Chapter 149 The Weight

Chapter 149 The Weight
"Are you completely out of your mind?!" Cierce rushed forward, her boots skidding on the damp grass as she threw herself directly into Rylan’s path, her fingers digging into the leather of his jacket.

"You can't just walk in there! Draven is not who you think he is anymore. He isn't your brother, Rylan. He’s an apex monster playing with things that will swallow this entire pack whole!"

Rylan didn't even blink. He reached down, his grip firm and unyielding as he shoved her hands away from his chest with a cold, dismissive flick of his wrist. "All the same, Draven is still my brother. If he’s burning the world down, I’m the one who has to put him down."

"Now is not the time to be emotional or theatrical!" Cierce yelled, her voice cracking under the sheer weight of her frustration. She stepped back, throwing her arms out toward the pulsing, bleeding rift behind her. "Ronan is in the Spire too! The Lycan King himself is down there fighting! You honestly think if it was as simple as walking in and breaking a few jaws, he wouldn't have been back with Elara by now?"

Rylan froze. His boot hovered a mere inch above the vibrating edge of the portal.

The tense, rigid line of his jaw slackened just a fraction as the words processed through his mind. A sudden, unexpected wave of relief flushed through his chest, lightening the heavy panic that had been suffocating his wolf since the sky turned red.

"Ronan is there," Rylan repeated, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly murmur.

Cierce glared at him, her chest heaving as she fought the urge to shake him. "That is entirely not the point! The point is that we need to stay here and prepare for a full-scale war! Leave Ronan to rescue his mate. He has the power to tear that place apart; you jumping in blindly is just suicide!"

Rylan hesitated. His golden eyes locked onto the swirling, toxic violet center of the rift. Inwardly, Imam was pacing, torn between the deeply ingrained instinct to hunt down his rogue Alpha bloodline and the sudden, logical realization that a Lycan King was already on the field. Ronan wouldn't leave an inch of that Spire standing if it meant getting Elara back.

Cierce took his silence as a victory. She let out a long, shaky exhale, running a soot-stained hand over her face to clear her vision. "Look around you, Rylan. Draven is gone. He abandoned his post, he betrayed the shifter community, and he left this pack defenseless. Northwood needs a leader right now. And like it or not, you are the only one left who fits that position."

Rylan raised a brow, the corners of his mouth twitching into a humorless, self-deprecating sharp smile. He slowly turned his back on the weeping tear in reality, fully facing his territory.

The entire courtyard was staring at him. Dozens of White Wolf warriors, elders, and frightened pack members were looking up at the balcony and across the grass, their eyes wide, waiting for a command from the man who had suddenly been handed a crown he never asked for.

"Fine," Rylan said, his voice dropping the uncertainty as he turned his back on the weeping tear in reality.

Before he could complete his statement, the world went completely dead.

The sky, which had been a bruised and bleeding crimson, violently turned a shade darker, plunging the entire Northwood territory into a suffocating, pitch-black night laced with veins of raw blood red. The thick clouds didn't just roll in; they dropped like a heavy velvet curtain, blotting out what little natural light remained.

Then, the moon came up.

It wasn't the smooth, silver moon the Northwood pack prayed to. It was a massive, bloated celestial body that looked like it had been dragged through a slaughterhouse, stained a deep, pulsing crimson that cast an eerie, sickly glow over the terrified pack members below.

The rift behind them violently warped, its smooth edges twisting and fraying until it resembled a massive, weeping wreath made of dead, blackened vines.

Pandora, who was still doubled over on the damp grass, felt the temperature drop until her breath hitched in her throat. She looked up through the tangle of her hair, and her lungs entirely froze.

Long, pale, aggressively veiny hands were slowly protruding from the center of the wreath. The fingers were unnaturally long, the skin so translucent that the dark, sluggish fluid pumping through the veins was completely visible under the blood moon.

Terrified, Pandora scrambled backward on her hands and knees, her chest heaving as she tried to scream. She reached out, her fingers clawing at the air toward Rylan and Cierce, desperately trying to get their attention.

But nobody was paying any attention to her. Rylan and Cierce were locked in their own world, eyes glued to each other as they argued back and forth, entirely deaf to the quiet rustling of the grass behind them.

"R—" Pandora tried to choke out Rylan's name, but her voice completely failed her, sticking to the roof of her dry, terrified mouth like ash.

She couldn't speak. She couldn't breathe.

With a trembling, dirt-caked finger, she pointed at the figure slowly sliding out of the veiny wreath.

