Chương 54: When Ruin Was Not Enough

Sleep had been coming too easily lately. That alone should have unsettled me. For three hundred years, I had never truly needed it. Sleep was a convenience, something I allowed when boredom became unbearable, when I had pushed myself too far, or when the rare stretch of peace made remaining awake feel pointless. Lately, however, my body seemed far more willing to surrender to it. Perhaps it was everything that had happened over the past few months. Akane certainly did not help.

She had wrapped herself around me, tucked her face against my neck, and settled in with the absolute confidence of someone who had already decided neither of us would be moving again until morning. Several of her tails curled possessively around my waist and legs, while another lay loosely across one of my wrists. Even asleep, Akane held me as though I might vanish the instant she loosened her grip.

I told myself I would remain awake, but somewhere between that thought and my next breath, the bedroom vanished, replaced by searing heat and the unmistakable taste of blood. I stood beneath a crimson sky, smoke clawing at my lungs while the earth trembled beneath my boots. Power surged violently through my veins, vast and furious, accompanied by the distant roar of an army so immense that the sound itself seemed to shake the air. For a moment, I assumed it was only another dream until my body moved on its own.

My fingers flexed, my head turned toward movement in the distance, and even my breathing changed without my consent. I felt every motion as though I had chosen it myself, yet I had no control over any of them. That was when unease finally took hold. I was not seeing through someone else's eyes, nor inhabiting some unfamiliar body. These were my hands, my power, my instincts. I was Helena Vaust.

But the Helena moving through this battlefield was living a life I had no memory of, and I could do nothing except follow along. The battlefield stretched beneath the red sky in every direction, crowded with demons beyond any reasonable attempt at counting. They advanced through fire and broken stone in black and crimson waves, climbing over bodies that had fallen moments before. Winged creatures circled overhead while immense silhouettes moved behind the swarm.

The world looked as though it had already ended and continued fighting purely out of spite, yet somehow I was smiling with Akane standing beside me. All nine tails burned with gold-white foxfire, their flames whipping through the air while magic gathered around her hands. Her golden eyes shone brighter than the fires consuming the horizon. She looked toward the approaching army and then at me as though the apocalypse were a private joke between us.

"Hela, try not to fall behind." Warmth flooded my chest so suddenly that it almost hurt, carrying with it a certainty I was far less prepared for. It was love. There was no hesitation in it. My feelings were so certain that I couldn't even imagine having any other thoughts. Instead, it felt natural. A smile touched my lips before I could stop it, one I had never chosen and yet somehow recognized as my own.

"I was about to tell you the same thing." Akane's ears twitched.

"Kill count?" A laugh escaped me. An army capable of swallowing nations stood before us, and apparently we were making a game of it.

"Winner gets whatever she wants tonight," Akane offered.

"Careful. I want many things." I laughed. Her smile turned wicked.

"deal." Then we moved. The battlefield became ours. Primordial Ruin swept across the ground in violent violet waves, erasing demons before their bodies had time to fall. Akane's foxfire followed beside it, gold and white twisting through the destruction until the sky flashed with our combined power. I shattered armor with my bare hands while Akane burned entire formations into pillars of light, her tails sweeping enemies away from my blind side as violet destruction erased anything reckless enough to threaten hers.

Neither of us gave a single command. Every movement was made with absolute certainty that the other would already be where she needed to be.

"Thirty-two!" Akane called from somewhere beside me.

"Forty."

"You liar."

"You proposed the contest." I smirked.

"You destroyed half a hill."

"That's called efficiency."

"That's called flirting badly." I laughed again. Beneath that laughter was absolute trust, the certainty that nothing on the battlefield could truly threaten us while we fought together. That certainty was our mistake. A ritual engine suddenly pulsed to life along the right side of the battlefield, feeding streams of black energy into an enormous portal frame. At nearly the same moment, a massive behemoth smashed through our allied forces to the left, crushing soldiers and war machines beneath its armored body.

Akane's attention shifted toward the ritual engine while mine settled on the behemoth, and in that moment, separating seemed like the obvious choice. We could destroy both faster that way.

"I will take the engine."

"Then I will deal with the ugly one." Akane glanced toward the creature.

"They're all ugly."

"This one has committed to it." Her laughter followed her as she launched toward the ritual engine in a streak of foxfire. I charged the behemoth, and for the next several minutes, nothing felt wrong. Akane and I had drifted apart, but not enough to matter. I could still hear her voice cutting through the battlefield whenever another enemy fell.

