A Luna for Alpha Kieran-Chapter 288: Have always loved you

(... continued)

As the world around split itself open the storm screamed louder.

The shrine buckled.

The light bled.

And then...

The creature howled at the loss. At the loss of Freya.

It wasn’t a sound of rage alone. It was grief.

It was something too grotesquely primal.

The sound rippled through every crack in the void.

Her back arched. Her head snapped towards the storm where Freya’s tiny body spun away, vanishing into the collapsing rift.

" Grrrrrr..."

It wasn’t a voice. It was a shiver of sound, a vibration that made the chains around her neck dissolve into ash.

Velor staggered backward, eyes wide, unblinking at Niva. "Stay back...! Don’t..."

The creature was listening to nothing.

Her form convulsed. The slick red sheen of her flesh shimmered, shifted. Veins writhed across her arms like serpents alive beneath her skin. Her ribs cracked open in jagged lines of a similar glow that Autumn and her children displayed...but different.

She screamed again, and the glow bled through her, until it looked as though she were on fire from the inside out.

She lunged forward.

Her body lengthened, spine stretching like molten glass, joints twisting, the shape of her head elongating into something feral.

The creature’s claws struck the ground, splintering it into red shards. She looked up at Velor...eyes molten with betrayal.

And then she turned back towards the storm.

Freya’s light...faint now, dwindling...flickered once more in the distance.

That was all it took.

The creature’s scream broke into a sob...a desperate, broken gasp...before she sprang.

Her body moved like shadow and lightning combined, every muscle coiling, every torn limb surging towards the vanishing light of the child. The portal yawned before her, edges flickering with fractured reality.

Her claws reached forward...mere inches now from the portal’s burning edge...when...

Niva moved.

She moved like the the breath of death...silent.

Her body was a blur, her expression calm, resolute...not anger, neither fear... acceptance.

In a single step, she placed herself between the creature and the storm.

"Enough," Niva yelled." You are not going after Freya! This ends now. "

The creature’s claws struck her chest.

The impact was thunder.

Niva’s body jerked violently, blood bursting from her lips in a violent arc. Her eyes flickered...once, twice...but she didn’t step back.

The creature froze mid lunge, trembling, her claws buried through Niva’s chest. For a suspended, endless moment ... neither moved.

The creature let out a sound...a soft, broken mewl, like a wounded animal...her hands shaking as if she wanted to pull back but couldn’t.

Niva smiled.

Even through the pain, through the light flickering in her eyes, she smiled...gentle, radiant, almost motherly.

She glanced once over her shoulder...towards the shrinking portal...and her gaze softened.

"Go, little star..." she murmured. "Find your mother."

And with that, the portal snapped shut.

The light vanished.

The rift sealed.

The storm went silent... only for a few minutes...

The creature’s claws slipped free.

She staggered back, shaking, staring down at her own blood slick hands...at Niva’s blood mixed with her own... confusion flickering like a dying flame in her molten eyes.

Velor finally found his voice. "No... Niva..."

Niva fell to her knees, her breathing slow, shallow. Her light dimmed by the second, every flicker a heartbeat fading.

But her smile didn’t fade.

It only widened...soft, serene...as she lifted her gaze towards the skyless void above... and that’s when the storm started lashing back again.

Her body crumpled forward.

Velor screamed as he lunged forward to catch her.

The creature beside him whimpered, shrinking back into the miasma, trembling as if she too understood what she had done.

The crimson light of the shrine flickered once... twice... then died.

The air ruptured... and the storm intensified.

Karl spared the scenario one last glance, mutterer something like... "pathetic" and "waste of time"... and then with a whoosh, he was gone.

From the middle of the screaming storm, Velor’s howl cut through like a blade of grief.

"Noooooooo!"

Niva’s head lolled against his chest. Her mouth trembled as she saw him grief.

Velor fell to his knees, clutching her tighter.

His breath hitched.

The trembling of the collapsing world around them seemed to pulse in his chest but it somehow felt very irrelevant.

"Niva... no... no, no, no, no!What the fuck have you done?!!" His voice broke like glass. He shook her shoulders, desperate, shaking as though sheer will could force her heart to beat again. "Why...why would you do that?! You did you..."

His words dissolved into sobs.

Real sobs.

The kind that tore through the armor of his reputation.

"Niva...how did you find me here...I thought u left me...," he whispered again, smaller this time, like the question wasn’t for her, but for the world.

Niva’s eyes fluttered, barely open now.

Her breathing was negligible...quivering breaths that rattled in her throat. Yet... she smiled. A small, weary smile that softened every jagged edge around them.

Her trembling hands rose...one, then the other...and cupped his face. Her fingertips were slick with blood, yet the gesture was tender, reverent.

"Because..." she breathed, voice a fragile thread. "I love you."

Velor froze.

Every storm, every sound in the void, dimmed for that one heartbeat.

Her lips trembled again, trying to form words through the pain. "Always have..." she whispered. "I had to save your soul, Velor... I had to..."

Her touch lingered.

For a second, the red light softened around them.

For a second... it looked like dawn.

And then...her hands slipped. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

They fell, lifeless, to her sides.

Velor didn’t breathe. He couldn’t. His eyes went glassy, wide and hollow all at once.

"No..."

The word was barely a sound. Just breath.

He pressed his forehead to hers, holding her close, trembling uncontrollably.

All around them...the creature screamed.

The sound was monstrous now.

Its body convulsed, twisting as the loss of Freya’s light ripped through it. It clawed at the ground, at the air, tearing apart the shrine stones, raking through the crimson fog in maddened hunger... as if trying to look for something underground...trying to unearth something.

The red light exploded in waves around it. Each pulse shattered another piece of reality.

Velor didn’t look up.

He sat there, unmoving, Niva’s blood painting his chest. His tears streaked his face silently.

The creature howled again behind him.

It lunged blindly, rending through the collapsing altar, shattering runes.

The sound was unbearable...the screech of something that had been born from pain and now it was as if drowning in it.

The storm roared, howled...lightning of red and black slashed across the void.

Velor never looked up anymore.

He stayed there, in the middle of a dying world, his arms wrapped around Niva’s still body.

The creature shrieked one last time, a sound that shook the remnants of the void, and then its form started disintegrating...into light...into smoke...into darkness...leaving only echoes behind.

The shrine collapsed inward...like the air collapsing into itself like a dying star.

Everything blurred...stone, blood, storm...

and in the middle of it all, Velor rocked Niva in his arms.

The world tore itself apart.

But Velor didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t blink.

He just held her.

Until there was nothing left to hold on to.

Only silence.