Chapter 1280. This Bitch Helena... She’s Been Missing Out With A Lot Of Things.

Chapter 1280: 1280. This Bitch Helena... She’s Been Missing Out With A Lot Of Things.

The silence that followed Helena’s realization was not empty; it was a physical weight, a crushing pressure that seemed to squeeze the oxygen from their lungs.

Neither of them moved.

Neither of them lowered their guard.

They stood like statues carved from grief and defiance in the center of the desecrated road, two relics of a dead world watching the new one march past them. The questions screamed in the silence, ’Where is our family?’ Who allowed this?’

’How long has this been happening? ’ but no words could pierce the suffocating atmosphere.

Then, the silence broke.

It wasn’t the thunderous crash of an attack or the clatter of demon armor. It was the measured, rhythmic sound of footsteps approaching from the direction of the inner city.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Helena spun toward the sound, her flame flaring brighter, the crimson light casting jagged, dancing shadows across the cobblestones. Her heart hammered against her ribs like something trying to claw its way out.

Leonidas shifted instantly, his sword finally clearing the sheath with a deadly whisper of steel.

Ssssss ching.

The figure emerged from the morning haze. As the shape solidified, the figure stopped at a careful, measured distance close enough to be seen, far enough to respect the lethal tension radiating from the two parents.

A single hand rose to shoulder height, palm open, empty.

Helena’s breath hitched.

"Morwenna?" she whispered, the name feeling foreign on her tongue.

It was Morwenna Nightwing. But she was not the woman Helena remembered.

The Morwenna Nightwing of old was a force of nature, tall and rigid, with a spine made of iron and a voice that could command armies and silence kings with a single syllable. She had been the pillar upon which their social circle rested, a woman of unshakable poise.

The woman standing before them now looked like a ghost haunting her own corpse. She was still tall, still possessed that unnatural, aristocratic posture, but she seemed hollowed out.

Her face, once sharp and commanding, was gaunt, the skin stretched tight over cheekbones that looked dangerously fragile. Dark circles hung beneath her eyes like fresh bruises, speaking of sleepless weeks spent in some private hell.

Her dark coat was immaculate, pressed with military precision, but it hung loose on her frame as if she had been consumed from within.

"Morwenna, what in the name of the gods..." Leonidas started, his voice cracking with a mixture of fury and horror. "What have you done? What has happened to our city?"

Morwenna didn’t flinch at his anger. She didn’t even blink.

Her pale and sunken eyes met theirs with a hollow desperation that was more terrifying than any demon’s glare. Behind her, half a dozen soldiers in the black and silver livery of House Nightwing moved into position.

They weren’t demons, but they weren’t the soldiers Helena knew either; they moved with a grim, mechanical obedience, their eyes fixed straight ahead, their faces masks of exhaustion.

"Leonidas... Helena... glad you both came back safely. " Morwenna said.

Her voice was low and steady, but it lacked its usual steel. It sounded ancient, weary beyond comprehension, like the sound of wind howling through a tomb.

"Put your weapons down."

"Don’t you dare order us," Leonidas began, his sword tip lowering toward her throat.

"Put them down!" Morwenna’s voice rose slightly, cracking with a sudden, desperate emotion before she forcibly steadied it.

"Please." The word seemed to cost her more than the movement of her limbs. "If you want any of us to survive this... and if you want to see your daughters alive, put them down now."

The threat hung between them, more potent than any blade. Helena felt a cold shiver race down her spine.

’If you want to see your daughters alive.’ The words struck her like a physical blow to the solar plexus.

Her flame flickered dangerously low.

"Morwenna," Helena said, her voice trembling with a raw, bleeding vulnerability. "Where are they? Where are Lily and Diana?! Where is Elizabeth?! And where is Mother?!"

Morwenna closed her eyes for a long moment, a single muscle twitching in her jaw. When she opened them again, they were wet with unshed tears.