"Seventy!" Akane called from somewhere to my left, far too pleased with herself. I tore the head from the creature in front of me and glanced in her direction.

"Eighty-one." There was a beat of offended silence.

"Cheater!"

"Troublesome fox."

"Beautiful Vampire!" Despite myself, I laughed and turned back to the behemoth. It proved tougher than I had expected. Black armor had fused into its flesh, and magic from the surrounding spires pulsed through swollen veins, knitting torn muscle and shattered bone back together almost as quickly as I could destroy them. I drove Primordial Ruin straight through its chest and unleashed the power from within. Violet light burst through the seams in its armor.

The creature convulsed once before collapsing with enough force to shake the battlefield beneath my feet. For one brief, glorious moment, I felt untouchable until I turned to find Akane and realized she was far farther away than she should have been. My smile disappeared as I stared across the battlefield, unable to remember when I had allowed so much distance to grow between us. Demons packed the space, dozens becoming hundreds the longer I looked. They had not formed some deliberate wall to separate us.

There were simply too many. The gap had become a living sea of bodies. Every time Akane burned through one formation, another rushed forward before she could advance. When I destroyed a cluster on my side, fresh demons poured into the opening before the ashes settled. At first, I assumed they were simply trying to overwhelm us separately, but the longer I watched, the clearer their intent became. They were not trying to kill us quickly but trying to keep us apart. Alarm tightened in my chest, and I drove forward.

Primordial Ruin carved a violet trench through the battlefield, erasing hundreds of demons in a single sweep, but the opening lasted less than a heartbeat before more bodies poured across the scorched ground to fill it. I pushed harder. That was when their behavior changed. Winged creatures attacked from above, forcing me sideways. Armored beasts pressed from the front while smaller demons swarmed my flanks. Every assault pushed me farther from the path I wanted. They were herding me.

Claws tore through my sleeves and opened my arms. A blade struck my back, followed by teeth sinking into my shoulder. My body repaired the wounds almost immediately. The pain lasted long enough for the next attack to find me. A spear pierced my thigh. I snapped the shaft and kept moving. Something winged crashed into me from above. I caught it by the throat, crushed its skull, and hurled the corpse through several demons ahead. A spell struck my ribs with freezing force and numbed half my side.

I destroyed the caster, but another stepped into its place before the body had even fallen. Akane's foxfire still burned in the distance, but she was farther away now. Farther than she should have been. That frightened me more than anything surrounding me. I unleashed another wave of Primordial Ruin. Violet destruction tore across the battlefield, swallowing the ground and everything standing on it. For one brief opening, the swarm parted enough for me to see her clearly.

Akane's golden eyes found mine across the distance. The laughter was gone. In that instant, we both understood. We had treated the battle like a game, confident enough in our strength to believe nothing could truly threaten us. The enemy had waited for exactly that moment, letting us separate before flooding the space between us with bodies. Then the battlefield closed around us. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Akane!" My voice disappeared beneath the roar of battle. I carved another path toward Akane, Primordial Ruin tearing through everything between us, but the opening vanished almost as quickly as I created it. Fresh demons flooded into the gap before the last bodies had even fallen. I destroyed them, only for more to surge into the space they left behind. That was when the truth struck with terrifying clarity. My power was immense, but even I had limits. I was burning through too much of it too quickly.

Every attack erased hundreds, yet none of that destruction brought me any closer to Akane. The enemy simply poured into every space I created, as though the Demon Continent itself were bleeding monsters from the scorched earth. My breathing grew ragged. Tremors spread through my arms, and blood coated one side of my face until I could no longer tell how much of it was mine. Still, I forced my way forward, refusing to let the battlefield keep Akane from me. Then a chain snapped around my wrist.

I shattered it immediately, only for three more to coil around my arm. Two broke beneath my strength. The third held for a fraction of a second longer, and that was enough for a demon to drive a blade deep into my side. Its throat gave way beneath my teeth, but there was no time to recover. More chains lashed toward me as fresh bodies surged in from every side. They crushed inward from every direction, no longer caring whether they survived.

