Death's Choice
438 Words
Chapter Twelve: Death’s Choice
The battlefield was silent now.
Ash floated through the air like snow.
Aria moved through the smoldering remains of the courtyard, her heart pounding against her ribs as if trying to escape her chest.
“Lucien?”
Her voice cracked.
There was no answer.
Only the bodies of the fallen. Only the blood—his blood—still warm on the broken stone.
---
She found him beneath the shattered archway of the Crimson Keep’s eastern wing.
His body lay still. Motionless.
A jagged blade was embedded deep in his abdomen—drenched in the dark, sacred blood of the Alpha King.
“No,” she whispered, stumbling to her knees.
“Lucien, no...”
---
He didn’t speak. Didn’t stir.
And the bond—the eternal, primal connection that had always throbbed like wildfire through her soul—was silent.
Empty.
---
Her scream shattered the dawn.
---
The healers arrived too late.
They pulled her back, but she fought like a feral thing, claws out, magic flaring from her skin in blinding bursts.
“No one touches him!” she roared.
They whispered around her. “He’s gone.”
But Aria refused to hear it.
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She knelt beside him, her palm pressed against his bloodied chest.
The world had stolen everything from her before—but not him.
Not Lucien.
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And then the choice came.
A voice—ancient, female, echoing in her mind.
The Moon Goddess.
> “One must die so the other may live. One soul, one fate. Will you pay the blood price?”
Aria was trembling.
“Take mine,” she said.
But the voice answered with chilling clarity.
> “Only he can choose. Even in death.”
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Suddenly, Lucien’s body jolted, eyes flashing open—just once—as if caught between two realms.
His lips parted, bloodied and cracked.
And then… he whispered her name.
“Aria…”
His voice was a breath.
But in that breath, he made the choice.
---
A searing light erupted from their bond.
Magic spiraled into the sky, shaking the mountain.
And then, as suddenly as it began—stillness.
Lucien collapsed into her arms, unconscious.
But his heart was beating.
Weakly.
Alive.
---
Aria clutched him, tears carving rivers down her cheeks.
“You came back,” she sobbed.
She didn’t know what it cost him.
But she would find out.
And she would make the world bleed if it tried to take him again.
---
In the distance, the last of the rebel banners burned.
But this war?
It was far from over.
- Writer
