The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss-Chapter 144 - 145: Number 9

Deep in the forest, somewhere between death and disgrace, Kury carried Denish on her shoulder like a broken flag—torn, bloodied, but still somehow standing. The canopy above them blurred with each blink. She could barely keep her eyes open, and when they did stay open, everything swam. Her ribs screamed with every breath. Her leg barely responded. Her armor—once shining with the proud mark of Berkimhum—was cracked open, stained with a dozen lives’ worth of blood, not all of it hers.

Behind them, a noble—Baron Tevrin—cradled his severed hand like it was a newborn child, blood soaking his fine silks. His lips trembled, not from pain but the sheer absurdity of survival. His eyes were wide, too wide, staring at the trail behind them like the ghosts would catch up if he blinked too hard.

"We... we lost," he stammered, his voice thin as smoke. "We’re gonna lose... It’s over... it’s fucking over..."

The words echoed like an execution bell in the woods, bouncing off tree trunks, slicing through the silence left by the fallen.

Denish stirred slightly against her. "He’s not wrong," he rasped. His voice was shredded—raw, like bark peeled from the trunk. "We’re fucked. We’re so fucked."

Kury didn’t answer. Her mouth was too full of blood and grit. Her focus narrowed to the next step. Just one more. Just get over this root. Just stay upright.

Denish tried to shift his weight off her, but it was laughable. One of his legs dragged like dead meat. His right shoulder was shredded down to the bone. Still, even broken, the old general’s pride crackled through. He coughed blood into the leaves but kept his gaze fixed forward.

"If... if Princess Lara was here..." he mumbled, pain lacing every word. "She would’ve held the skies down. She would’ve stopped it."

Kury winced at that. Not from pain. From truth.

Because Denish was right. Lara had pulled off the impossible before—had carved victories out of the jaws of annihilation with nothing but willpower and those violet eyes. She was fire on the battlefield. Divine. Strategic. Unrelenting. And Kury... Kury was just a soldier with a famous father and a kingdom to prove herself to.

Denish groaned again. "But instead, they got me," he muttered bitterly. "A commoner. A meat shield with medals."

That one stung too. Even if he didn’t mean it to. Even if his voice was too cracked to carry the venom.

Kury grit her teeth and kept walking. She had no energy left for pride. No words left for hope.

But she carried him anyway.

Because that was what warriors did.

Even when the world turned to ash.

Even when her muscles screamed traitor with every breath.

Even when her armor felt like it weighed a thousand sins.

A sharp root caught her foot, and she nearly collapsed—but didn’t. Her knee buckled, and her body screamed, but she locked it in place with sheer fury.

She was more injured than Denish. She knew that. Her right leg had torn during the retreat—if you could even call it that. Her left rib had caved from the last explosion. Her ears were ringing. Her senses were half-dead. Her sword had cracked down the middle. She hadn’t even told Denish she couldn’t hear out of her right ear anymore.

But she was the one still standing.

She was the one who had to.

Because everyone else was ash.

And because if she fell, Denish would fall too.

And then there would be no one left.

Just the noble behind them, crying over his hand, still muttering nonsense like a man who had lost too much and couldn’t afford to admit it.

Kury didn’t blame him. She had looked back once too. Just once. Hoping, praying, hallucinating that some of them had followed. That maybe a few soldiers had broken through the rain of fire.

But there was no one.

Just trees.

And silence.

And the smell of charred flesh that hadn’t left her nose since the first explosion.

She tasted iron in her mouth and kept going.

Because that’s what her father had taught her.

"Be the mountain. Not the river. Rivers bleed. Mountains stand tall."

So she stood.

Even as her bones begged her to collapse.

Even as her soul clawed against the truth that maybe—just maybe—there was no help coming.

That maybe Berkimhum had lost its best.

That maybe they had walked into a trap disguised as a war.

And yet...

She kept walking.

Because if she didn’t...

No one would.

"Wait... I hear something," Denish rasped, his voice barely louder than the wind slithering through the leaves.

Everyone stopped. Breath halted. Even the forest seemed to freeze in place.

Kury shifted her grip, muscles aching as she carefully eased Denish off her shoulder. The Baron—his face smeared with grime and dried blood, one arm missing—moved forward to support him without protest. His fingers trembled, not just from pain, but from the haunting truth of what they’d just lived through. What they’d survived. Barely.

"Where?" she asked, her voice hoarse.

"There..." Denish whispered, eyes glowing faintly with mana—his Survey skill flaring to life. It lit up his pupils like twin lanterns, unnatural in the daylight.

Kury followed his gaze through a tangled wall of vines and charred underbrush. Her instincts screamed. This wasn’t over. It never was.

Still, her boots pressed forward. Every step a silent prayer, every breath a shallow drag through pain-ripped lungs. She unsheathed her blade as the shape in the distance took form—hunched, human... female.

A mage.

One arm gone. The other barely holding her upright against a tree, crimson leaking from her side like a slit wineskin. She was waving with urgency, her lips moving—but no sound came out.

Kury’s heart surged with fragile hope. A mage meant communication. Communication meant rescue. Or at least, warning.

Denish saw her too, a flicker of desperation flaring in his bloodshot eyes. "Finally... we can get a signal out. We can tell them what happened."

Even the Baron moved forward without complaint, as if salvation dangled just ahead.

"Hurry, send the coordinates!" Kury shouted.

But the mage didn’t move. Not the way she should have. Her hand twitched—strange, jerky, like a marionette with tangled strings. Her mouth opened wider, shaping words, but—

No voice.

No tongue.

Kury’s heart dropped into her gut.

"...Your tongue..." she muttered, eyes wide, pupils constricting as she took a half-step forward—and then three steps back.

She hadn’t even finished the thought.

"It’s a trap!" she screamed, yanking her sword to full guard—

But it was too late.

The sound came not from the mage—but behind her.

A clean, mechanical hiss.

Then—

SHLKT!

A blade passed clean through the mage’s head. From one ear to the other, straight across the bridge of her nose. There wasn’t even time for her to flinch.

One half of her skull slid off with an awful wet sound—then hit the earth with a dull splat.

Blood sprayed.

Then a voice, cool and casual, from the woods beyond.

"...Told you someone would take the bait."

The figure emerged like a ghost pulling itself from the shadows.

Leather armor, dyed black with a red-stitched imperial crest. But it was the number etched into his shoulder plate that made the Baron scream.

No, not scream.

Crack.

Because something inside him broke.

"Holy... fucking... fuck..." the Baron stammered, stumbling back, mouth dry, eyes too wide. "No... no, no, no—he’s a Prime. A goddamn Prime!" He mumbled, gazing at number ’9’.

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