IMMORTALS

C H A P T E R 3

The Grand Rotunda erupted into a wall of roaring, violet-tinged fire.

As Arthuria’s clumsy oil spill cascaded into the central braziers, thick clouds of blinding smoke billowed across the marble floor. Panic, alien and electric, fractured the silent discipline of the immortal assembly. Elders scattered in disarray, white robes fluttering like startled gulls, while the guardians lost their formation in the sudden, blinding heat.

"Seize them! Do not let the heretics escape!" Jude’s voice pierced through the din, shrill with venomous fury as she swatted away rolling embers from her copper robes.

Taking advantage of the total chaos, a familiar figure slipped through the smoke. Melin materialized beside Lili, her olive face tense with a fierce, unprecedented resolve. In her hands, she held a heavy celestial sledgehammer dropped by a panicked guard.

"Hold still!" Melin gasped, swinging the heavy hammer down onto the celestial iron shackles binding Lili's wrists. c***k! The cold metal shattered under the divine force, releasing Lili's hands. At the same time, Ethan broke his own spiked collar free with a roar of sheer, desperate strength, his muscles straining as mortal adrenaline flooded his veins.

"Melin, go—they will see you!" Lili cried, rubbing her raw, bleeding wrists.

"I have spent millennia watching people cower," Melin whispered, pressing a small leather pouch of healing herbs into Lili’s palm. "Run. To the eastern wall. Don't look back."

Before Jude could reorganize the guards, Ethan seized Lili’s hand. Their fingers locked—two beating hearts burning in sync against the frozen laws of paradise. Together, they bolted past the blazing altar and plunged into the labyrinth of the marble colonnades.

"After them!" Jude shrieked, her pale eyes spotting their flight. "Cut them down! Let none of their corruption remain!"

A hail of silver-tipped javelins shattered the pillars around them as Ethan and Lili sprinted through the trembling groves. Every breath burned in their lungs—a sensation that was agonizing yet intensely alive. They were no longer untouchable, static ghosts; they bled, they panted, they feared, and they loved.

They reached the base of the Great Wall just as the howling guards closed the distance behind them.

"Up! Now!" Ethan shouted, hoisting Lili toward the ancient ivy-draped footholds carved into the sheer stone.

Lili scrambled upward with desperate agility, her dark fingers finding the familiar crevices. Ethan followed close behind, his boots kicking off loose mortar as celestial halberds lunged past his heels, slicing the air inches from his skin.

They climbed like hunted animals, defying gravity and divinity, until they hauled themselves over the final stone battlement onto the high summit of the wall.

But there was no sanctuary waiting for them.

Stepping out from the swirling alpine mists ahead of them, blocking the path down into the outer wilderness, stood Jude. Her copper hair whipped wildly in the gale, and in her hands, she held a crackling spear of pure lightning, its lethal energy illuminating her twisted, triumphant smile.

"End of the road, little apostates," Jude sneered, stepping closer. "There is no escape from the Creator’s judgment. I will tear that beating heart from your chest myself, Lili, and feed it to the scavengers."

Ethan instantly pushed Lili behind him, his blue eyes blazing with a fearless, suicidal fury. "You’ll have to go through me first, Jude."

"Gladly," Jude hissed, hurling the spear of lightning straight toward Ethan’s chest.

Time seemed to freeze. With a sudden, synchronized burst of primal instinct, Lili lunged forward, shoving Ethan out of the path of the deadly projectile. The lightning grazed her shoulder, tearing her tunic and searing her flesh with a jagged, bleeding burn. She cried out, collapsing against Ethan’s arms.

Jude raised her hand for a second, final strike, stepping to the very edge of the outer precipice where the sheer wall dropped thousands of cubits into the dark, churning abyss of the mortal wasteland below.

"Die, traitors," Jude whispered, lunging forward with a barbed blade.

With nowhere left to run, Ethan looked down into the swirling, bottomless mist of the outer world, then down at Lili’s bleeding shoulder and glowing chest. He tightened his arm around her waist, a wild, reckless smile touching his lips.

"Together?" Ethan asked over the roar of the wind.

Lili looked into his piercing blue eyes and smiled, her own heart hammering a wild, beautiful rhythm. "Together."

As Jude lunged to strike, Ethan and Lili turned and deliberately threw themselves backward off the edge of the Great Wall, plunging headfirst into the dark, uncharted abyss.

Jude’s scream of frustrated rage vanished into the wind as the lovers plummeted through the clouds, falling out of paradise—and straight into the roaring heart of the mortal world.