Chapter 126: Finally

The pool of blood lay in the dark like a mirror that had forgotten how to reflect.

It was wide and perfectly still, and it did not smell of iron or rot. It smelled of something older, something that belonged to the inside of temples and the gaps between stars.

For a long time, nothing moved on its surface. Then, slowly, a ripple crossed it, and another, and a faint gold light began to bleed upward from the depths like a drowned sun.

Divine Spiritual Power.

It rose in thin, trembling threads, drawing patterns in the air that no mortal hand could have copied.

They coiled and uncoiled. They shivered with a hunger that was not their own. And with each thread that rose, the darkness around the pool seemed to lean back, as if it did not dare touch what was waking.

A man stood in front of it.

He was pale, so pale that the gold light seemed to pass through him.

His eyes were deep, bottomless red, the color of wine left too long in the cellar, and his jet black hair swayed over his shoulders, though no wind stirred the room.

He did not move. He only watched the threads rise, and his lips, which had been thin and still, began to curve.

Happiness surged through him like a tide.

"Finally."

...

Steel rang against wood in the clearing by the swamp.

Arthur held a spear, long and straight, its tip dancing in short, precise thrusts.

Lee met him with a sword so wide and heavy that it looked more like a slab of iron than a weapon, and he swung it as if it weighed no more than a branch.

They traded attacks and defenses in a rhythm that had become second nature over weeks of training.

Thrust, parry, step.

Sweep, duck, spin.

Dust rose around their boots, and sweat soaked their shirts, and neither of them gave an inch.

Arthur’s left eye was hidden behind a strip of cloth. He fought as if he had never had two.

For nearly a minute, the clearing was nothing but noise. Then Lee changed his grip, just slightly, and Arthur’s spear went wide for half a heartbeat. It was all Lee needed. The big sword came down in a short arc and stopped, trembling, one centimeter from Arthur’s neck.

Silence fell.

Arthur let out a long breath and lowered his spear. "Man," he said, grinning, "you are too good."

"You have gotten vastly better too." Lee slid the sword over his shoulder. He did not smile often, but there was something close to it in the corner of his mouth. "A month ago, you would not have lasted ten seconds."

"Thanks."

"Do not thank me.."

Behind them, footsteps crunched on the dry ground.

They turned their heads. Sera and Mary were crossing the clearing, each with a blade in hand, their faces calm and their steps matched. They stopped a few paces apart and faced each other, and the air in the clearing seemed to change.

It grew lighter. Sharper.

Arthur and Lee stepped aside to watch.

They had watched every day for months, and every day it had taught them something new.

Sera moved like a blade of grass in a storm, bending, never breaking, her cuts quick and short and cruel.

Mary was stillness itself, a quiet pool that suddenly became a river. Their swords met without a sound, parted, met again.

Neither of them wasted a single motion. It was not like watching a fight. It was like watching two feathers drifting in the wind, each one knowing exactly where the other would fall.

Both of them were prodigies. Everyone who had seen them knew it. And everyone who had seen them knew that the thing they were becoming was not something to be spoken of lightly.

Lee leaned against a dead tree and folded his arms.

Today would probably be the last day they got to watch.

Tomorrow, they would start Stage 4.

The thought rose in him slowly, like a long-held breath finally let go.

’Finally,’ Lee thought.

...

The dining room of the Rhys manor was warm and quiet, and nobody was eating.

Candlelight trembled in the silver holders. Rain tapped against the window glass, soft and constant.

Alaric Rhys cleared his throat.

"Did I ever tell you about the time the foundry foreman put his hat on the wrong furnace?" He looked up with a hopeful smile. "It went up like a firework. I thought he would lose his eyebrows. He lost his hat, but he kept the eyebrows, and he insisted for a month that it was a deliberate choice."

Audrey set down her fork. "You have told me, dear."

"Did I?"

"Four times."

"Then it is a very good story."

She tried to laugh. A small sound came out, and it died almost at once. Alaric’s smile faltered. He looked down at his plate and moved a piece of chicken from one side to the other, and neither of them said anything for a while.

It had been seven months.

Seven months since their children had gone through the Gate and into the realm of evil. It was the twenty-ninth of September, Sera’s birthday.

Her seat was empty, and the little cake that my mother had personally baked sat under a cloth in the kitchen, untouched. My birthday had come and gone on the fifth of May.

They were patient. They told themselves they were patient. But patience was a thin thing against seven months of silence. They did not know whether their children were alive or dead. Whether they were eating, or being eaten. Whether they were killing, or being killed.

Alaric reached across the table and took his wife’s hand.

Audrey looked at him. Then, slowly, she smiled.

It was not the brittle smile of the past months. It was calm. It was steady. It reached her eyes.

"Don’t worry," she said. "I know they are alive."

"Audrey..."

"I know it." She glanced at the candle burning between them. For seven months its flame had flickered and bowed and sputtered, as though something were pulling at it from far away. Tonight, for the first time, it stood straight and still, a single bright blade of gold in the dark.

She had no proof. She had only a mother’s heart and a candle that had stopped trembling.

But it was enough. It was more than she had had in seven months.

’Finally,’ she thought, and the word was like water in a long drought.

...

I sat on my bed with the lamp turned low.

The room was quiet. The soft mattress was warm under me, and the mirror on the dressing table caught the glow in a dull, yellow patch. I had grown a little moustache over the past weeks, thin and dark, and my long black hair was slicked back from my forehead. I looked like a stranger.

I ran my fingers over the edge of the blanket.

Stage one, the rumor. Stage two, Quinn and the money. Stage three, Rashford, and the new captain, and the first cracks in Culex’s army.

They were all in place now, every thread pulled tight, every disciple ready, every lie fitted against the next like stones in a wall. I had checked them one by one, in the dark, over and over, searching for a gap.

There was none.

All stages of the plan were complete. Tomorrow, every piece of it would be put to the test.

I thought of Sera’s cold voice by the fire. I thought of Arthur’s ruined eye and Mary’s quiet, knowing gaze.

I thought of the two names I kept in a tally I had promised never to lose. That had now turned to twenty.

I closed my eyes. For the first time in weeks, my heart was perfectly calm.

’Finally.’

___

Author’s Note: Reason for time-skip is that the story had unknowingly went very slow-paced and the plot development, which was intended did not happen that way. However, rest assured, nothing happened in the time-skip would be skipped and would be told in the story through thoughts and narration, possibly memory too. So, don’t mind and keep reading!