Chapter 1281. A Door That Might Reveal Salvation or Her Final Undoing

Chapter 1281: 1281. A Door That Might Reveal Salvation or Her Final Undoing

The words did not merely land; they detonated.

Helena’s face went white. The transformation was instantaneous and horrifying, as if the very blood in her veins had turned to ice.

One moment she was standing with her chin raised, a soldier braced for impact; the next, every ounce of color drained from her skin as if an invisible plug had been pulled from her soul.

Her lips parted, her mouth opening to scream or to retch, but her lungs refused to work. No sound came out, only a wet, ragged gasp that died in her throat.

’Apollo is dead.’ The thought circled her mind like a vulture, relentless and mocking. ’How? How could anything kill him?’

"Elliot fell trying to avenge him," Morwenna continued.

Her voice remained maddeningly steady, flat as a funeral dirge, as though she were reciting a grocery list rather than the slaughter of their kin. "He fought like a demon possessed, but he was outmatched."

"He was broken on the stones before he could land a single meaningful blow."

Helena flinched as if she had been struck. The mental image of Elliot, vibrant, stubborn Elliot, being crushed beneath the boot of some nameless horror made her stomach churn.

"Valentina and I tried to hold the line," Morwenna said, her gaze drifting to the distant, purple and black banners. "We fought until our magic burned out, until our bones screamed."

"But we were not enough... The city has surrendered, Helena."

"The resistance died on those cliffs." Her voice dropped an octave, carrying the weight of shame. "Valentina herself spoke the surrender in the corridor, in front of both armies."

"She stood there, surrounded by the corpses of our friends, and gave the word to spare what lives were left."

"Valentina..." Helena whispered, the name a broken prayer. "My mother... my mother surrendered."

The words felt like treason in her own mouth. The woman who had taught her that honor was worth more than life had knelt before the abyss.

"She did what she thought would keep the most people alive," Morwenna said, her pale eyes locking onto Helena’s with a fierce, desperate intensity. "She chose the survival of the many over the pride of the few."

"As I would have done the same."

Helena’s hand, the same hand that had conjured flame moments ago, was shaking uncontrollably. The tremor started at her fingertips, a violent, rhythmic twitch that raced up her wrist to her elbow.

She stared at it with detached horror, as if watching a stranger’s limb convulse.

Finally, she curled her fingers into a white knuckled fist and pressed it hard against her stomach, trying to physically hold herself together.

Beside her, Leonidas had become something less than human. He had gone rigid as granite, his entire body coiled like a spring under impossible tension.

His jaw was locked so tight that the muscles along his temples bulged like cords, and his breath came in slow, measured snarls through his nose, the controlled, dangerous breathing of a predator holding back a flood of violence that had nowhere to go.

"My children," Helena said at last.

The words were cracked, hollow, and echoing from a place of profound grief. She seemed unaware of her own voice, as if she were hearing it from somewhere far below the ground.

"Lily... Diana... Elliot... Are they... are they..."

"Elliot is badly hurt, but he lives," Morwenna answered quickly, sensing the precipice Helena was standing on. "The wounds are grievous deep gashes, broken ribs, but he breathes."

"Evelyn is with him; she refuses to leave his side, guarding him like a hawk."

Helena’s breathing hitched. ’Elliot lives... Thank gods, he lives.’

But the relief was immediately poisoned by the memory of Morwenna’s words about him falling.

"Lily and Diana were not on the front line when the battle was lost," Morwenna said, her voice softening fractionally. "They were spared the worst of the slaughter."

"They are safe, Helena... They are at your house."

A flicker of hope, fragile as spun glass, sparked in Helena’s chest. ’The house... Our home... They are there...’

Morwenna paused, gathering her strength for one more piece of the broken puzzle. "And Rex Rexilion is alive too, though he was wounded severely in the melee."

"He tried to help Apollo until the very end, fighting until his sword arm failed him."

The silence returned, but it was different now. The shock was beginning to give way to something sharper, something colder.

The horror of the loss was still there, but beneath it, a new emotion was stirring in the depths of Helena’s shattered heart: a desperate, murderous need to know what happened behind those closed doors.

There was a pause before Morwenna mentioned his name.

It was a minuscule hesitation, barely enough to register to a casual observer, but to anyone who understood the language of grief, it was a scream. Morwenna’s gaze dropped, just for a heartbeat, lingering on the cracked cobblestones a fraction too long.

Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line, as if she were physically choking back a truth too foul to speak aloud. For one terrifying instant, it seemed she might confess something that would shatter what little remained of Helena’s sanity.

Then she lifted her eyes again. The mask was back.

Her face was composed, the practiced neutrality of a Nightwing restored, and the moment of vulnerability died before it could truly begin. Helena was too consumed by the wreckage of her own heart to notice the slip.

Her mind was a storm of screaming voices, drowning out everything else. Leonidas was worse; he stood like a statue of obsidian, staring at some invisible point somewhere past Helena’s shoulder, his consciousness retreating into some dark, private corner of his mind where he could process the slaughter.

Neither of them saw the truth hiding in Morwenna’s silence. It was a detail that could only be read by someone who had shared secrets in the dim light of a private chamber, someone who knew what Morwenna had been doing in that room only days ago, and in this street of ghosts, no one was that someone.

Helena did not wait for another syllable. She could not bear another word of Morwenna’s measured cruelty.

Without a sound, without a glance back at the woman who had delivered their doom, Helena turned and bolted.

"Helena! Wait!" Leonidas roared, but she was already gone.

He tore after her. They became two streaks of desperate motion cutting through the corpse of their city.

They ran side by side, their breathing synchronized in a ragged, desperate rhythm. They tore past demon patrols whose flat, crimson eyes tracked them with mechanical indifference; the creatures made no move to intercept them, as if they were already dead.

They sprinted past townspeople who cowered in the shadows, flattening themselves against cold stone walls like frightened animals, their eyes wide with a terror that Helena could no longer afford to feel.

Helena ran, as she had not run in twenty years. Her lungs burned like she was swallowing molten glass; her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird desperate to escape its cage.

Her cloak snapped behind her like a battle standard in a storm. Her mind was a kaleidoscope of terror, fixating on a single, fragile image she tried to clutch with both hands: three faces.

Three voices.

Three children she had left whole, healthy, and laughing children who now existed only as possibilities in a world that had gone mad.

’Please let them be sleeping,’ she pleaded silently. ’Please let them be unaware of the blood on the wind.’

They reached the ornate iron gates of the Starlight household in what felt like a lifetime, though it was only minutes. The gates stood unlocked, swinging slightly in the wind like an open wound. Helena did not slow down.

She didn’t reach for the latch; she threw her entire body weight against the metal, her shoulder slamming into the iron with a bone-jarring impact. The gate shrieked on its hinges as it swung wide, and she charged across the front garden.

She sprinted past the marble fountain that had stood as the pride of their estate, now silent and choked with fallen leaves. She tore up the stone steps, each footfall echoing like a heartbeat.

The entire house was wrong. It was too quiet a hollow, unnatural stillness that felt heavier than the noise of a battlefield.

There were no servants scurrying to open doors; there were no guards standing at attention; there was no sound of life spilling from the windows.

The only thing that existed in the world was the wet, ragged rasp of her own breathing and the thunderous, terrifying thud-thud-thud of her boots against the stone, racing toward a door that might reveal either salvation or her final undoing.