws scraping the dirt.
“Zara!” I ran toward her.
She snarled at me, warning me away, eyes flickering between her wolf violet and her human brown.
But she wasn’t warning me because she hated me.
She was warning me because she was scared she might hurt me.
My heart broke in a way bones never could.
I sank to my knees just a few feet away.
“Zara… listen to me. You’re not alone. You don’t have to fight this alone.”
Her breathing quickened. She tried to crawl away from me, shaking violently, muscles spasming uncontrollably.
I didn’t move.
“I know about Voss,” I whispered.
“I know what she told you. I know she tried to..."
Zara howled, the sound slicing through the storm, cutting off my words.
Her memories.
She was remembering.
All of it.
The extraction.
The violation.
Me pulling the lever.
Even if it was forced…
Even if I wasn’t myself…
She remembered me hurting her.
Her howl twisted into a broken whine.
A knife twisted in my chest.
“I didn’t abandon you,” I whispered hoarsely, rain mixing with tears I didn’t remember letting fall.
“I didn’t choose any of it. I didn’t choose to hurt you.”
Her ears pressed flat, her eyes squeezing shut as if the memories were knives.
“And you didn’t choose this,” I continued.
“Whatever is happening inside you, it’s not your fault.”
Her body convulsed again, violently this time, and she whimpered, Zara Night, the fiercest wolf I knew, whimpered as shadows rippled under her skin like something was trying to claw its way out of her.
“Zara, look at me,” I begged.
“Look at me. Please.”
Slowly, painfully, she lifted her head.
Her eyes met mine, and they weren’t wolf eyes.
They weren’t Devourer eyes either.
They were Zara’s eyes.
Raw. Terrified. Human.
“Kai…” she whispered through the link, voice trembling.
“I, something is inside me, too much, too loud, I can’t, Kai, I can’t breathe”
I lurched forward, grabbing her face gently between my palms.
“Then breathe with me,” I said, forehead pressing to hers, ignoring the heat radiating from her skin...heat that could incinerate me.
“In… and out. Match me.”
Her breath stuttered.
Shadows flickered across her face.
Lightning exploded above us.
And then....
A pulse of violet energy blasted outward from her chest.
I flew backwards, slammed into a tree, and vision white-hot with pain.
When the world steadied, I staggered to my feet...
And froze.
Zara stood in the centre of the clearing.
Not wolf.
Not Devourer. Human. Barefoot. Shaking.
Dripping rain. And glowing.
Violet and silver energy coiled around her like living smoke.
Her hair floated in the air despite the downpour, strands lifting as if drawn to invisible static.
But what terrified me most...
She wasn’t looking at me.
She wasn’t looking at the trees.
She wasn’t looking at the storm.
She was staring upward.
At something I couldn’t see.
Her voice was barely a whisper:
“They’ve found me.”
I stepped toward her.
“Zara, who?”
She turned slowly, eyes now fully glowing violet, and when she spoke...
It wasn’t entirely her voice.
It was layered. Ancient. Dual.
“The ones Voss said didn’t exist.”
My heart dropped.
Before I could say anything else...
The sky split open.
A crack of white light tore across the clouds, not like lightning. This time, it didn’t fade. It widened. And widened.
Like a doorway being forced open.
Zara grabbed my wrist so tightly I felt bones strain.
Her voice trembled.
“Kai… run.”
And then....
Something stepped through.