Never Ending
735 Words
The Ancient Alpha stood, staggered—but whole.
Killian rose.
His chest burning gold.
His eyes turning from silver… to violet.
The eclipse above ignited.
And then—
A voice boomed across realms:
"The Bride has fallen. The Flame has passed. The Alpha Ascends.”
The smoke coiled in slow spirals around Killian’s trembling form as he dropped to his knees beside Seraphina’s still body. The heat from the blast still radiated across the battlefield, leaving cracks in the earth that glowed with embered veins—like a broken heart still pulsing with agony.
He touched her cheek.
Still warm.
But no light.
“No, no, no…” he whispered, brushing soot and blood from her lips. “Seraphina… fight. Please—don’t leave me in this cursed eternity without you…”
Above them, the sky churned into a swirling eclipse, blood-red and violet intertwining. The heavens knew.
And they wept.
Killian bent low, pressing his forehead to hers. From deep within, a pulse—ancient and golden—awakened. A flare of her flame… inside him.
The prophecy’s true meaning surged into his mind:
“When the Bride falls, the Flame passes. When the Alpha weeps, the world burns.”
He screamed.
The kind of scream that cracked the air, that tore fissures into the veil between life and death.
All around him, the remnants of their enemies—the Betrayer’s loyalists, twisted beasts born of ancient curses—began to shriek, clawing at their faces as golden fire erupted from beneath their skin. One by one, they turned to ash, their souls wrenched away.
His power—her power—was devouring them.
The Ancient Alpha staggered back, bleeding from the mouth. The cracks in his mask now spiderwebbed across his entire face. “You are… not supposed to awaken yet…” he hissed.
Killian stood, slowly.
Wings spread behind him—massive, phoenix-shaped, wrought from molten moonlight and crimson vengeance. His eyes no longer glowed silver, but the deep violet of the Bride’s soul, threaded with the gold of ancient Alpha blood.
He was becoming something else.
Something unspoken in the prophecies.
Something not even the gods had foreseen.
“I am not just the Alpha now,” Killian said, voice echoing like thunder wrapped in sorrow. “I am the vengeance of the Bride. The bearer of her Flame. And you—”
He pointed at the Ancient Alpha, whose legs trembled now, faltering—
“—are a relic of a broken age.”
The sky answered his rage. From the eclipse above, threads of power descended—each one a memory, a life, a vow. A pact.
The Eclipse Pact.
“I bind your soul,” Killian chanted in a forgotten language, as light spiraled around him. “To the ashes of the one you destroyed. And I offer your life in exchange for hers.”
“NO!” the Ancient Alpha screamed, but it was too late.
From Seraphina’s body, a golden spark rose. Her soul.
Drawn toward the vortex forming in Killian’s chest.
From the Ancient Alpha, a wail of agony as tendrils of his shadowy power were ripped from him, sucked toward the same vortex. His form began to splinter—like a mirror cracking inward—until finally, he was pulled apart, his essence obliterated, dissolved in pure light.
The ground trembled. The mountains bowed.
Seraphina’s body began to glow. Her chest rose—barely.
A gasp.
Her eyes fluttered open.
Killian fell to the ground beside her, utterly spent, power draining from his limbs like blood.
“Seraphina,” he whispered, sobbing.
She blinked. “Killian…?”
He laughed, brokenly. “You came back to me…”
But then—
A snap in the sky. The eclipse wavered.
Something… else emerged.
Not the Ancient Alpha.
But something older.
A ripple in reality tore open above them, revealing a vast, swirling abyss where countless glowing eyes blinked back. Not human. Not even divine.
Something had awakened.
Something watching.
Something waiting.
Seraphina clutched Killian’s hand.
Her voice was a whisper of dread: “What did you exchange for me?”
A single, echoing note rang out.
A howl—so deep and ancient, it predated the gods—pierced the heavens.
From the rift above, a colossal paw stepped through. Blacker than shadow. Larger than mountains.
The original beast. The First Flame Eater. The debt claimed.
- Writer
