Chương 10: What Death Couldn’t Break

"I think I just threw up in my mouth." The witch heard me. Her milky eyes shifted in my direction, and her smile widened until rows of crooked brown teeth filled her mouth. The noise crawling from her throat might once have been laughter, assuming laughter could drown in a swamp and return angry about it.

"Pretty thing," she rasped.

"Pretty, pretty thing. But not human. No… not human at all." I shrugged.

"And?" Celeste and Adrian both looked at me. Neither commented… Smart… The witch's grin sharpened. Then black fog erupted throughout the chamber. It poured from cracks in the walls, seeped between the ritual markings, and spilled from the roots, jars, and bones hanging overhead. Within seconds, the underground chamber vanished beneath darkness thick enough to taste. Cold pressure slid across my skin, oily and invasive, like dead fingers searching for a place to dig in.

I glanced at my hand, but the faint tingling in my fingertips was the only effect.

"What was that supposed to be?" I called through the darkness.

"Your opening joke?" Someone gasped behind me. I turned. Adrian had fallen to one knee. Celeste collapsed a heartbeat later, one hand clutching her throat while the wand trembled in her other. Color drained from their faces as though the fog had sunk teeth into their veins and begun feeding. Black lines crept beneath Celeste's skin. Adrian's sword struck the floor with a sharp clang as he reached toward her.

"Celeste."

"I'm fine," she lied. A broken laugh escaped him before collapsing into a cough. Celeste reached for him in return, and their hands found each other through the fog. Even while dying, they reached for one another first. I stared at them. Usually, their constant devotion made me want to gag. They clung to each other as though love might somehow persuade the world not to crush them. This time, it didn't make me sick. It felt strangely awful. The witch cackled from somewhere beyond the darkness.

"Death curse," she sang.

"Breath to rot, blood to ash, and bone to dust. You will all die here, little things. Every last one." Celeste's and Adrian's presences had burned strongly since the moment I met them, but now both were collapsing. Celeste's magic flickered around her like a candle caught in heavy rain, while Adrian's heartbeat slowed with every passing second. No wonder no one had completed this mission. The chamber itself was a trap. The witch didn't need to defeat those who reached her.

She only needed to keep them alive long enough for the curse to devour them. Unfortunately for her, I had become exceedingly difficult to digest. Whatever had happened to me was not immortality in the simplest sense. It was regeneration so relentless that the difference hardly mattered. My body corrected every injury and dragged itself back toward whatever condition it considered proper. Wounds closed, bones repaired themselves, and fire warmed my skin without leaving a mark.

Even death seemed unable to hold on to me for long. Whether that qualified as true immortality could be decided later, preferably somewhere without a rotting witch.

"Helena." Celeste's voice emerged thinly from the fog. I turned toward her.

"Kill the witch," she managed.

"Quickly. It's the only way to break a death curse like this." Adrian tightened his grip around her hand.

"Please… Hurry or she'll die." Celeste looked at him in horror, tears gathering in her eyes as the black veins spread higher along her throat.

"What about you?" He smiled at her.

"With luck, I'll be too handsome for death to keep."

"Idiot."

"Your idiot." I closed my eyes for exactly one second, because even while dying, they remained insufferable. When I opened them again, violet light glimmered across my fingers.

"Fine. Let us kill the ugly thing." When the witch realized her curse had failed to weaken me, her smile only grew crueler. She raised one crooked hand, igniting the ritual circles beneath her in sickly green light as the floor split open. Skeletons clawed their way from the cracks, followed by ghouls with twisted limbs and gray flesh stretched tightly over their bones.

Charms dropped from the ceiling and tore themselves apart, their pieces assembling in midair into shrieking horrors built from mismatched ribs, skulls, and far too many hands. An entire swarm clawed its way into the chamber. How ambitious. The first ghoul sprang toward me. I caught it by the throat and drove it into the floor hard enough to crack the stone. Before its claws could reach my face, I tore its head free and threw the remains into two approaching skeletons. Bones scattered across the chamber.

The second ghoul reached me from the side. My fingers passed across its chest, leaving a trail of violet light behind. Its flesh darkened, collapsed inward, and dissolved before the creature could finish screaming. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. More skeletons crowded around me. Fighting them felt like cutting weeds.

