Chapter 218 | Selene…

Chapter 218: 218 | Selene...

The door closed behind her and Dexter stood alone in his room.

He stared at the closed door, then he punched the air in anger.

"What the fuck," he muttered to the empty room.

He sat down on his bed and pressed his palms against his face.

The first question was the most fundamental. When had the switch happened? When Lyra entered his room, was she Lyra? Or was she already Aurelyx?

He replayed the sequence.

The first one had seemed like Lyra. The shyness. The hesitation. The nervous energy.

But the heartbeat had been slightly wrong but even then, the chips.

’Was she Aurelyx from the beginning? Or did they switch midway?’

The chips. The way her eyes had lit up. The way she had flashed across the room. The way she had eaten with content, rhythmic precision. The "thank you" that was soft and warm and genuine.

That had felt like Lyra. Completely, absolutely Lyra.

But then the crunching had stopped. The gaze had changed. The kiss had happened. And the voice that followed the kiss, the voice that asked "You don’t like it?", had carried a tremor that could have been either Lyra’s genuine nervousness or Aurelyx’s imitation of Lyra’s genuine nervousness.

’Did they switch during the kiss? Was Lyra the one who initiated it, and Aurelyx the one who took over when it deepened?’

’Or was Aurelyx there from the start, performing Lyra’s nervousness with enough accuracy to fool me?’

He didn’t know.

And that was the part that was driving him insane.

Was it Lyra? The sweet, shy, chip-loving girl who had kissed his cheek and then run away? Or was it Aurelyx? The Shadow Queen?

The uncertainty was maddening.

And then there was the other thing. The thing that Aurelyx had said before she left.

’Your heavenly physique.’

Dexter’s hands tightened into fists.

How did she know? What did she know? How much had she observed during her time in control of Lyra’s body?

’Think. Think. Think. The only way she can know about the physique is if she can sense it or she can actually read my inner most thoughts unlike Lyra who can read just the surface.’

He didn’t know that either.

Dexter lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

Everything was starting to make sense now. The strange behaviors. The cold voice in the bedroom. The diary entry. The single-portion meals. The "Are you testing me?" reaction to the chips. All of it was starting to make sense.

It had been Aurelyx every time.

Two people and one body. One who remembered everything and one who remembered nothing.

And Dexter was caught between them.

He thought about what to do. The options were limited. He could confront Lyra directly, tell her about Aurelyx, and hope that the knowledge would help rather than harm. But he didn’t know if telling Lyra might trigger her or cause even more harm than good.

Or it might help and give Lyra the awareness she needed to fight back.

He didn’t know which but he knew one thing.

Between Aurelyx and Lyra, he had already chosen Lyra and not the Shadow Queen.

His Lyra.

Dexter would find a way to erase Aurelyx. To remove the secondary personality from Lyra’s body and give Lyra full, permanent, unchallenged control over her own mind and her own life.

He didn’t know how yet ans didn’t have the tools yet or knowledgeyet but he would find them.

Whatever it took and however long it took.

’For now, I can only keep an eye on her.’

The thought was unsatisfying. But it was the only strategy available to him at the moment. Charging into Lyra’s room and demanding answers from Aurelyx would accomplish nothing except potentially destabilizing a situation that was already balanced on a knife’s edge.

He was still pondering when the door opened.

"Click."

Dexter’s expression changed instantly.

The killing intent erupted from his body before his conscious mind could intervene.

For a split second, he thought Aurelyx had returned.

His hand shot toward his spatial storage as the Void Star Saber’s hilt materialized against his palm and his muscles coiled as his mana surged.

The door opened fully.

Dexter froze.

It wasn’t Aurelyx nor was it Lyra.

It was Selene.

She stood in the doorway, her silver-white hair falling over her shoulders, her pale face tilted slightly forward, her sightless eyes aimed roughly in his direction. She wore a simple white sleeping gown that reached her upper thighs, and her bare feet made almost no sound on the wooden floor.

At the same moment she appeared, the temperature in the room plummeted.

An icy chill seeped through the doorway like fog rolling across a frozen lake.

Selene had sensed Dexter’s killing intent and her face turned cold.

’Assassin.’

Without hesitation, her own killing intent exploded.

’BOOM!’

A violent, chilling aura erupted from Selene’s body.

The frost on the doorframe exploded outward, coating the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The window behind Dexter developed a thick layer of ice that blocked the moonlight. The air temperature dropped below freezing in an instant, cold enough to make breath painful, cold enough to freeze moisture on contact.

The killing intent was staggering.

It didn’t roar or crash or thunder like Dexter’s flame-forged aggression. It was silent as it consumed Dexter’s own.

Dexter’s eyes widened.

’What the...’

He hadn’t expected Selene to respond with a counter-surge that made his own killing intent feel like a campfire compared to a blizzard.

For a brief moment, the two killing intents collided and the atmosphere in the room became suffocating. Fire and ice.

Even crippled and blind and chronically ill. The killing intent she radiated was enough to make Dexter’s survival instincts scream.

He was caught off guard.

Not by the power. By the speed. By the instant, reflexive response of a woman who should have been helpless but whose body still remembered how to kill.

Dexter immediately withdrew his killing intent.

"Wait," he said. His voice was calm. Firm. Designed to cut through the confusion without escalating it. "There isn’t an assassin."

Selene’s killing intent held for another moment, then it gradually, it faded.