Chapter 168: The Unfolding Truth XLVIII

Third Person POV

A long, gleaming sword appeared in his right hand out of thin air.

The weapon came from absolutely nowhere.

In one single moment his hand was completely empty; the very next, the heavy blade was right there in his grip.

It was long, curved, and crafted in the elegant style of a Renaissance rapier, polished so bright that it caught the dim torchlight and threw it back across the room in sharp, broken fragments.

Lysander crouched down slowly beside Kai, his grey eyes looking almost pleasant.

"Look over at her," Lysander whispered.

Kai painfully turned his head to the side, his green eyes instantly finding Helen standing across the room.

"That is going to be the absolute last time you ever look at her," Lysander whispered into his ear.

"No!" Helen screamed, her voice piercing the air.

She lunged forward with everything she had.

But she was far too late.

The long blade drove straight through Kai’s back, piercing through his chest.

The sharp metal tip emerged completely out of the front of his shirt, dripping wet and red, and Lysander pulled the weapon back out of his body in one single, smooth motion.

Kai fell heavily onto his side.

His body hit the cold stone floor with a dull thud.

His bright green eyes remained wide open, completely fixed on Helen’s face, still tracking her even as he lay in the pooling blood.

Helen was screaming, but the sound coming out of her throat didn’t sound human at all.

It was an incredibly old, primal sound, something that had been waiting deep within her bloodline since the very day she was born.

The thick stone walls of the hall began to vibrate violently.

Grey dust poured down from the ceiling beams, and long, jagged cracks began to spread rapidly across the solid stone floorboards.

She dropped to her knees and crawled to his side, dragging her frame across the rock.

Her hands shook wildly as she cupped his face, touching his chest as his warm blood instantly soaked into the fabric of her dress.

"Stay with me," Helen sobbed, her voice cracking as she held him.

"Please, Kai. Just stay with me. Don’t close your eyes."

Kai’s lips moved slightly, his breath hitching.

"You... you are the happiest thing... that ever happened to me in my life, my love," Kai whispered, his voice barely audible in the quiet room.

He coughed hard, more blood bubbling up past his lips.

"Never... never let him get his hands on our Azura," Kai struggled to say, his green eyes beginning to glaze over.

"Promise me right now. Never let him get to her."

"I promise you," Helen cried, her hot tears falling straight onto his cheeks.

"I promise you I won’t. Please just don’t leave me here alone. Please, Kai!"

"I love you," Kai whispered.

"No, no... please, Kai, stay!" Helen begged.

But Kai’s green eyes didn’t close. They just... stopped moving entirely.

The bright, fierce light behind his pupils went out in an instant.

His green eyes turned to completely flat, empty glass, staring blankly at absolutely nothing at all.

His chest stopped moving up and down.

"Kai! Kai!" Helen screamed, her voice echoing off the high stone ceiling.

She shook his broad shoulders, but his head just lolled uselessly to the side.

His body felt incredibly heavy and limp in her arms.

"No," Helen whispered, her voice dropping into a broken chant.

"No, no, no..."

She pressed her forehead flat against his, weeping silently as her tears mixed with the blood on his skin.

He didn’t blink. He didn’t take another breath. He was completely gone.

Lysander stood tall over the two of them, calmly watching the scene play out.

His grey eyes looked entirely bored, as if he were simply waiting for a tedious chore to finish.

"You people are all so incredibly stubborn," Lysander said, letting out a long sigh as he cleaned his blade on a cloth.

"If a task can easily be done in five minutes... You just have to go ahead and waste lives trying your best to avoid it."

He looked down at Helen’s hunched, weeping form on the floor.

"I actually would have wanted to keep you alive, Helen," Lysander continued, his voice casual.

"Truly, I would have. But after your foolish father-in-law told me all about your little daughter..."

Helen’s head lifted up slightly from Kai’s chest.

Her eyes were no longer their usual light grey color.

"Why exactly would I ever need the mother," Lysander said, a wide smile spreading across his wrinkled face, "when I can easily have the most powerful being in existence?"