Their lives had become currency, spent one after another to steal seconds from me. Every demon existed only to slow me down, exhaust my power, and keep Akane beyond my reach. Then my back slammed into stone, and I twisted just enough to see the shattered remains of a wall behind me. They had maneuvered me into a corner, cutting away every path until there was nowhere left to go. Fear settled over me with brutal clarity. Not caution, not uncertainty, but something colder and far more intimate.

A suffocating weight that sank beneath flesh and bone made one truth impossible to ignore. I could die here. It settled into my bones with a weight even my healing could not touch, stripping away every trace of arrogance until only one thought remained. I refused to die here. For three hundred years, I had survived things that should have killed me. Somewhere along the way, death had become an inconvenience I associated with weaker creatures, something that happened to other people while I continued walking.

Cornered beneath that blood-red sky, I finally understood just how desperately I wanted to live. Ravenport… Vaust Royale... My children… Every infuriating, precious part of the life I had built. I wanted the ordinary chaos of home again. Aura complaining because I had forbidden her from burning something, Celeste inventing another excuse to invade my privacy, Adrian appearing with a report I had never asked for, and Malcolm and Vera being far too affectionate when they thought no one was watching.

I wanted to see Nadia and Rowan again, safe and alive, somewhere far from this battlefield. Yet nothing hurt more than knowing Akane was somewhere beyond that endless wall of bodies. My troublesome fox should have been beside me, close enough that I could hear her laugh, reach for her hand, and know she was safe. Instead, an army stood between us. I longed for the sound of her laughter, the warmth of her tails around me, and even that infuriating confidence she carried into everything.

More than anything, I wanted to hear her call me Hela again, with the effortless familiarity that made the name feel as though it had always belonged between us. That longing burned hotter than the magic in my veins. I forced myself upright, only for the demons to drag me down again. The distance between Akane and me had become unbearable. I could feel how desperately I wanted her beside me, but love was useless against a battlefield determined to keep us apart.

It could not replenish the power I had spent, tear open a lasting path through the swarm, or bring her back within reach. No matter how much I destroyed, the army kept closing in. No matter how hard I fought, I remained trapped. Exhaustion sank deeper into my body, and with it came a thought I refused to acknowledge. I might not reach her. Before that fear could settle any further, the battlefield changed. One moment, the world was consumed by screams, clashing steel, magic, and death…

the next, everything fell silent as every demon froze in place, lowered their weapons, and bowed their heads. The deafening roar of war disappeared until all I could hear was my own ragged breathing and the distant crackle of Akane's foxfire somewhere beyond the swarm. Every demon within my line of sight began to part. They moved with slow, deliberate obedience, lowering themselves as a path opened through their ranks. Something was coming. At first, its size seemed almost underwhelming.

Fifteen, perhaps twenty feet tall, it was dwarfed by several of the monstrosities already roaming the battlefield. Then it took another step, and the air itself seemed to recoil around it. That was when I understood. It had never needed size to inspire terror. Its presence alone was enough to make the battlefield feel smaller. The creature seemed carved from the absence of light itself, a shape so black that the burning world around it appeared dimmer simply because it existed.

There was no face, no mouth, nothing even resembling an expression. Only two crimson eyes burned within the darkness, while horns rose from its head like the shattered remains of a crown. With every step it took, the air around me seemed to thin, and something deep within my body reacted before I could understand why. Something in my power recoiled before I consciously understood the danger. Primordial Ruin did not weaken. It resisted.

The force within me seemed to recognize the creature on a level deeper than instinct, reacting to its very existence as though the dark god violated something fundamental. The demons bowed even lower as the creature stopped several paces away. The dark god looked down at me without a mouth, without an expression, and yet I felt its smile with absolute certainty. Its voice never reached my ears.

It passed through flesh and bone instead, sinking directly into me until the words settled somewhere beneath thought itself. Little ruin… My breath caught. The words had no sound, yet they filled me more completely than any voice could have. I wondered which of you would break first. The fox burns loudly, but you... His crimson eyes brightened. You taste like a soul that refuses its cage. A tremor passed through my hands as I tried to raise them, but the chains cinched tighter around my arms.

I will devour you slowly. I will wear your power within my darkness, and when she comes for what remains of you, I will let her hear you scream from inside me. Helplessness settled over me like a weight I could not fight. I remained trapped on my knees with blood running down my face and barely enough magic flickering between my fingers to illuminate them. I hated the demons, the chains, the helplessness, and most of all the fact that I could not reach her. Then, through the chaos, her voice finally found me.

