Kael's POV
Silence.
Not the peaceful kind. The kind that rings in your ears after an explosion, hollow and sharp—where your thoughts echo too loudly and your breath feels borrowed.
I was on the ground. I didn't remember falling. The dirt beneath me was scorched, a long, dark scar carved into it like lightning had kissed the earth. My chest heaved. My body trembled. Not from pain… from power.
Something inside me had broken. Or awoken.
The magic was still fizzing through my bloodstream—crackling under my skin like live wire. It didn't feel like mine, not entirely. It was… wilder. Freer. It had responded to that thing in the sky not like a defense mechanism, but like a predator answering a challenge.
I pushed myself upright. My hands were burned—red, seared, some skin split open—but I didn't feel it. Not really. Pain felt muted now, like it had taken a backseat to something louder. Something screaming.
The air was heavy with soot. Smoke curled from the crater surrounding me. The village beyond was untouched, eerily silent.
But Sister Lily was gone.
Gone.
I staggered forward. No blood. No trace. Just a faint imprint in the dirt where her feet had been… and a smell. Something bitter and unnatural—like singed roses rotting in the sun.
'Did she run?' No. That didn't feel right. She didn't move. I saw her. She watched the thing descend.
Then what the hell happened?
I looked up.
The sky was quiet now. Not a single sign of the creature—no torn clouds, no lingering malevolence. Just that rising morning light, indifferent as always.
But something had changed.
Inside me.
The storm wasn't gone. It had just... coiled itself again. Like a snake beneath my ribs.
I took a breath—and froze.
A presence.
Not human.
Not just mana. Will.
I turned slowly.
On the far edge of the scorched field stood a figure.
Tall. Humanoid. But... wrong.
Its body shimmered faintly, as if it was half-here, half-somewhere else. Its limbs too long. Its face... masked. A white, cracked thing shaped like a porcelain child's smile. No eyes. Just slits.
It didn't speak.
Didn't need to.
I knew.
It wasn't the thing from the sky.
This was something left behind.
Or something that had come to witness.
I'm not ready. That thought came instinctively.
But the ground didn't tremble. The air didn't warp.
It just stood there. Watching.
And then—its head tilted.
Like it was studying me.
Judging.
And without a sound, it stepped back once… twice… and vanished into thin air. Dissolved like mist under sunlight.
Gone.
But the weight of it remained—inside my lungs, behind my eyes, in the marrow of my bones.
I didn't even realize I was shaking until I dropped to one knee again.
This wasn't over.
This was a beginning.
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The silence persisted, but it wasn't peaceful. It was suffocating—wrapping itself around me, pressing down on my chest with each ragged breath I took. My hands trembled, and my skin burned where it had touched the grimoire earlier. Not because of the physical wounds, but because of the way it felt to hold it now.
Something had shifted.
The storm in my veins, that chaos, that storm had turned inward and left me grasping for something, anything, to hold onto.
I was no longer just the discarded child of the Witch's Forest.
I wasn't even a person anymore.
I was something else. Something broken, reshaped by powers I didn't understand.
And now… there was this.
The figure that had appeared before me.
I couldn't quite make sense of it. It had been real. It had been there. Yet… it hadn't touched me. It hadn't come for my life. Instead, it had observed, studied me with that hollow, unblinking gaze.
It had come. It had watched. And then it had left.
But what did it want? Why had it allowed me to live?
I didn't know, but the question gnawed at me, twisting inside me like a parasite.
The weight of its presence—how it hung in the air long after it had vanished—was still there. And the smell, that bitter, decaying rose scent, still lingered. It was like I could taste it on the back of my tongue.
'Not yet,' it had whispered, though it hadn't spoken aloud. The words had come from within my head, an eerie whisper that carried more meaning than any spoken words ever could.
Not yet.
What did that mean?
I gripped my hands into fists, the pain of my burns grounding me in reality for a moment. That pain—though muted—was real. And the world was still here, still waiting.
I stood up fully, staggering for a second before I caught myself. I had no direction. No plan. But I knew one thing—I had to find Sister Lily. Whatever the hell had happened, she hadn't just disappeared. Not like that.
There was something wrong here. Something wrong with me. Something beyond the magic.
My feet moved without thinking, pulling me toward the village. Toward the soft rising smoke still lingering in the air. But the moment I took a step forward, I felt it.
A shift.
A presence.
It wasn't the figure from earlier, nor was it the storm in my veins. It was something darker, something that made my blood run cold even before I turned around.
A voice.
Not like before.
Not a whisper. A command.
It didn't call my name, but it was close enough.
I didn't need to hear the words to know what was coming.
The air around me thickened. The ground trembled, just like before, but this time it felt intentional. Like whatever was coming wasn't just watching anymore. It wasn't just here to observe.
It was here to claim.
I spun on my heel, my heart hammering in my chest.
A figure stepped from the shadows—the darkness itself seemed to peel away from it as if it had crawled from the depths of something ancient. The figure was tall, slender—more like a wraith than a person. And this time, it didn't have that mask. No. This thing… it was something even more horrific.
A face, twisted and void of any humanity. It had no eyes, only a cracked mouth, gaping open, like it was waiting to devour everything in sight. The air shifted, dark magic rolling off it in waves, choking the light, making the very space around us feel hollow.
