Chapter 152 Hollow thread
Chapter 152 Hollow thread
Back in the spire.
Ronan coughed, spitting a thick mouthful of black, sluggish blood onto the cracked marble floor. His chest heaved, every rib screaming under the sudden, brutal absence of the Shadow King's protection.
His body was entirely covered in jagged scars, the skin around his torso turning a sickly, bruised gray where the void energy had burned through his flesh.
The Pale Mother snickered, her translucent form floating effortlessly a few inches above the debris. She tilted her head, her pale, smooth face twisting into a mask of pure amusement as she taunted him. "Look at you. Even the so-called Shadow King knew better than to go head-on with me. He gave up his entire essence just to buy that little girl a few more minutes of life, and left you behind to die like a dog."
Ronan glared up at her through the blood dripping into his eyes, letting out a weak, raw snarl that tasted like iron and ash. He tried to force his legs to stand, but his muscles felt like melted lead.
Draven, on the other hand, was still sitting paralyzed in the dirt, completely lost in his own thoughts. The chaos around him didn't even seem to register.
His mind was stuck on a loop, processing the horrific reality that had just shattered his entire existence.
He had honestly believed the bond he felt toward Elara was natural.
For nine years, he had carried the weight of that suffocating, maddening pull, believing the universe itself had mandated his obsession. He had no idea that the Pale Mother had been manifesting inside his mind right from the very beginning, pulling his strings like a cheap puppet.
Groaning in agony, Draven held onto his bleeding, shattered arm and looked up at the floating deity.
"When?" he asked, his voice a weak, cracked whisper that barely carried across the stone dais. "When did you do it?"
The Pale Mother, who had been raising a hand to send another lethal strike toward Ronan, froze in mid-air. She turned her featureless face toward Draven, her lips curling into a wide, jagged smile. In a fraction of a second, she vanished, teleported directly to where he sat in the dust.
She drifted down behind him, her long, ice-cold hands trailing smoothly along the outline of his neck, her sharp claws barely skimming his skin. "I don’t really have to answer a creature like you," she murmured, her voice sliding into his ear like freezing oil. "But since you are going to die either way, I suppose there is no harm in letting you know how the trap was set."
Draven clenched his jaws so hard a muscle in his cheek violently twitched, his breathing turning ragged.
The Pale Mother let out a soft, mocking hum, striking a thoughtful pose with her fingers against her chin.
"Let's see. Remember the very first time you walked in on little Elara while she was undressing? Oh, that should be right around nine years ago. She was twelve, and you were fifteen, I guess."
Draven’s eyes widened, the blood freezing in his veins. Of course he remembered.
Nine Years Ago...
The summer heat outside the washhouse was a suffocating, dusty oven, but inside the rotting wooden structure, the air suddenly went dead.
Draven’s boots slank across the damp floorboards. His chest was still puffed out with the unearned arrogance of an Alpha's firstborn, his muscles burning from a brutal endurance run with his father. He had expected the creek-side shack to be empty at midday.
He just wanted a quiet place to wash off the sweat and clear his head.
Instead, a slight ripple of water in the large stone basin caught his eye.
A twelve-year-old Elara stood with her back to him. She had just pulled off her dirt-stained kitchen smock to scrub the soot from her face, her small, sharp shoulder blades shifting as she reached for a piece of rough linen.
To fifteen-year-old Draven, she was just his quiet, scrawny little sister figure—the kid he occasionally saw running happy errands in the pack kitchens. He actually liked her presence; she was peaceful, completely detached from the brutal expectations his father forced on him every single day.
Draven parted his lips, drawing in a breath to call out to her. "Hey, brat, hurry up with the water, I need to—"
The words died on his tongue. The comforting scent of damp wood and river water completely vanished, replaced in a heartbeat by a sharp, metallic stench of rusted iron and rotting funeral flowers.
A violent, crushing bolt of psychological lightning tore clean through Draven’s brain. His knees hit the wet planks with a hollow thud, the impact rattling up his spine as his lungs entirely seized.
The dirty washhouse warped. His vision twisted, overlaying the image of the young girl with a suffocating, blindingly bright golden aura that slammed straight into his primitive wolf instincts.
"Yours," a deep, foreign echo thrummed against the inside of his skull, forcing his heart to hammer a frantic, erratic rhythm against his ribs. "You must possess her. You must lock her away. If she breathes, she breathes only for you."
Draven clutched the sides of his head, his fingernails digging tracks into his scalp as a cold, greasy sweat broke out across his neck.
He stared helplessly at Elara’s back, his young mind fracturing under the absolute, sudden certainty that this child—this girl he had viewed as a little sister—was now his entire universe.
The protective, familiar warmth he usually felt for her was violently overwritten, twisted into a heavy, dark, and cruel possessiveness. It felt like destiny slamming a steel collar around his throat and forcing him to look at her as a prize.
He was too busy drowning in the manufactured euphoria to look up. He didn't see the faint, violet vapor curling down like tendrils from the dark, rotting rafters above the stone basin.
He didn't feel the ice-cold, skeletal hands hovering just an inch above his hair, carefully weaving a thin, veiny thread of dark magic directly into his cerebral cortex.
He just closed his eyes, let the obsession swallow his identity whole, and believed the Moon Goddess had finally spoken to him.