Chapter 9
904 Words
The wind outside Devlin Manor howled like the ghosts of the past had finally broken free.
Inside the mansion’s candlelit hall, Calla stood at the edge of something unholy—her fingertips still tingling from the altar’s magic, her blood humming with a rhythm that was no longer human. She had taken the curse. Taken it willingly. And now the Devlin bond pulsed inside her, ancient and unruly, like a serpent coiling through her soul.
She should have been afraid.
But she wasn’t.
Because for the first time, she wasn’t just a reincarnated soul trapped in someone else’s history. She was the storm that would rewrite it.
Ares stood behind her, eyes locked on her glowing veins. His breath was shallow, gaze torn between awe and grief. "You took it from me."
"No," Calla whispered, voice sharp with new power. "I claimed it."
Cain's steps echoed in the chamber as he circled them like a predator.
"And now the vessel has changed," he murmured, a twisted smile curling on his lips. "Fascinating. The curse never anticipated a host strong enough to absorb it."
Calla turned to him. "You knew this was possible."
"Possible? Yes. Survivable? Not quite."
Ares growled, stepping between them. "She’s not your experiment, Cain."
Cain's eyes darkened. "She is the prophecy, brother. Whether you like it or not."
---
Calla didn’t sleep that night.
She couldn't.
Images stormed her mind in fragments—lives she never lived but remembered anyway. A thousand versions of herself, dying again and again, always too soon. Always taken.
She stood at the balcony of the west wing, where the moonlight painted her body in silver. Her eyes, once soft and warm, now held a distant glimmer—ancient, dangerous. She saw the night for what it was: not darkness, but truth unveiled.
The door behind her creaked open.
"You need rest," Ares said quietly.
"I need answers."
He came to stand beside her. "What you're feeling... it's going to get worse. The power inside you, it’s not meant to lie dormant. It will want to be used."
"Then I’ll use it."
"Calla..."
She faced him. "Don’t tell me to run. Don’t treat me like something fragile anymore."
He searched her face. "I never thought you were fragile. I thought you were the only thing left worth protecting."
She softened for a moment.
"Then help me," she said. "Help me end it for good."
Ares hesitated. Then nodded.
"We go to the Crypt of Sables."
---
The Crypt of Sables lay beneath the oldest forest on Devlin land. Few dared speak of it, fewer still returned from it. Said to be the birthplace of the curse—a sacred tomb where the first Devlin had bartered his bloodline for eternal dominance.
They traveled by night, guided by the shifting compass of the curse now embedded in Calla’s heart. Each step closer made her veins ache. Her senses sharpened unnaturally; she heard the whispers of spirits in the trees, felt time folding in on itself.
By the time they reached the gates, the sky had turned the color of bruised flesh.
The crypt was carved into the side of a mountain, its doors sealed by runes that pulsed in response to Calla’s presence.
She stepped forward. The stone parted.
Inside, darkness swallowed them.
Ares lit a torch. The flicker revealed walls of bone, skeletal remnants bound in ceremonial silks. Names were etched into the floor—Devlins long dead, Reyes lost to history.
At the center: a pedestal. Upon it, a dagger unlike any she’d seen. Its blade bled shadows. Its hilt bore the sigil of the moon and flame—a mark she now bore on her skin.
"This is it," Ares said. "The first blade. The one used to bind the curse."
Calla reached for it.
The moment her skin touched the blade, the chamber screamed.
Visions burst behind her eyes: her hands soaked in blood, standing over corpses of gods; Ares, chained and begging; Cain, holding the severed head of someone she once loved. It was chaos, pure and raw, not memories—but possibilities.
She dropped the blade, gasping.
"What did it show you?" Ares asked, breathless.
"Not the past. The future."
He went pale.
Cain emerged from the shadows. "Then it has begun."
---
Later that night, after they returned, Calla found herself standing in the manor's oldest gallery.
Portraits lined the walls—each Devlin etched in time, faces painted in elegance and sorrow. But as she passed them, they changed.
Eyes moved.
Smiles warped.
And then she saw her own face in a painting that had been blank just days ago.
Not Céleste.
Calla. Crowned in blood, seated on a throne of bone.
"This isn’t a prophecy," she whispered. "It’s a warning."
Suddenly, pain lanced through her skull. Her knees buckled. The room melted around her.
And she was pulled into another vision.
She stood at the edge of the world, winds howling. Fire rained from the sky. At her feet, bodies of gods and mortals. And beside her...
Ares. But broken. Eyes hollow. The curse gone.
And her?
She was smiling.
She had become the very thing the curse feared.
---
She awoke in her chamber, gasping.
Ares was there. So was Cain.
"What did you see?" Cain asked.
Calla looked at them, her voice eerily calm.
"I saw the end."
Cain frowned. "Whose end?"
She smiled faintly.
"Everyone’s."
- Writer
