Novel Full Chapter 841: Preparations for the future
Chapter 841: Chapter 841: Preparations for the future
“You won’t be staying here,” Kain said at last.
Airalai’s head tilted, but instead of looking happy at the news of her release she looked rejected, “You don’t want me anymore?!”
“I am releasing you,” Kain corrected. “But it’s not as if we’ll have no more contact anymore. You’ll go back to the Black Dawn, but under my orders. Tell them you survived an ambush. Say the Knight came to retrieve you, but he fell—burned to ash. That much is true enough. Or it may be soon”
Her eyes narrowed, then glimmered with a disturbing kind of amusement. “And the beacon? They’ll ask why it flared.”
“You tell them the truth,” Kain said coolly. “You were ambushed. Injured. Infected by a weird worm that never left your body—it’s still draining you. Anyone who examines you will see the toll. That will be your cover. You escaped with your life, barely. They’ll believe it.”
Airalai pressed her hand to her stomach, wincing faintly. The parasite’s drain was steady, weakening her frame with every heartbeat. “So I play the survivor. A cripple who limped home. But usually the weak in the Black Dawn are just eliminated…”
“Well figure out how to make them not eliminate you. Consider it your first mission from me. Don’t let me down.”
At the mention of not letting him down, her eyes sparkle and she nods her head emphatically. “Of course! And while they pity me, I start to… look for others?”
Kain nodded. “Not everyone in the Black Dawn embraces their methods. Some joined for power, others because they thought it was humanity’s only hope. Those are the ones I want. You’ll identify them. Slowly, carefully. And when the time comes, you’ll bring them to me.”
Most people would balk at being turned into a spy against their own comrades. Airalai only smiled—too wide, too eager. “You really do think so far ahead. You’re so smart! Humanity’s true last hope! I’ll find others. And I’m sure they’ll see what I see.”
Her gaze made his stomach knot. Reverence. Fanaticism. It was more unnerving than hostility.
A pause. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she raised her hands. Black aura shimmered, coiling like smoke.
“As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I’m not a beast tamer but I was still granted some power due to them implanting me with something—a gift.”
Kain’s brows furrowed.
“They stole it,” Airalai whispered. “From someone else. Gift implantation. They cut the ability from another and forced it into me. That’s why I can drain life by touch, even though I was born without a beast-tamer’s affinity or a gift. But without a contract, all the energy I stole bled away. Wasted since I couldn’t form additional star spaces to cultivate further. I could strengthen the gift a little, but most of the absorbed anergy was wasted and slipped away.”
Her gaze locked on him, reverent and fever-bright. “But now? With the deathleech bound to me, I am technically a tamer, I can channel it. Every life I touch can feed my cultivation.”
Kain’s chest tightened. So that was the byproduct of one of the Black Dawn’s experiments. One of their successful ones. Stealing gifts, ripping them from one host to graft onto another.
And it left Kain with a question that tasted like poison. Could he risk using that method himself, to arm his own recruits? Or would it only repeat the Dawn’s atrocities under a different banner?
Airalai stepped closer, her voice a silken whisper. “I was theirs. But now I’m yours. My life, my gift, my devotion—it all belongs to you.”
A shiver went down Kain’s back at the words, and he turned away with an awkward cough.
“Enough. Since you seem determined to keep the deathleech, I’ll research how to make it stronger, safer. For now, you’ll return as planned. Don’t reveal yourself or our connection.”
Her laugh was soft, almost musical. “Of course. Whatever you say, brother.”
Kain forced himself to turn away. “Good. Then we’re done here. I have one more matter to settle.”
—————–
The Knight stirred as Kain approached, restraints rattling against the slab. His eyes cracked open, bloodshot and hateful.
“You… frog in a well,” he rasped. “You have no idea what is coming. What you’re up against. Let me go now and you may still have a chance at salvation.”
Kain’s expression stayed flat. He pressed a hand to the Knight’s forehead. Bea’s splits formed, slipping into the man’s fractured mind.
This is one less memory reading to make sure he doesn’t miss out on any crucial information.
