Novel Full Chapter 388: Stage of Annihilation
Chapter 388: Stage of Annihilation
But he hadn’t.
Instead, he’d let her in. Held her. Kissed her. Made her one of his.
She’d thought—naively, stupidly, hopefully—that the same would happen when she saw Victoria and Nastya make their move.
That whatever mercy he’d extended to her, whatever capacity for forgiveness lived inside him, would stretch far enough to cover her sister too.
She was wrong.
His anger was instant.
Total.
With Nastya, he’d been almost gentle. With the Romano girl’s hand—a bold move, an intimate move—he’d reached up and unwrapped her fingers with careful, deliberate precision.
Lifted her hand away from him gently before he stood.
No anger.
No heat.
Just a quiet not this, not nowthat Nastya had accepted with wide eyes and a frozen spine.
But Victoria had been shoved.
With words and tone.
“I said let go of my arm.”
Phei’s voice dropped.
And the temperature dropped with it.
The frost that had been gathering at the edges of his irises spread inward—slow, inevitable, turning amethyst to pale violet edged with white. The air around his wrist shimmered faintly; Victoria’s fingers suddenly felt numb, like she’d plunged them into ice water.
She gasped—small, involuntary—but didn’t release him.
A plummet of cold aura leaked at the edges.
Every person within fifteen feet felt it at once—a wave of ancient, furious chill that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature and everything to do with the seventeen-year-old boy at its center losing his fragile grip on something vast and barely tamed.
Breath fogged mid-laugh. Condensation froze on half-empty glasses. The leather couch behind them spiderwebbed with sudden hairline cracks.
Sierra and Maddie locked eyes.
Oh no.
Melissa’s warning replayed in both their heads—the one she’d delivered with that exact look, the one that carried the weight of a woman who’d once watched Phei crumple a car into a perfect metal sphere and had never quite recovered from the sight.
His emotions are volatile right now. The Void-Ice answers to anger, fear, distress. If something pushes him past the edge…
Sierra moved first.
Four swift strides from the dance floor. No hesitation. Her hand found Phei’s free arm—the one Victoria wasn’t clutching—and laced fingers through his. Warm. Steady. Anchor.
“Hey,” she breathed against his ear. “Hey. Come back to me.”
Maddie moved second.
Not to Phei.
To Victoria.
She seized the Maxton girl’s shoulder—firm, steering, never cruel—and tugged her back a single step while unleashing a bright, carrying laugh pitched perfectly for the crowd.
“Oh my God, Vic, stop being so dramatic!” Maddie’s voice rang clear and performative. “You two are hilarious when you fake-fight, seriously—like watching siblings—”
She kept pulling Victoria away as she spoke, opening space with the smooth expertise of someone who’d neutralized a hundred Legacy-party landmines.
Her grip stayed gentle but iron but Victoria was one hell of stubborn girl, wasn’t she?
The cold didn’t fade.
It sharpened.
Frost thickened on nearby drinks. A girl three feet away hugged herself and gasped. The bass from the speakers stretched, each beat dragging slower, as though sound itself were freezing solid.
Phei stared straight at Victoria.
His eyes were changing.
Amethyst purple drowned from the edges inward. Warm violet retreated, swallowed by void-black ink blooming across the sclera until they vanished entirely. Irises flared brighter against the black—glacial blue-white, slit vertically.
Dragon slits.
Razor-thin. Ancient. Utterly inhuman.
Sierra’s soft coaxing turned sharp and urgent.
“Phei. Phei, look at me. Look at me. She’s not worth it. Breathe. Come back—”
He wasn’t hearing her.
Eira watched from the shadows.
Her three-day sulk evaporated the instant the surge of Void-Ice flooded their bond. Fairy pride meant nothing when her master was seconds from turning a human girl into a coroner’s nightmare—cells crystallized, blood frozen black, final expression locked forever in perfect translucent ice.
She felt the power coiling in his chest: a black star collapsing inward, pulling everything toward a singularity of cold rage that would detonate the moment control frayed the last thread.
In the next heartbeat or two, Victoria Maxton would become a Void-Ice statue.
Eira scanned the room for anyone—anyone—with enough gravity to pierce the fury before it solidified into irreversible act.
She already knew she wasn’t that person.
Phei took one step toward Victoria.
Victoria shivered violently. Teeth chattering. Breath pluming white. Frost crept across the floor toward her heels like a living thing stalking prey.
Yet she held her ground. No retreat. No fear in her eyes.
She hadn’t received the message.
Maddie saw the lock—those void-black dragon eyes fixed on Victoria with the patient certainty of a predator that had already ruled the prey extinct.
She released Victoria.
Went straight to Phei.
Arms wrapped his torso. Full-body press. Face buried in his chest, entire weight leaning in like a living anchor against a storm.
“Babe, stop. Stop. Please.”
Sierra stayed on his arm, still tugging, still whispering, her own calm fracturing at the seams—not fear of him, but terror of what he was becoming.
Her composure cracking at the edges, underneath who was genuinely, viscerally afraid—not of Phei, but of what Phei was about to become.
Delilah stood rooted.
Everyone else was watching. The crowd. The college girls who’d been playing security. Nastya, still rooted to the couch, green eyes enormous. Amber, hand covering her mouth.
Maya, silver hair gleaming, already running mental contingencies.
Phei radiated rage made flesh.
Hands curled at his sides.
In his right palm—invisible to everyone, visible only to him and to Eira who was watching with her heart in her throat—a black swirling sphere
had begun to form. Void-Ice condensing into a ball of pure annihilation no larger than a marble, spinning silently, consuming the light around his fingers.
“When I tell you to let go—”
“Phei.” Maddie and Sierra together, voices overlapping in raw plea.
His eyes had finished the change. Full void-black sclera. Glacial blue-white irises burning cold. Dragon slits pinned on Victoria with the calm of someone correcting a minor administrative mistake.
“You let go, bitch—”
“PHEI—”
“Phei~”
A new voice.
Soft. Quiet. Cutting through the roar of bass, cold, and panic like a single warm piano note in a deserted nave.
Not loud. Not commanding.
Just there.
A small, soft hand settled on his cheek.
Warm against skin gone sub-zero. Fingers rested along his jaw with the quiet devastation of someone who had done this before, who knew the secret shape of his breaking.
“Calm down.”
Two words.
Void-black drained from his eyes like ink retreating into shadow. Glacial fire dimmed. Amethyst purple flooded back—warm, human, alive. For the first time since he rose from the couch, he looked seventeen again instead of something ancient dragged from between collapsing stars.
Frost halted.
Air warmed.
The annihilation marble in his palm unraveled into nothing—unmade by touch and two quiet syllables.
The room exhaled as one.
Only then did the realization crash through Phei.
He had lost control.
Here. In public. At his own celebration. Surrounded by his people. Witnesses everywhere.
He would have killed Victoria Maxton with a power no one in this room was meant to know existed.
His hands shook.
He looked down at the hand still cupping his cheek.
And at last met the eyes of the face it belonged to.