"A nine-tailed fox born with pure Alpha blood running through her veins? A child who shouldn’t even exist in this world?"

He took a slow step closer to her.

"Since you simply refuse to give me what I want..." Lysander said softly, "I am really sorry it has to end this way for you."

Helen raised her head all the way up, facing him.

Her eyes had turned into a deep, terrifying ocean color now.

They were a solid, freezing blue, the color of the deepest sea, where the light of the sun could never reach, where ancient, monstrous things had been sleeping undisturbed for centuries.

She opened her mouth, her lips moving silently. She muttered something very quietly.

Lysander tilted his head to the side, his brow furrowing.

"Huh? What was that? I couldn’t hear a single thing you just said."

She said the exact same words again, her voice rising in volume.

It was completely steady.

Far too steady for a woman who had just watched her husband die.

"Come again?" Lysander mocked, a cruel laugh bubbling up in his throat.

"What did you say to me? Go ahead and say it again. I really didn’t hear you."

Helen’s teeth pressed tightly together, her jaw locking into place.

Her hands, still dripping wet with Kai’s warm blood, curled into tight, powerful fists at her sides.

"I said..." Helen spoke, her voice low, freezing, and incredibly dangerous, "I am going to tear you completely apart."

Lysander burst out laughing, the sound ringing through the stone hall.

"Oh, wow. I am so incredibly scared right now."

He was still laughing out loud when the strange noise started.

It was a low hum. It began very quietly at first, but then it grew rapidly louder and louder.

It was the specific sound of a metal weapon moving at an incredible speed, slicing cleanly through the empty air, coming from somewhere very far away outside the castle and getting closer by the second.

Lysander stopped laughing instantly.

He whipped his head around, his grey eyes searching through the heavy shadows along the stone walls and up toward the high ceiling.

The humming sound was coming from absolutely everywhere and nowhere at the exact same time.

It was getting closer.

He felt the weapon strike before he even saw it.

A sudden, sharp pain flared directly in his stomach.

Something incredibly sharp had driven straight through his torso.

The king looked down at his own midsection in absolute shock.

A massive kusarigama blade was embedded deeply inside his abdomen.

The curved metal blade had entered straight from behind his back and had exited clean through the front of his stomach, the sharp tip dripping wet with his own blood.

Bright blue flames flickered wildly along the heavy iron chain, across the steel blade, and right inside the wound itself, a wound that was surprisingly not healing at all.

The iron chain suddenly pulled taut through the air.

With a loud snap, the weapon flew backwards across the room, returning straight to Helen’s waiting hand.

She caught the handle perfectly.

The heavy iron chain wrapped itself tightly around her forearm.

The two curved blades dangled down at her sides, one dripping wet with the Alpha King’s fresh blood, the other humming with a fierce blue fire.

She stood up slowly on her feet.

Her long white hair flew wild around her pale face.

Her deep ocean eyes were burning with an ancient power.

Her fine dress was completely soaked through with her husband’s blood.

She turned the weapon in her hand once. Twice.

"What... what exactly is that weapon?" Lysander asked, staring down at his bleeding stomach in absolute confusion.

"Why is my skin not healing itself?"

Helen looked straight at him.

Her pale face was heavily streaked with tears, but her eyes weren’t sad anymore.

They weren’t grieving. They were purely angry.

It was the specific kind of anger that didn’t scream out loud.

It was the kind of rage that didn’t waste time crying.

It was the exact kind of anger that killed.

"The wrath of a nine-tailed fox," Helen said, her voice low, steady, and certain.

The bright blue fire coating her steel blade burned significantly brighter, illuminating the dark room.

The Alpha King took a sudden step backward, his boots sliding in the dust.

The entire grand hall fell into an absolute, suffocating silence.

The dead bodies lay perfectly still on the stone floor.

The iron torches flickered against the walls.

The heavy shadows waited in the corners.

And Helen, the last of her kind, the mother who had lost her child, and the wife who had just watched her husband die in the dirt, raised her weapon high and prepared to completely end what had started.