"I will explain everything," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that carried more weight than a shout. "But we cannot do it while you stand there waiting for a war that has already been lost."

Helena stared at Morwenna for what felt like an eternity, searching for some sign of deception, some flicker of the old Nightwing bravado that would tell her this was all some cruel, elaborate ruse. But there was nothing in Morwenna’s hollow gaze except a devastating, naked honesty.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Helena opened her palm. The crimson flame guttered, hissed like a dying animal, and finally vanished, leaving behind only a faint trail of acrid smoke that curled upward into the morning air.

Beside her, Leonidas’s jaw worked silently. With a mechanical, almost violent motion, he shoved his sword back into its sheath.

The resulting click of metal meeting scabbard rang out across the silent cobblestones like a gunshot, startling a nearby raven into flight.

Then, Morwenna began to speak.

There was no ceremony. There was no diplomatic polish, no careful phrasing to soften the blow.

She spoke with the flat, dead cadence of someone who had already died inside someone who had recited this nightmare to her own reflection so many times that the words had lost their meaning and become mere sounds.

"It started with the Undead Bringer," Morwenna began, her eyes fixed on some invisible point behind them. "A masked horror that moved like shadow and rot."

"Two of Apollo’s closest companions were slaughtered before they could even draw steel."

"They didn’t just die; they were unmade... And then he vanished, leaving only the stench of decay."

Helena felt a cold numbness creeping up her spine. Leonidas’s shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly.

"Then came Tremor," Morwenna continued, her voice gaining a grim, rhythmic quality. "The Forbidden Earthen Apostle."

"The ground didn’t just shake; it screamed... He cracked the very foundation of this island."

"Golems monsters of living stone burst through the streets like teeth breaking through gums."

"Half of the Academy’s brightest students... gone."

"Dragged into a prison of living rock where no magic can reach them."

Morwenna paused, her throat working. "Ignivara came next, her dragon’s wings blotting out the sun, turning the sky to ash."

"And then..." Her voice hitched. Just once. A microscopic crack in the dam of her composure. "And then there was Theo."

The name hung between them. Helena felt a sob threaten to tear through her throat.

Her mind raced, ’Theo, our sweet, brave Theo.’ What did they do to him?’

Morwenna didn’t give them the mercy of silence. She pushed forward, the words tumbling out like stones from a broken dam.

"The Apostle of Time came. The cliff... the collapse of everything we believed was sacred."

"A long, dark afternoon where the sun seemed to freeze in the sky and time itself bent and twisted over this city like a predator’s claw."

"We watched our world unravel in slow motion."

She described the Council’s desperation and the impossible choice.

"The Key," she whispered, the word sounding blasphemous. "We opened it."

"We opened the gate to the Underlayer’s northern corridor."

"We thought we could strike first... We thought we could fight our way out of the dark."

"We sent everything we had left," Morwenna said, her voice growing hollower. "Apollo led the charge."

"Valentina was at his back, her magic burning like a second sun."

"But the army we met... they weren’t just waiting for us."

’They were expecting us... They were already here, woven into the fabric of the ambush."

Helena’s hands began to shake.

She remembered Apollo’s laugh, his unshakable confidence. She remembered Valentina’s fierce protectiveness.

"The battlefield went silent when he appeared," Morwenna said, her voice dropping to a ghostly murmur. "A figure in darkness who called himself Lord Xerollion."

"He didn’t speak; he simply existed, and the air itself seemed to recoil from him."

"Apollo challenged him... The whole world seemed to hold its breath as they met in that duel."

"Steel against shadow. Light against the abyss."

Morwenna’s eyes finally lifted to meet Leonidas’s. Her expression was one of profound, exhausted pity.

"The duel didn’t last long enough to save anyone," Morwenna said. "Xerollion moved faster than thought."

"He broke Apollo’s guard, broke his bones, broke his spirit... And then he broke his life."

A pause followed, so heavy it felt like the sky might collapse.

"Apollo is dead," Morwenna said.