Free Web NovelChapter 29: The Fall
They came at dawn.
Not the reconnaissance. Not the test. The real thing.
Zerathis hadn’t retreated to regroup. He’d retreated to prepare. The army that hit the estate at dawn was different from the army that had probed the walls twelve hours ago. This army wasn’t measuring. This army was taking.
"ALL WALLS," Renka screamed through the crystal. "EVERY APPROACH. FULL FORCE. THREE HUNDRED INFANTRY AND TWELVE LORDS SIMULTANEOUSLY."
The sound hit first. The thunder of demon boots on earth. The crash of enchanted weapons against stone. The scream of auras activating in unison. The estate shook. The walls Brokk had built trembled. The foundation groaned.
"North wall holding," Renka called. "Barely. Two lords at the base. Infantry climbing."
"East wall compromised," she continued. "Trap wall already spent. Lord through the gap. Engaging."
"South wall," Alexei’s voice. Calm. The calm of a man who had been waiting for this his entire life. "Three lords on the slope. Infantry behind them. I’m going."
"HOLD POSITION," Ryuji said.
"I’m holding the ground."
"ALEXEI."
"Ground. Adjacent. Holding."
The crystal cut out. The sound of combat replaced it. Steel on steel. Auras colliding. The south wall becoming a war zone.
"West wall," Ryuji said.
Silence.
"Selene. West status."
"They’re coming through the garden."
The garden. The destroyed wall. The crater where the foundation had been. The open wound in the estate’s defense.
"How many."
"Infantry. Dozens. Flooding through the gap."
"Lords."
"Three. Behind the infantry. Moving slow. Letting the soldiers absorb my aura."
"He’s using the same strategy."
"He’s using THEIR bodies as shields."
"Fall back to the courtyard."
"I can hold the gap."
"The gap is too wide. You’re at thirty percent. Fall back."
"I can HOLD."
"Selene."
"I said I can HOLD."
The crystal hummed. The sound of a woman refusing to leave a position she’d sworn to protect. The garden her husband had buried assassins in. The flower beds her husband had planted. The soil her husband had turned with his bare hands at 2am.
She wasn’t leaving.
Ryuji stood in the courtyard.
The center. Where he always stood. Between the walls and the home. Between the threats and the people.
His left hand flexed. Open. Close. Eighty-seven percent. The tremor visible now. The grip weak. The body keeping score.
He couldn’t hold a blade. He’d tried. The grip wouldn’t sustain. The fingers wouldn’t lock. The hand that had caught a moon blade between two fingers twenty-seven days ago couldn’t hold a weapon.
He didn’t need a weapon.
He needed to be where the breach was.
The west.
He ran.
Through the estate. Past the kitchen. Past the bedroom. Past the table where four cups of coffee sat every morning. Past the life he’d built in twenty-seven days.
He reached the garden in twelve seconds.
Selene was at the gap. Moon blade swinging. Violet aura blazing. The most powerful demon princess in Avarthos holding a breach in a wall that shouldn’t have been breached. Infantry falling before her. Soldiers dropping under the weight of her aura. The garden becoming a battlefield.
Behind the infantry. Three demon lords. Moving through the chaos. Their auras dark. Their blades enchanted. The Obsidian Circle’s west trio. Patient. Waiting. Letting the soldiers tire her.
Her energy was dropping. He could see it. The aura flickering. The glow dimming. The thirty percent she’d had after Zerathis’s beam burning down with every swing.
Twenty percent.
Fifteen.
"SELENE. FALL BACK."
She didn’t hear him. Or she heard and ignored. The demon princess who had sworn to guard the west wall holding it with her body because the wall was gone and her body was all she had.
The trio moved.
Together. Coordinated. The formation they’d used for centuries. Three lords converging on one point. One woman. One princess. One target.
The first lord struck from the left. Selene blocked. The moon blade catching his sword. The impact driving her back one step. Her aura flared. The lord stumbled.
The second lord struck from the right. Selene spun. The moon blade catching his blade. The impact driving her back another step. Her aura flickered. Five percent.
The third lord didn’t strike from the front.
He struck from above.
Descending. Dark energy concentrated into his blade. The full weight of a demon lord falling from the air onto a woman whose aura was at five percent and whose body was at its limit.
Selene looked up. Saw the blade. Knew she couldn’t block it. Knew her aura was gone. Knew the moon blade was committed to the second lord’s weapon.
She knew.
The blade descended.
A hand caught her shoulder.
She was pulled backward. Hard. The force of a man throwing everything he had into one motion. Her body moved. The blade missed. The space where her head had been a half-second ago was now occupied by three feet of enchanted steel falling at terminal velocity.
The blade hit something else.
Him.
The enchanted steel entered below his left shoulder. Deep. The kind of deep that goes through muscle and into the space where organs live. The kind of deep that changes everything. The kind of deep that a man with no class and no level and no healing and no power can’t survive.
Ryuji looked down.
The blade was in his chest.
Not through. Not yet. But deep. The steel buried six inches into the left side of his torso. The blood was immediate. Not a trickle. A flood. The kind of blood that means something vital has been cut.
His legs buckled.
He went down.
For the first time in twenty-seven days. In twenty-eight years. The man who never fell. The man who caught war hammers and moon blades and crossbow bolts and never once hit the ground.
He hit the ground.
His knees first. Then his hands. The left hand giving out first. Eighty-seven percent. Not enough. The hand that had been failing for weeks failing completely now. His palm hit the dirt. The blood ran down his arm. Mixed with the soil. The garden soil. The soil where twenty-eight assassins were buried.
He fell forward.
His face hit the ground.
The garden went quiet.
Not the quiet of peace. The quiet of a world holding its breath.
