When The Sun Died

Chapter 12

Asher’s pov

Darkness squeezed around me like a fist.

Not peaceful darkness.

Not sleep.

This was heavy. Suffocating. Burning.

Like something was coiled inside my chest with red-hot wire, wrapping around my ribs, crushing, tightening.

My veins felt like they were sizzling under my skin, boiling from the inside out.

Am I turning?

Is this it? Is this what it feels like right before you become one of them?

A strangled breath tore out of me, raw and animal, as awareness slammed back into my body like a punch to the ribs.

I gasped, choked, then shot upright so fast pain ricocheted through my spine.

The world hit me in broken fragments.

Red eclipse light pouring through the shattered supermarket windows.

Shelves knocked over.

Debris everywhere.

Serena shouting something, her voice sharp, panicked.

Kane swinging a metal pipe like he barely knew how to hold it.

Nia crying somewhere behind the crates high, terrified little sobs.

And then

Three Eclipseborn.

Not the normal ones.

No.

These things stood still.

They watched.

They calculated.

Their pupils tracked every breath I took.

And every single one of them was focused on me.

“Elara?” I rasped, barely hearing my own voice. She was beside me, crouched low, hand hovering near my shoulder. Her fingers barely grazed my skin before I jerked away, trembling so hard my teeth clattered.

“What…what happened?” My voice cracked. “Why am I…why aren’t I”

I looked down, expecting black veins. Expecting rot. Expecting the same corruption I’d seen on the people who’d turned before my eyes.

Nothing.

Just sweat. Trembling skin. Hot..too hot but not infected.

But the heat… it was strange.

It wasn’t fading.

It was building.

Pushing outward.

Stretching something awake inside me.

“Elara…” My throat closed. “Please. Tell me I’m not turning.”

She said something. I saw her lips move but the sound never reached me.

Because suddenly..

One of the Eclipseborn moved.

No, launched, straight at Nia.

“No!” Elara screamed, voice ripping through the air.

And something inside me snapped

loud, violent, unstoppable.

A roar tore out of my chest, deeper than anything I’d ever heard from my own throat. The shelves rattled. Dust fell from the ceiling. My bones cracked so loudly I heard them over everything else.

A burning pulse shot down my spine.

I didn’t think.

I didn’t decide.

I became.

My hands slammed onto the floor, except they weren’t hands anymore.

They looked dead. Sharp, curved, dripping with some kind of heat that felt instinctive, ancient, wrong.

My vision sharpened until the world went razor-clear in shades of red and black. I could hear every heartbeat in the room like drums under my skull. The smell of the Eclipseborn, rot, hunger, poison hit the back of my throat like smoke.

I didn’t run toward the creature.

I was already on it before I realized I’d moved.

My claws tore through its throat in one clean swipe. Blood, dark, thick, wrong splattered across my face. The monster tried to scream but choked on its own black ooze, collapsing backward with a wet thud.

Two more dove at me.

I met them with a grin

or maybe the creature inside me did.

One lunged from a top shelf, coming down at an angle. I reached up, caught it midair, and crushed its head in my arms. Bones snapped like brittle sticks. It dropped instantly, twitching.

The third slashed across my ribs. Pain flared bright and burning. And the thing inside me loved it. It Wanted more.

I grabbed its skull and slammed it into the freezer door, once, twice, three times until the head caved inward like soft clay.

Then silence.

Only my heaving breaths.

My claws dripping black.

The metallic taste of blood burning on my tongue.

And the monster inside me refusing, absolutely refusing to settle back down.

Slowly, I turned.

Serena’s gun was aimed directly at my head.

Kane stood behind her, shaking so hard the pipe rattled against a shelf.

Elara watched me with wide eyes, chest rising and falling fast.

Nia stood frozen near the crates, tears streaking silently down her face.

I opened my mouth to speak.

What came out was a distorted growl.

“El… Elara…”

She flinched.

Not on purpose her body just reacted.

It crushed me.

“S… stay back,” I rasped, the words warping around the growl. “I’m… not… safe.”

Serena clicked the safety off. “Asher don’t move.”

“Serena, wait!” Kane grabbed her arm. “He protected us! He killed them!”

“Look at him!” Serena shouted, voice breaking for the first time. “He’s not back!”

She was right.

My body wouldn’t shift back.

My skin rippled like something was crawling beneath it. My muscles vibrated, locked halfway between human and monster. My spine felt too long. My jaw felt too heavy. My claws couldn’t retract.

And worst of all

The hunger wasn’t going away.

The instinct to protect them warred with the urge to tear everything apart.

“I can’t control it,” I growled, claws digging scratches into the tile as I forced myself backward. “Don’t come closer.”

Nia whimpered. “Asher… please don’t be a monster…”

Her voice sliced through me.

I slammed my head against a shelf hard trying to shock myself back into control, trying to crush the instinct roaring inside me to rip, to hunt, to feed.

“I’m trying!” I roared, the sound echoing off the walls. “I’m trying I don’t want to hurt you”

Elara stepped forward.

“Elara stop!” I backed up fast enough to knock over an entire aisle. “I can smell your fear. I don’t trust myself.”

She didn’t stop.

“You saved her,” she said, voice trembling but steady with something beyond fear hope. “You saved all of us. You controlled it enough to choose.”

I shook my head violently. “It’s not me it’s not…Elara, I’m barely holding it together.”

My claws gouged deeper into the tile.

Kane swallowed. “He didn’t attack us even while shifting. That means something.”

Serena’s voice cracked. “That means nothing if he loses control!”

Another pulse ripped through me, hotter, worse, like fire crawling under my skin.

I dropped to one knee with a growl that barely sounded human.

“I’m fine,” I gasped.

Then my vision flickered red and black.

“I’m not fine..just..stay back”

The world tilted.

The monster pushed.

I pushed back.

My breath turned ragged. I crawled backward until my back slammed into the far corner of the supermarket, as far from them as I could get, forcing myself into the shadows.

“Please…” I whispered, voice breaking apart, “tie me up. Knock me out. Shoot me. Something before I hurt someone.”

Nia sobbed harder, burying her face in Kane’s leg.

Elara didn’t move her gaze from me.

“No,” she said softly, with a certainty that cracked something inside my chest. “We’re not losing you. Not to them. Not to this.”

My claws trembled uncontrollably.

My chest ached.

The monster inside me pressed against my skin, screaming for control.

And all I could do was fight it.

Alone.

In the cold, flickering shadows of the ruined supermarket—

While the people I wanted to protect watched me battle myself…

Waiting to see whether I would become their savior

or their executioner.