A predator.
I felt the pressure crush my chest.
There was no mistake now. This wasn't a spectator. This wasn't some observer lingering in the shadows.
It was coming for me.
Before I could react, the figure lunged.
I barely managed to twist, my body reacting faster than my mind, but it wasn't enough. A tendril of shadow whipped around my wrist, the grip strong and unyielding. My breath hitched as the darkness squeezed tighter, dragging me off the ground.
"Kael…"
The voice came from somewhere distant—familiar, but warped.
Sister Lily?
No. It couldn't be.
The darkness around me shifted again, and I saw the figure's form distort, as though the very air around it was warping in response to its presence.
I didn't know what it was.
I didn't care.
What I knew was that if I didn't do something, I wouldn't make it out of this alive.
Instinctively, my hand shot out, grabbing the grimoire that hung at my waist. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I didn't have time to think about it. The magic surged inside me, a pulse of wild power that sent shockwaves through the air.
A scream—my scream—ripped from my chest.
Not a battle cry.
Not a plea for mercy.
Just rage.
It exploded from me in a wave of dark violet energy. The tendrils of shadow recoiled for just a second, but it wasn't enough. The figure was stronger. It twisted the shadows around me like a leash, dragging me forward, pulling me toward that gaping mouth, the one that only hunger could fill.
But in that second, I felt it.
A pull. A tug. A scream from the depths of me that answered something inside the void.
And then—
The grimoire flared.
Not with the gentle glow it had once shown in my early days of magic, not with the quiet hum of a tool I could control. No.
This time, it was as if it had come alive, as if it were feeding, hungry for something—something darker.
The air thickened. The weight of the magic crushed down on me, making it harder to breathe, but also sharper. More focused.
I felt the magic inside me stir, rattle like a beast wanting to break free. The energy surged through me—familiar, yet so foreign at the same time. It was like the grimoire was answering my call, taking my rage and fear and turning it into something tangible. The violet light wrapped around me, twisting into tendrils of destructive power.
For a moment, I thought I might tear the very fabric of reality apart with the raw energy, but that's when I heard it—the voice.
Sister Lily.
It wasn't her voice speaking to me, no, it was the thing within her.
"Release it..." The voice was smooth, twisted, like a serpent's hiss. "Release it, Kael. Let it consume you."
My blood ran cold.
It was her—but not her.
That bitter scent—the rotting roses from before—clung to the air, marking her presence. My mind reeled. Had she been... tainted? Corrupted?
The shadowy figure in front of me twisted its form, contorting in ways that no human being should be able to move. Its cracked, gaping mouth opened wider, and I saw it—the face of Sister Lily, warped beyond recognition, smeared with something unholy.
"No!" I shouted, but my voice was swallowed by the roaring energy that pulsed around me.
I stumbled back, the force of the magic overwhelming, trying to contain it, to force it back into the grimoire, but it wasn't willing to go.
The shadow's grip tightened around my wrist, and the beast dragged me closer, its otherworldly presence pushing against my mind, tugging at the very fabric of my being. My skin tingled, a searing sensation as though I were being torn apart from the inside out.
"Kael," it whispered again, the voice of Lily still echoing in my head. "Release yourself. Come to me. You belong to the darkness."
I slammed my free hand onto the ground, grounding myself as best I could, trying to force the dark magic back into its place. I felt something in me snap, a mental barrier breaking, and the full force of the magic exploded outward, creating a shockwave that sent the figure reeling back.
I staggered, my breath coming in gasps, trying to shake off the numbness in my limbs, the burning sensation that crawled under my skin.
Then I saw it.
In the dark, swirling miasma of shadow and violet energy, I saw a figure emerge—a twisted version of Sister Lily. Her face was no longer the serene, kind one I remembered. No, this was a creature of darkness, her skin pale and cracked, her eyes empty and hollow. She had no pupils—only empty voids where her humanity once was.
"You are mine," she whispered, her voice echoing around me. "Kael, you are the final piece."
Something inside me screamed.
I knew this wasn't her. Not truly. This was a husk, a puppet, a shadow of the person she used to be. But the sight of her, the wrongness in her eyes, stirred something deep within me.
I wanted to run. I wanted to fight. But that wasn't the choice I had.
With a roar, I yanked my wrist free from the creature's grip, using the surge of energy coursing through me to break its hold. I threw myself forward, not caring about the consequences anymore.
The shadowy figure reacted instantly, lashing out with its tendrils, trying to strike me down, but I was faster. My hand shot out, and I grabbed hold of the grimoire once more.
The pages turned of their own accord—no longer obeying me, no longer bound to my control. They fluttered as if caught in a wild wind, the ink changing, transforming, writing something new.
The dark magic inside me howled. It felt wrong, but it felt right too.
I could feel the grimoire pulling, dragging me into its depths.
The final piece, it whispered to me, over and over again. Become the darkness. Release it.
I could hear Sister Lily's voice, twisted by the madness, calling my name, and then—the world shattered.
The air crackled, the ground beneath me splitting apart. The shadow figure lunged at me with an unholy speed, its form shifting and distorting into something far worse than before. But I had no choice.
I had to let it go.
The storm inside me broke free.
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To be continued...
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Seeya in next chapter, any doubts, put it in the comments