Kain pulled back, bile rising at many unpleasant memories were seen. The Knight’s body sagged, spent from the intrusion.
After reading the memories, and getting an idea of his personality, Kain felt like the Knight was unlikely to shift allegiance to himself. Not that it mattered much, the Knight’s spiritual circuits were shattered, and it would take a lot of time, effort, and resources to heal them. Useless as an ally, too dangerous as a captive. Keeping him alive would only be a risk.
“Vauleth,” Kain said.
The dragon loomed, exhaled a low growl, then unleashed a controlled breath. Red flame laced with black corrosion engulfed the entire cell. When the fire died, only drifting ash remained.
Cold. Necessary. Final.
————-
That night, when the lab was finally silent, Kain leaned against the cold steel wall. His thoughts churned. Airalai as a double agent, the Knight’s death, the abyssal invasion’s date. And now the revelation of gift implantation.
Ten months. A world on the brink. And his only advantage—a method to awaken the powerless, and a sister who worshipped him with eyes too bright to trust.
————-
Serena leaned against the cool stone wall outside Kain’s dorm, her heart beating far faster than it should have. The summons had been simple—“We need to talk, in my room. Tonight.”—but the way he’d said it, the way his eyes lingered just long enough to make her stomach flip, had left her with a head full of treacherous thoughts.
Their dorm rooms at Dark Moon were side by side, separated only by a thin wall that sometimes betrayed the sounds of Kain pacing late into the night, or the scratch of his pen across paper. She’d grown used to his presence being so close, both comforting and dangerous. Now, standing before his door, she smoothed down her robes twice before daring to knock.
The door opened at once.
Kain stood there, his true thoughts not revealed on his face. It had never bothered her before—if anything, it added to his mystique. But tonight, with her nerves wound taut, it only made her throat dry.
“Come in,” he said.
His voice was steady, neutral, without a trace of warmth. That alone should have killed the butterflies in her stomach. Should have—but didn’t.
The room smelled faintly of ink and old parchment, a tamer’s den with books stacked along the walls and crystals glowing faintly on the desk. Serena hesitated at the threshold, cheeks heating. She’d been in his room before, of course—usually with Cherry or another teammate around—but never alone, never like this.
When she stepped inside, her imagination betrayed her. Is this it? she wondered, pulse hammering. After everything, is he finally…?
She nearly jumped when the door clicked shut behind her. Kain gestured to the chair by his desk, his posture stiff, his eyes fixed on her with a gravity that drained all the heat from her fantasies.
“Sit,” he said.
Serena obeyed, her embarrassment cooling into something closer to dread. He wasn’t fidgeting, wasn’t avoiding her gaze the way he sometimes did when teasing crossed into flirting. His entire aura was heavy, dark. This wasn’t about them.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
For a long moment, he didn’t answer. He leaned against the desk, arms crossed, and his voice came out low. “I learned something today from interrogating a member of the Black Dawn. Something I can’t ignore. But if I tell you, it won’t leave this room. Do you understand?”
The seriousness in his tone chilled her. “Of course.”
Kain closed his eyes briefly, as though bracing himself. When he opened them, the weight of his words pressed the air flat.
“The Abyss isn’t coming someday in the distant future. It has a date. Ten months from now, the invasion has already begun in the East actually.”
Serena’s breath caught. For a second, she thought she’d misheard him. Ten months? Not years, not decades—months.
“That’s… not possible,” she whispered. “If something like that were true, the Empire would—” She stopped herself, shaking her head hard. “No, they’d have told us. The College, the Order, the Emperor himself—”
“They haven’t,” Kain said flatly. “Or they’re hiding it.”
The air between them turned cold. Serena tried to laugh, but the sound cracked. “You got this from who? Some… prisoner? And you’re just—just taking his word for it?”
Kain’s gaze didn’t waver. “I saw it. In his mind. The Black Dawn isn’t bluffing, Serena. They’ve been preparing for this for years. I thought they were insane, obsessed with atrocities for power’s sake. But they’re afraid too. This invasion in inevitable. And maybe even unbeatable.”