Chapter 87

Chapter 87: Chapter 87

Chapter 87

The highlight of Marcellan’s shenanigans was covering my eyes with a blindfold. The hand towel, thick and with its wool faded, itched against my face, but I couldn’t complain.

He was wickedly starting to become more of a bully than a teacher now, and I blamed myself because I had deliberately signed up for it, thinking Clawface’s training had been the worst.

I had thought wrong.

"So, what’s next?"

My ears picked up Marcellan’s footsteps as he receded. The sound of metal clattering in a drastic collision with the ground kept me on alert, wary and painfully anticipating his next move.

He cleared his throat.

"I’ve had the weapons rearranged. Find them without your sight and conjure them to bend to your will and appear in your hand."

Though he spoke clearly, I found his imagination amusingly delivered.

"You act like you know a lot about magic."

"I was an advocate before I left the palace. That required being a scholar too, so I learned quite a lot from MoonBlade’s archives."

I raised a brow. It was a pain in the balls not being able to see the light, having only darkness to brood over and its persistence in refusing to give me even the slightest chance to use my sight.

"But I thought, until my involvement, MoonBlade and SilverFang weren’t close?"

"They weren’t. As I said, I left the palace, which meant the job was life threatening. Risky as fuck."

He spoke with such familiarity that I’d almost thought he wasn’t the same Marcellan from back then.

"You ready?"

His next statement threw me off the chart. Taken aback, I stuttered, not knowing exactly what to say.

"I’d come at you at any moment from now. Use your magic."

"I... I can’t see!" My voice came out high pitched.

"In the books, the power of Aetherblood has a resonance. It contains a seismic sense. You don’t need your physical senses, the five you rely on. You’re different. You’re spiritually connected with nature."

His words were like fuel, a determination of some sort rising within me like dough left in a heated room. My lips thinned and my breathing steadied.

Even Marcellan said nothing more, as though he’d realised I was beginning to let myself use the extent of my power.

My hand stretched out to my left, and I curled my fingers as though the bones were being cracked.

Then the sensation settled in.

It felt uncertain at first. Like casting a fishing line into a river and waiting for it to catch a bite.

And so I waited.

I felt myself extending without actually moving. The resonance, indeed, lengthened like the other day when I’d seen Marcellan and Clawface from afar.

I caught the blurry shape of a sword, the resemblance of a fish having fallen for the bait.

The skin of my forehead wrinkled so much it began to ache around my frontal lobe, yet I continued to push through the hardship it brought, especially the striking headache piercing the bones around the bridge of my eyes and nose.

I pushed further.

The rattling of steel came.

First, a pull at the pommel as it rose faintly, then the awakening of the length of the hilt, followed by the sharpened edge.

Slowly, the entire weapon heeded my command.

"Shit... you’re doing it, Alex. You’re levitating. And not just the weapons are heeding your command. The rocks too."

"What..."

My breathing hitched at the meaning behind Marcellan’s words.

And that was when I actually realised my feet weren’t touching the ground anymore.

And it wasn’t just the sword.

I was overwhelming myself.

I tried to stop, tried to contain the range, and attempted to fixate my focus only on the sword I’d been seeing through the resonance, but it wouldn’t happen.

My hand strained, my veins bulging.

Even while blindfolded, I felt every struggle my body was trying to maintain.

Until it snapped.

Like a muscle overly trained and tugged beyond its limits, only to tear apart.

Following it came such immense pain that I screamed aloud, my hearing fading into the distance.

I hadn’t even realised I’d fallen to the ground, caught by Marcellan. He’d protected my head from clashing against the hardened sand, and he was screaming my name.

Yet I only heard him from a great distance.

I could see my own body, as though I’d stepped away from it.

But at the same time, it was clear I remained within it.

The Aetherblood Resonance.

It’s malfunctioning.

The snapping of the string left behind the sensation of separation, and I attempted to pull at one, trying to drag myself back into the real world.

I was beginning to lose consciousness. That much was clear.

"Alex!"

Marcellan was getting closer. I was getting distant.

"Fuck! Alex, please. Shit, I’m gonna die." He said that part more to himself and his worry than to me. "Alex!" He called out again.

I could almost feel the breath carried by his voice—only for me to be pulled back. Heat burned the blindfold from my sight, replacing the darkness with the vision of a ruin.

Fire burned, and the heat seeped into my skin. A sort of pain followed.

Skin, flayed alive and crisped by those same flames, left me strangled. The air thickened with the smell of burnt flesh, carrying flakes of ash as they billowed through the wind.

Smoke formed a great fog, darkening the sky. It smothered the heavens, yet a crimson glow pierced through.

A red moon.

Just like the crimson dried upon the ground, mixed with dirt and fallen buildings existing as fragments of shattered brick, the moon bled in semblance of the agony existing within this timeline.

Then something caught my eye.

Someone.

I strolled forward, my legs seemingly growing heavier with each step. My eyes narrowed as my mind tried to make sense of the figure.

"Kai..."

All hell broke loose as I raced towards him, realising the thorn-wood masking half his face was the throne itself.

One side, from his left brow downward, had been jagged and melted by the burning of the twisted vines. His eye was gone, the same as the skin trailing down to his neck.

Yet that scared me less than the right side of his face, the part still intact but stained black with smoke.

He was lifeless.

I suddenly couldn’t breathe.

My legs turned to jelly as I dropped to my knees, swallowing a lump that wasn’t really there.

"Kai... no," I whispered. "You can’t..."

Words failed me.

As I crawled towards him on my knees, a faint grunt came from the side, where Clawface was dragging himself with the last strength remaining in him towards Kai.

But only an inch away from touching Kai’s fingers, he breathed his last breath. Both of them, their clothes tattered and burnt halfway through, looked as though they’d been heading towards something... trying to stop something.

The feeling crawled at the back of my head.

But the horror of this scenery burned my heart far more than the heated smoke ever could.

"Please... no, Kai."

I didn’t know what else to say.

He was gone.

I’d lost him.