Chapter 103: This Is The Work Of Evil

Aina

What is happening? What is happening?

Aina’s knees trembled so violently she thought her legs would give out beneath her right then and there. She couldn’t understand the situation. She couldn’t wrap her head around how everything had played out in a terrifying blur of bloody chaos.

First second she was choking on water in the lake, and now... now she was standing on the stone platform, her hands slick with dirt and blood, holding all the point-pouches.

A few feet away, Jax smiled, looking straight at her. It was a dark, twisted, unnatural curve of his lips, and it was horrifyingly clear he had no intention of stopping. The whistle had blown in the air, its sharp, screaming shrill still ringing in her ears, but it had done absolutely nothing to halt him. He was out for blood. Or whatever else she had to offer him. She had thrown a pouch at him earlier, and somehow that simple, desperate act had bruised his monstrous ego.

And just when Aina thought this was the absolute end of her life, when she braced herself, thinking there was nothing else that could be done, no one left to save her, a hollow numbness settled in her chest.

At this point, she had gotten all the pouches. The official bell had rung. She had won. Team Fang had won the entire tournament at a terrifyingly great price. But she felt nothing inside. Nothing except a suffocating, paralyzing horror.

She was surrounded by people who were broken and severely injured, left, right, and center. There was only her, standing right in the middle of the carnage without a single scratch on her skin, thanks to Malric throwing himself in front of her.

As Jax stepped closer, his shadow falling cold over her, Aina squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t move. She waited for the final blow, a claw to her neck, a tear through her throat.

Thud.

Instead of a blade or a claw, the sickening sound of a heavy body collapsing onto the wet stone echoed in front of her.

Aina snapped her eyes open, her breath hitching sharply in her lungs.

Standing directly in front of her, framed by the pale sunlight, was Roiner.

His broad back was rigid, his crimson eyes blazing with fury. In his right hand, Roiner was holding a dark, still-throbbing heart, dark crimson blood dripping steadily down his pale fingers and splashing onto the rock.

Aina’s whole body shook, a gasp trapped in her throat. She looked down at his feet, and there lay Jax on the stone, his chest cavity torn open and void of a heart.

In a terrifying, unnatural way, Jax’s body still coughed. A low, wet rattle vibrated in his throat.

This is wrong, Aina’s brain screamed, panic clawing at her mind. This is impossible! Jax was no vampire. Jax was a wolf boy! He could not survive without a heart. He was supposed to be dead expeditiously, instantly, yet he was still breathing, his dead blue eyes rolling upward to fix on Roiner.

"You... are as strong... as they say," Jax rasped, a sickening, bloody chuckle bubbling past his lips. And just like that, his body went entirely limp, falling unconscious, though his bloodied fingers remained tightly clenched around Malric’s eye.

A heavy silence fell over the lake. Everyone in the surrounding crowd was in absolute shock, frozen in place, wondering what on earth had just happened.

Aina couldn’t move. Her brain was a complete blur, every thought hazy and fragmented. She didn’t know what was going on.

It didn’t take long before a swarm of people from the Healer Squad broke through the crowd, sprinting wildly onto the stone platform with stretchers and medical kits. Aina caught sight of Malric or at least, what was left of him for two seconds. He looked like a mumble-jumble, a discombobulated mixture of torn flesh and shattered bone. She couldn’t look any longer because Roiner stepped directly into her line of vision, blocking the gruesome sight.

Roiner’s voice cut through the chaos, barking out orders that echoed over the lake.

"Take the prince!" Roiner roared to the head healer. "Take all the princes but the crown prince is your top priority!" Roiner turned to an instructor, his eyes flashing. "And someone put a search party out there right now! Look for the fourth prince!"

"Understood, Headmaster!" the instructors shouted, scattering in every direction.

Aina just stood there, utterly lost as the wild ruckus erupted around her. Healers were lifting the broken, unconscious bodies of Malric, Theo, and Vance onto stretchers. Even the members of Team Million, Max and Dax, were being tended to, though they were nowhere near as horribly injured as Malric or the other princes. Part of the reason for that was that their wolves were actually healing them unlike the princes.

