Chapter 8
656 Words
The air in the sanctum stilled. The candle's flame danced once—then died.
The spell failed.
Drusilla collapsed forward, palms scraping the stone. Her blood still steamed in the bowl, the arcane sigils drawn on the floor flickering with dying light.
It wasn't enough.
Sure, she and Valentine had a strong bond, but not close enough. Not physical. The blood sigil clung to her son like rot to bone, and magic cast from afar could only whisper at it.
To sever it, she needed to touch him. To feel the branded rune against her skin. To defy the very ritual that sought to silence him forever.
And time had run out.
Above, the drums sounded.
The execution ceremony had begun.
The courtyard had been transformed into a grotesque theatre.
Black banners whipped against the stone, and at the center, the altar had been carved with blood runes older than the High Council itself. Noble families gathered in silence, their faces masked with veils and rings of silver. Children clutched rosaries. Men held torches.
Valentine was kneeling in the middle of the altar, his shirt ripped open, his wrists chained, his face white and drenched in perspiration.
His chest still bore the sigil, now glowing, responding to the power that filled the air like smoke.
At Caelum's feet rested the Arc of Hollowing.
An object of legend.
An obsidian shaft, forged from the remnants of a fallen star, passed through thirteen rituals, blessed by priests, sorcerers, and even the Crownless Saints. The tip was sharp as thought, coated in salt mined from the Ruins of Uro, where the dead refused to rot.
When the arc was thrust into a heart, it performed the Curse of the Hollowing:
Flesh would stiffen.
Blood would freeze.
It would crystallise the heart.
And the victim's body would shatter, scattered across the realm as nothing but salt and dust.
Valentine barely breathed.
He looked up at Caelum, who stood above him with ceremonial robes and that ever-present smirk.
"No last words?" Caelum asked.
Valentine's lips cracked into a grin.
"You'll burn for this."
Caelum raised the arc.
But before it could fall, Drusilla appeared.
⸻
The crowd gasped as the wind surged.
She descended from the upper wall on a thread of light, her robes torn, hair unbound, her hands glowing with raw, ancient power. She landed between her sons, her body crackling with so much force that the ground itself split beneath her feet.
"No," she said, voice trembling with fury and love. "Not him."
Caelum stumbled backward, momentarily stunned.
"Mother, you__"
She ignored him.
She turned to Valentine, fell to her knees, and touched the sigil on his chest.
The effect was immediate.
The symbol burned gold, then white and then vanished.
Valentine gasped, his magic roaring back into him like a flood released from a dam.
The chains burst open.
⸻
However, the arc, which Caelum had started mid-spell, took a different turn.
Drawn by ritual. By blood. By fate.
It pierced Drusilla's chest.
She exhaled sharply, her hands still on her son's skin.
"Run," she whispered.
"Mother_"
"NOW."
With the last of her strength, she lifted her palm and used the Veil of Casting, an old spell that would rip a being from its plane and send it into the human world.
A blinding light swallowed Valentine whole. Just as Drusilla's body began to crystallize. Her heart froze into a red gem. Her arms turned to stone. Her hair shimmered like spun glass. And then__she shattered.
A thousand shards of white salt scattered to the winds.
Elsewhere...
Valentine crashed through a canopy of trees, landing hard in wet earth, gasping, his chest still burning.
The sigil was gone but it had ripped him apart on its way out.
Blood pooled beneath him. He choked on the pain. He looked up at a grey sky filled with birds unfamiliar to his world.
And then—
everything went black.
- Writer