I crushed skulls, shattered ribs, and snapped spines before ruin could crawl through the remains and consume whatever magic attempted to pull them back together. Bone fragments filled the air, clattering across the ritual floor while the witch's laughter echoed through the fog. Behind me, Adrian attempted to rise. His arms buckled. Celeste tried to lift her wand, but her hand shook so violently that the tip struck the floor.

"Stay down," I snapped. Adrian looked prepared to argue until Celeste coughed blood into her palm. He remained beside her. The undead were merely distractions; the witch was the real threat. I tore through the final skeleton blocking my path and rushed her directly. The chamber blurred around me as I crossed the distance, violet ruin wrapping around my hand before I drove it toward her chest. My palm struck an invisible barrier. The impact rang throughout the chamber like an enormous bell.

Sickly green light erupted around the witch, revealing a translucent shield that rippled beneath my strike but refused to break. Numbness shot through my arm to the elbow. The witch giggled.

"Strong little monster," she crooned.

"But strength is meant for doors, not curses." I struck the barrier again, then a third time. Each blow sent green light surging through the shield. Cracks spread beneath my feet, stone splintered outward, and several hanging bone charms shattered from the force. The barrier remained intact, much to my irritation. The witch raised both hands, summoning a ring of violent color around herself before green, pink, yellow, and black bolts shot toward me at once.

I had no idea what any of them did, and I preferred to keep it that way. I twisted aside as the green bolt struck the floor, melting the stone into bubbling sludge. Pink light curved through the air and chased me around a ritual circle with startling determination. Yellow magic struck the wall and unleashed a shriek so sharp that pain stabbed through my skull. The black bolt passed close enough to graze my cheek. My skin prickled, split, and healed before I fully understood what had happened.

No touching the rainbow death lights. Lesson learned. I threw out my hand. Violet ruin collided with green curse craft between us. The explosion shook the chamber. Bones flew from the walls, candles toppled, and three glass jars shattered against the stone. Something wet and many-legged spilled from one of them, twitched twice, and died. I fired again. The witch answered immediately. The chamber vanished beneath a storm of magic. Her spells tore through the air in sickly colors while mine burned violet.

Bolts collided and burst between us, scorching the walls and cracking the floor. Roots snapped loose from the stone. Green candle flames bent sideways beneath the pressure, and the overlapping ritual circles pulsed erratically as if the entire chamber had developed a failing heartbeat. A light show from hell… At the edge of my vision, Adrian dragged himself over Celeste. He covered her with his body while she raised both trembling hands and forced a pale-blue barrier around them.

It flickered with every impact, barely holding as fragments of stone and stray magic hammered against its surface. Something uncomfortable tightened inside my chest, and I recognized it as concern rather than pity. Somehow, that was worse, so I crushed the feeling and focused on the witch. The duel continued, and with every exchange, the ruin became easier to control. My first attacks had been too broad and eager, spilling destruction wherever I aimed them.

Under pressure, I began to understand the magic more clearly: its weight, its direction, and the way it hungered to unravel anything placed against it. There was no better teacher than a battle where failure meant becoming part of the floor decoration. The witch's grin began to falter, and her barrier flickered. Sweat glistened across her sagging green skin, and her hooked nose twitched as fear finally narrowed her milky eyes.

Then I glanced toward Celeste and Adrian and realized their condition had grown far worse. The curse continued eating through them. Their skin had begun cracking, black decay spreading beneath the surface like burned roots. Celeste's breathing came in weak, shallow pulls, while dark blood coated Adrian's lips. They were dying. Meanwhile, every exchange of magic shook the chamber apart around their half-dead bodies. Enough… I raised my hand and gathered the violet ruin above my palm.

This time, I didn't allow it to expand. I forced it inward. Layer after layer of destruction folded over itself, spinning faster as I compressed it into a dense sphere. Violet light deepened until its center appeared almost black. The air warped around the condensed sphere as dust rose from the floor and every candle flame in the chamber bent away from it. The witch stopped laughing, while Celeste snapped her head toward me with widening eyes.

"Helena!" Her voice barely reached me beneath the roar filling my ears.