Roiner whirled around, his eyes locking onto Aina. Before she could even speak, Roiner swiftly unbuttoned his heavy, dark jacket, removed it, and draped it securely over her drenched shoulders, wrapping it tightly around her small frame.

"Your scent is reeking out," Roiner whispered urgently into her ear, his hand firm on her shoulder. "You are revealing yourself as a girl."

Aina blinked up at him, her lips trembling. "What...?"

"Come," Roiner said softly.

He wrapped a strong arm around her waist, and in a fast blur of movement, so blindingly quick the world turned into a streak of wind and trees, the chaos of the lake vanished.

Within seconds, Aina found herself standing directly in front of Roiner’s private cabin, the quiet wind rustling the leaves around them. Roiner pressed a heavy brass key into her trembling palm, his eyes searching her pale face with deep, aching concern.

"I will be back," Roiner murmured hastily. "Stay inside."

Before she could process his words, Roiner blurred out of sight, leaving Aina standing alone on the porch, drenched, shivering, and still unable to understand a single thing.

Roiner

This is the work of dark arts.

The thought burned bitterly in Roiner’s mind as he stood inside the small, sterile hospital room of the campsite cabin.

Jax’s body had been moved from the lake and now laid flat on a steel medical table. A white sheet was draped over his torso, but it did nothing to hide the dark, gaping void where his heart had been ripped out.

The doctor stepped back from the corpse, wiping his bloody gloves and shaking his head. "He is dead, Headmaster. There is no pulse, no brain activity. He is gone."

"How unfortunate," Roiner replied coldly, his broad arms crossed over his chest, his crimson eyes fixed unblinkingly on the corpse. The doctor frowned, opening his mouth to argue, but the heavy wooden door pushed open.

Drenched from head to toe, his wet hair dripping onto his shoulders, Keali limped slowly into the medical room. His face was pale, his bad leg dragging slightly, but his eyes were sharp and focused. Roiner turned his head, his brow furrowing. "You should be resting, Keali. Why are you here?"

Keali’s jaw tightened, a dark, dangerous edge lacing his usually quiet voice. "Because this motherfucker has put my brother’s life in danger."

Roiner took a slow breath, adjusting his posture. "Don’t worry. We are investigating this matter thoroughly."

"How can you investigate something you do not know?" Keali shot back flatly, walking right up to the edge of the steel table.

Keali looked down at Jax’s body, at the large, fatal wound on his chest, the missing heart, and the still, closed eyes.

"When we were fighting," Keali said, his voice dropping low, "this man took my brother’s eye. Do you see the eye in his hand now?"

Roiner froze. The doctor stopped in his tracks, blinking in confusion. Both men immediately lowered their gaze to Jax’s right hand, which was now lying completely open and limp on the table.

There was no eye in his hand. It was completely empty. "What does this mean?" the doctor stammered out, looking between Roiner and the corpse.

"I have never been sure of many things in my life," Keali said softly, his pale eyes staring intensely at the corpse’s face. "But I am sure of this. This man was not Jax. Someone performed dark arts and sucked Jax’s soul out."

Keali looked up at Roiner, his expression grave. "So... what happened to Jax? Is he dead?"

"Yeah, he has to be dead," the doctor chimed in quickly, gesturing to the hollow chest. "The soul must have left the body, so the new soul could enter."

Keali shook his head firmly. "He is not dead."

Roiner stepped closer, his eyes narrowing into sharp slits. "What do you mean, Keali?"

"I can feel it," Keali murmured, placing a pale hand over the cold air above Jax’s chest. "Jax’s spirit is still here in this world. It’s just bound to something, my guess is that it’s the person who removed his soul from this body that has to be keeping his soul somewhere."

The doctor threw his hands up, utterly baffled. "I don’t understand!"

"I do not understand either," Keali admitted plainly, staring down at the empty hand. "I do not even know where I am getting this information from... but I know it is true."

Keali looked directly into Roiner’s eyes, for the first time in a long time he didn’t look like he was a second away from falling asleep. "You have to keep him alive, Roiner. Do not bury him yet. He may wake up if we find a way to get his soul back into his body... and he may be the only person who can tell us who the person who took his body was, or give us some sort of idea. Because right now... we are completely clueless."