To ruin an Omega

Chapter 425: When the seasons change 1

FIA

I blinked. Or I thought I did. The concept of eyelids felt theoretical at best.

The space around me resolved slowly. I noticed there were stone walls that were damp and gray. It looked… It looked like a cell.

The more I looked at it, the more I realized it was the kind of cell that had held me before, when I embodied my ancestor Athena in those vivid dreams of mine. Yes… It was. It was the same vile space that had held so many innocents before and after her.

I could almost taste the iron in the air, could almost hear the echoes of screams that had soaked into these walls over decades.

But it wasn’t real. I knew that somehow.

I sat up. My body moved without the pain I should have felt after what had just happened.

I had no throbbing skull, no broken nose, no blood coating my face. All I really felt at this point was a strange lightness, like I’d been hollowed out and filled with something kinder entirely.

Then I noticed someone was there.

I looked and to mo one’s surprise. There was indeed someone.

The apparition stood across from me.

She wore my face.

She had the same dark hair, same pale skin, same frame. But the eyes were different. They held something ancient, something that had burned itself out long ago and left only embers behind.

“Athena?”

The word left my mouth before I’d consciously decided to speak.

She smiled. The expression transformed her face, made her look younger despite everything those eyes had witnessed.

“We finally meet, granddaughter.”

The weight of that word settled over me like a physical thing. Granddaughter. I’d only gotten to know about her from fragmented memories I had gotten from my dreams. So all I had really about this woamn was the trials and tribulations that she had gone through in life. The woman who had suffered so Valentine could build some sick sort of empire with the blood of the Omegas who had died in these very walls, or ones like them.

“I’m dead?”

I needed to know. Needed to understand if this was the end, if that girl had beaten me into nothing and left my baby to whatever fate awaited children conceived by a mad warlock’s design.

Athena’s smile faded. She moved closer, her steps silent against stone that should have echoed.

“You should know by now that there are feelings and fates so much worse than death.”

The statement landed with the finality of a door slamming shut. I thought about Morrigan’s face before the girl had thrown her against the wall. I thought about the baby growing inside me, about Gabriel trapped in his own body while Aldric wore his skin like a costume.

“So this is like before.”

When I’d been dying on that private road, when something had reached into me and pulled me back from wherever I’d been headed. When I’d woken with power singing through my veins and power burning on my flesh.

Was this another of my gifts similar to the dreams I had of the past and meeting up with my mother’s younger version?

Athena tilted her head, studying me with an intensity that made my skin prickle.

“Muna used to tell me stories about you.” Her voice went soft, almost fond. “Our whole salvation. And now you’re about to share the same fate as me. The history book on the shelf does like repeating itself.”

The bitterness in those last words cut through the fondness like a blade.

“I can’t end up like that.”

The words came out sharp, desperate. I couldn’t become another woman who died in these walls while Valentine continued his experiments, continued his search for whatever vessel he’d been chasing since before I was born.

Athena laughed. The sound held no humor.

“Right. I was so pathetic that I died in his walls.”

She stepped closer, and I could see the bruises on her throat now. Faint marks that hadn’t been visible before, like she was slowly becoming more corporeal, more real with each passing second.

“Riddle me this, Fia.” Her eyes locked onto mine, unblinking. “How do you intend to defeat a warlock with a god complex and a juiced up healer born from fleshcraft?”

The question hung between us like a challenge.

I pushed myself to my feet. The movement felt strange, like I was learning how to inhabit my own body all over again.

“First, I need to leave this… trance.”

Athena watched me stand, her expression unreadable.

“There’s nothing holding you back.” She gestured around us, at the cell that wasn’t quite solid, at the walls that seemed to shift and breathe with each passing moment. “You’re the one who pulled yourself here. You’re the one who pulled me here as well. Perhaps because you have need for me.”

I stared at her.

“I did this?”

The concept felt impossible. I’d been beaten unconscious, had felt my awareness scatter under that rug while the girl had brought her fists down again and again. How could I have pulled anything anywhere when I’d barely been holding onto existence?

“I guess that’s the difference in this reiteration.”

Athena moved to the wall, pressed her palm against stone that looked solid but gave slightly under her touch like it was made of something softer.

“Though we have similar faces, we perhaps don’t share similar fates.” She turned back to me, and something in her expression had shifted. Gone vulnerable in a way that made her look more real than anything else in this space. “You were born blessed. I was destined to suffer as an Omega and meet a bitter end. Everything that was great about me was born in a lab. So was my sweet girl. Muna. Even her gift to peer into the future couldn’t save her from a bitter death.”

“Enough!”

The word exploded out of me, sharp enough to make the walls around us shudder.

“Don’t say that.”

I couldn’t listen to her talk about my mother like that. Couldn’t hear the resignation in her voice when she spoke about the woman who had loved me, who had tried to save me from this exact fate.