The hands gripped the edges of the portal, the sharp, black fingernails digging into the thin air as the entity dragged its torso into the Northwood courtyard. The face was entirely featureless, a smooth expanse of pale skin that seemed to absorb the crimson moonlight, but as it turned its head toward the pack house, a wide, jagged slit tore open across the bottom of its face, revealing rows of thin, needle-like teeth in a silent, welcoming grin.

Pandora’s finger shook violently in the air, her wide, empty eyes reflecting the nightmare as the creature fully stepped onto the pack's soil, its elongated shadow stretching directly toward Cierce's boots.

Just as the creature's full form tore free from the veiny wreath, it didn't hesitate. It dropped onto all fours, its elongated limbs moving with a sickening, spider-like agility as it instantly charged straight toward Cierce.

In that split second of pure horror, Pandora finally found her voice. The paralysis snapped, and she screamed the witch's name at the top of her lungs. "Cierce!"

Cierce, who was still entirely locked in her conversation with Rylan, slowly turned her head toward the sound. But there was no time to react.

The creature closed the distance like a flash of grey lightning. It drove its long, translucent claws straight into Cierce's chest, the force of the blow piercing clean through her ribs with a wet, heavy thud. Cierce’s eyes went instantly wide, her body going rigid as she spilled a dark, thick mouthful of blood over the creature's pale arm.

"No!" Pandora yelled, her voice breaking into a hysterical shriek.

Rylan’s instincts took over before his mind could even process the horror. With a guttural, primal roar, his alpha strength flared. He lunged forward, his hands clamping around the creature's extended arm like a vice.

With a violent, bone-snapping twist, Rylan tore the entire limb completely off the creature's shoulder, spraying black, stagnant fluid across the grass. He tossed the severed arm to the ground and drove a heavy, fur-gloved fist into the monster's chest, blasting it backward into the dirt.

Dropping to his knees, Rylan caught Cierce before she could collapse, gently laying her down onto the stained courtyard grass.

Cierce choked violently, her chest heaving as more blood bubbled past her lips, staining her chin and her clothes. The wound was deep, a ragged hole right over her sternum that pulsed with a dull, greyish corruption.

"Hold still," Rylan commanded, his hands trembling as he pressed down on the injury, expecting the familiar hum of supernatural regeneration to kick in. But the flesh beneath his fingers remained open, gray, and completely dead. "Why isn't it closing? Pull yourself together, Cierce. Heal."

Cierce let out a weak, rattling wheeze, her fingers weakly clutching Rylan’s sleeve. "I... I can't heal," she whispered, her voice fading into a thin, breathless rasp.

"What do you mean you can't heal?!" Rylan snapped, panic finally bleeding through his alpha composure as he looked at the expanding gray stain around her heart. "You're a werewolf—your blood is supposed to fix this!"

"No," Cierce murmured, a bitter, tragic smile tugging at the corner of her bloody lips. She looked past him, her eyes tracking the bloated, blood-stained moon hanging in the dark sky. "The Nosferu... their flesh... it carries a venom. A component wove into their cells that prohibits their victims from healing. Especially us. Especially the wolves."

She coughed again, the sound wet and hollow. Every breath was visibly draining the last of her strength. "The toxin... it didn't just scratch the skin, Rylan. It went straight to my heart. It's already inside. I won't survive this."

Pandora crawled over, her hands shaking, staring down at the dying witch in absolute horror. The anger, the blame, the frantic arguing from moments ago—all of it dissolved into a cold, heavy grief.

Cierce looked at Pandora, then back at Rylan, her breathing slowing to shallow, jagged hitches. The terror of dying seemed to fade, replaced by a quiet, devastating clarity. "It's karma," she whispered, a tear cutting a clean line through the soot and blood on her cheek. "Isn't it? It's just... karma acting up. For everything. The things we did to Elara years back... the cruelty... the choices we made. I thought I could run from it. I thought Elara sparing me meant I was safe."

She let out one final, shuddering breath, her grip on Rylan's jacket going completely slack. "You can't... run from the debt."

"Cierce! Cierce, look at me!" Rylan growled, but her eyes had already gone glassy, reflecting the crimson moonlight as her head rolled to the side.

There was no time to mourn. There was no time to process the weight of her words.

The veiny wreath of the rift suddenly let out a deafening, thunderous roar that shook the very foundation of the Northwood mansion. The tear violently increased in size, splitting open until it swallowed half the courtyard in a swirling vortex of black and purple rot.

And then, the floodgates broke.

Dozens of Nosferu surged out of the rift all at once, a massive, slavering swarm of grey flesh, hairless limbs, and barred fangs. They poured onto the grass like a wave of starving locusts, shrieking with a hunger that filled the night air.

"To arms!" Rylan roared, leaping to his feet as his body rapidly expanded, his clothes tearing as his massive, pure white wolf form took over. "Protect the pack!"