Selene screamed.
Not the sound from the thunderstorm. Not the small involuntary sound of a woman afraid of noise. Not the controlled voice of a princess or the sharp voice of a commander or the furious voice of a wife.
The sound from two centuries ago.
The sound she’d made when she held her mother’s body in the moonlight.
The sound that soldiers still talked about.
The sound that meant the person she loved was dying in her arms.
She caught him before he hit the ground completely. Her hands under his chest. The blood soaking through her fingers. Hot. Fast. The kind of fast that meant the wound was arterial. The kind of fast that meant minutes.
"NO."
The word tore from her throat. Not to anyone. To the universe. To the thing that had brought him to this world and given him no class and no level and no power and no healing and nothing to protect himself with except a body that was never enough.
"NO NO NO NO NO."
Her hands found the wound. The blood was everywhere. Soaking his shirt. The wrinkled shirt. The combat shirt. The shirt he’d worn every day since the wedding. The shirt she’d grabbed and pulled and argued about and called terrible and secretly found not terrible.
The wound was deep. The blade had cut through muscle and into something deeper. Her demon senses could feel it. The damage. The internal bleeding. The things that were wrong inside a body that had been wrong for weeks and was now catastrophically wrong.
Her glow activated. Violet. Bright. The healing power she’d used four times on his arm. Four times on his hand. The power that had cost her forty percent of her energy during the thunderstorm.
She poured it into him.
Everything.
Every reserve. Every remaining drop. The thirty percent from the beam. The five percent from the fight. The last desperate energy of a woman who would burn herself to ash to keep a man alive.
The wound fought her. The tissue was damaged too deeply. The bleeding was too fast. The body had been weakened by twenty-seven days of fighting and hiding and standing and never resting and never healing and never asking for help.
"STAY," she said.
His eyes were open. The dead eyes. But different. Not dead. Not flat. Looking at her. Really looking. The way he’d looked at her the first time. On the altar. When the machinery stopped.
"Morning, wife," he said.
His voice was wrong. Thin. The flatness wasn’t flat anymore. It was weak. The voice of a man whose body was shutting down and whose mind was still trying to make pancakes.
"Don’t you DARE," she said. "Don’t you dare say morning. It’s not morning. You’re not dying. You PROMISED."
"I promised."
"THEN STAY."
"I’m staying."
"Your heartbeat is dropping."
"I know."
"Fifty. Forty-eight. Forty-five. STAY."
"I’m here."
"You’re LEAVING."
"I’m not leaving."
"Your heartbeat is forty-two."
"That’s low."
"That’s DYING."
"I promised."
"Promises BREAK."
"Not mine."
His hand found hers. The left hand. The weak hand. The hand at eighty-seven percent. The hand that couldn’t hold a blade but could hold her fingers. The tremor was gone. His grip was steady. The steadiest it had been in weeks.
"I promised," he said again. Quieter.
The healing poured into him. Her energy draining. Her reserves emptying. The glow dimming. The violet light fading. Her body was shutting down. The cost of pouring everything she had into a man who was bleeding out in a garden.
"Please," she said.
The word broke. The demon princess who never begged. Who never asked. Who never needed. Saying please. To a man. To a wound. To a universe that had given her four centuries of power and twenty-seven days of pancakes and was now taking the pancakes away.
"Please don’t leave me."
His eyes were closing. The dead eyes. The eyes that saw everything. The eyes that noticed her wall-gaze shift and her heartbeat and the way she held a fork and the fact that she woke up on his side of the bed.
"Selene," he said.
"I’m here."
"The pancakes."
"Don’t talk about pancakes."
"Tomorrow."
"There is no tomorrow if you don’t STAY."
"Make them tomorrow."
"I can’t make them. You make them."
"You learned."
"I learned from YOU."
"Then make them."
"I will if you STAY."
"Promise."
"I promise. I promise I’ll make pancakes. I promise I’ll burn the edges. I promise I’ll hit the ceiling. Just STAY."
His eyes closed.
His hand went limp in hers.
His heartbeat stopped.
The garden was silent.
The most powerful demon princess in Avarthos held a classless human with no level and no class and no heartbeat in a garden full of buried assassins and broken flower beds and a crater where a wall used to be.
And she made the sound.
The sound from two centuries ago.
The sound that meant love was dying.
The sound that shattered every remaining window in the estate.
The sound that reached the watchtowers and the walls and the courtyard and the bedroom where four cups of coffee would sit untouched tomorrow morning.
The sound that reached the hill.
Where Zerathis watched.
And smiled.
----------------------
[System Log: Day 27]
[HUSBAND STATUS: DOWN]
[WOUND: LEFT CHEST. ENCHANTED BLADE. DEEP. ARTERIAL.]
[HEARTBEAT: STOPPED]
[BLOOD LOSS: CRITICAL]
[TIME SINCE HEARTBEAT CESSATION: 0 SECONDS]
[...]
[WIFE STATUS: HOLDING HIM]
[ENERGY: 0%]
[HEALING: COMPLETE DRAIN] ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
[...]
[THE SOUND]
[I HAVE NO WORDS FOR THE SOUND]
[IT IS THE SOUND OF A WORLD ENDING]
[...]
[HE PROMISED]
[SEVEN PROMISES]
["I WILL COME BACK TO YOU"]
["I WILL EAT BREAKFAST TOMORROW"]
["I WILL MAKE PANCAKES"]
["I WILL POUR YOUR COFFEE FIRST"]
["I WILL SIT DOWN"]
["I WILL LIVE"]
[...]
[THE PROMISES ARE BREAKING]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[WAIT]
[...]
[THE VOID]
[IT’S MOVING]
END OF Chapter 29