"That much power could bring down the chamber!" Too late, I had already released it. Screaming, the witch poured more power into her shield and ignited every ritual circle beneath her. Fractures raced across the green surface until it finally gave way, allowing my ruin to tear through her right side. Violet light swallowed the chamber. Stone split under my feet as the floor bucked violently, throwing me backward while bone charms disintegrated overhead and roots ripped free from the walls.

Across the room, Celeste's barrier flashed once before shattering, leaving Adrian to shield her with the last of his strength as debris rained around them. Then the light vanished. Silence crashed down in its place. The witch remained standing… somehow. Half her body was gone. Her right arm, shoulder, ribs, and most of her side had vanished, leaving a smoking ruin behind. What remained leaned at an impossible angle, its green flesh blackened wherever my power had eaten through her.

She looked down at the missing half of herself. Her milky eyes lifted toward me as a soft, wet laugh escaped her lips twice before she finally collapsed. The instant her body struck the floor, the black fog disappeared. The death curse snapped apart with the sensation of a thread pulled too tightly. For one foolish moment, I believed Celeste and Adrian were safe. Then I looked at them. Their skin was no longer gray, but the damage remained. The curse had broken only after consuming too much.

Dark veins still twisted beneath their skin. Flesh had thinned close to the bone, and each breath sounded weak, wet, and further away than the last. Adrian lay beside Celeste with one arm wrapped around her. She had turned toward him. They held each other with whatever little strength remained. Adrian lifted a trembling hand and brushed his fingers against her cheek.

"Find me," he whispered. Celeste's lips quivered.

"In the next life?"

"Every life." She attempted to smile, but the expression broke halfway.

"You were always dramatic."

"Only for you." I stood over them, bloodied and coated in dust as the last violet sparks faded from my skin. I tried to call what I felt annoyance, then discomfort, pity, or anger, but none of those words fit. What I could not understand was the sharp ache beneath my ribs when Celeste pressed her forehead to Adrian's and began to cry. They were both dying. Yet neither seemed afraid for themselves. That was the part I couldn't understand.

Adrian tried to comfort Celeste even as his own body failed, while she whispered apologies for a curse that had never been her fault. Neither begged me to save them or asked what waited beyond death. They only held each other tighter, already promising to meet again as though the universe had ever honored such things. Idiots… Beautiful, impossible idiots… Then instinct surged from somewhere deeper than hunger, carrying a certainty that left no room for doubt.

It was a pull, recognition, an answer written into my blood before I even understood the question. I stared down at them. Children. My body went still at the thought. Why would I think of them that way? The word should have felt absurd, yet the longer I stared at them, the more undeniable it became. It returned with greater force, settling into place as though it had always belonged there. My fingers curled. Somehow, it made perfect sense.

Adrian was far too composed; Celeste was painfully talkative, and both possessed an intolerable talent for making death look romantic. But together, they were something I had never known. A bond that remained intact beneath fear and a love that didn't become selfish at the edge of death. Two people willing to spend their final breaths comforting each other rather than mourning themselves. Something inside me reached for them with a need that had nothing to do with hunger.

It wanted to pull them back from death, hold them close, preserve what they had found in each other, and make certain nothing could ever take them from me.

"What am I thinking?" I whispered. Adrian's barely open eyes shifted toward me. Celeste's followed. Then the knowledge surfaced, cold and undeniable. I knew how to save them. No one had taught me. No book had explained it, and no convenient vampire mentor had stepped from the shadows to provide instructions. The answer had simply been waiting inside my blood for the moment I finally needed it. I could turn them. A bite alone would not be enough.

Saving them required more than venom; it demanded my blood and a deliberate act of will. They would no longer be human, and I had no idea whether they would thank me for that or wake as monsters cursing the woman who had stolen their deaths. My gaze fell to their joined hands and fading faces. Adrian tried to speak, but no sound came, while Celeste's fingers tightened weakly around his. For once, I did not know what I wanted. Then Adrian forced two broken words past his lips.

"Save… her." Panic widened Celeste's eyes.

"No. Save him." I stared at them, because of course those would be their final words. Even at the edge of death, each cared more about the other. Something inside me cracked open. I hated them for it. And I envied them even more. I wanted to know whether eternity could break what death had failed to touch. So I knelt between them and made my choice.

"Both of you," I ordered, my voice low and unfamiliar even to me.

"Stop being dramatic and listen."