"Helena!" The dark god lifted one clawed hand. Its shadow fell over me. My body shot upright, tearing free from several of Akane's tails as I scrambled away from something that was no longer there. Sweat covered my face. My hands shook so violently that I could barely close them. For several seconds, I did not recognize the room. Ravenport's violet lights filtered peacefully through the curtains while my heart hammered hard enough to hurt. I pressed one hand against my chest as though I could force it to slow.

Akane woke instantly.

"Hela?" I flinched. She saw it. The sleep disappeared from her expression immediately.

"Helena." Her voice became so incredibly tender.

"What happened?" I tried to answer, but nothing came. That frightened me almost as much as what I had seen. I could threaten kings without raising my voice and command rooms full of armed officials with enough authority to make them grateful when I allowed them to leave. Yet now, sitting in my bed, I could not force a single word past my throat. Instead of reaching for me immediately, she drew her tails back and gave me space even though every part of her expression made it obvious she wanted to come closer.

"Breathe." Her voice felt soothing, compared to what I just went through.

"I'm trying."

"Try harder." I attempted to glare at her, though the expression carried little of its usual authority. Still, I drew in a slow breath, then another. The room began to return through familiar details: clean sheets beneath me, cool night air against my skin, and Akane's scent close enough to anchor me. No ash, blood, or burning flesh. My hands continued to tremble despite the reassurance. Akane lifted one hand toward me, and then stopped before making contact.

"Can I?" That simple question nearly broke what little composure I had left. She wanted to hold me, and even now, she still waited for permission. I managed a small nod. Akane gathered me into her arms. She didn't smother me beneath her tails or pull me so tightly that I felt trapped. She simply held me with careful strength, giving me enough warmth to feel protected without taking away the space I needed. Her hand moved slowly through my hair.

"I'm here," she murmured.

"You're in Ravenport with me." My fingers tightened around the fabric of her clothes, grounding me in the warmth beneath them.

"I saw something." A few words finally flowed off my tongue.

"A dream?"

"I don't know." My voice came out rougher than I intended.

"It may have been, but it didn't feel like one." Akane remained silent, giving me the space to continue.

"I was on the battlefield from the other timeline or somewhere close enough that I could not tell the difference." At that, her entire body went still.

"I could feel everything. Heat, wounds, magic. I was inside my own body, but I could not control it. I experienced everything she did without being able to change any of it." Akane studied my face.

"Do you think the shard showed you?"

"Possibly." I pressed a hand over the faint warmth beneath my ribs.

"I cannot tell whether the shard showed me something real, whether my mind pieced it together from everything you and the children have told me, or whether it came from somewhere else entirely." The uncertainty was what made it tough to handle.

"Whatever it was, my body still expects those chains to be around me." Akane's arms tightened slightly.

"What happened?" For a moment, the woman holding me overlapped with the one I had seen beneath that red sky.

"We were fighting together. Laughing, counting kills, and for some reason flirting in the middle of an army." Akane closed her eyes briefly.

"We were far too confident in our own strength. When a ritual engine appeared on one side of the battlefield and a behemoth broke through on the other, we split up without hesitation, convinced we could deal with both faster that way." Her hand stopped moving through my hair.

"Only for a moment."

"Yes." Akane answered as if expecting me to say that.

"The demons immediately filled the space between us. Every time I opened a path, more replaced them. They were not trying to kill us quickly. They wanted to keep us separated." Akane's jaw tightened.

"I kept trying to reach you, but they pushed me sideways until they trapped me against a broken wall. I killed hundreds, perhaps thousands. It did not matter because there were always more." My hands started shaking again. Akane placed one of hers over them.

"I exhausted my magic. My body kept healing, but I could not clear enough space to escape." The bedroom suddenly felt smaller.

"I was afraid." Pain crossed Akane's face.

"I knew I was going to die, and I did not want to." My voice emerged much quieter than I intended.

"I wanted my family, Ravenport… everything I had built." Then I met her eyes.

"I wanted you." A wounded sound escaped Akane before she pulled me closer.

"I only wanted to reach you again."

"I know." The pain behind those two words silenced me, because Akane truly did understand. Whatever the truth behind what I had experienced, she carried the memory of losing Helena once already. I forced myself to continue…

"Then every demon stopped." Akane's breathing changed.

"They bowed and opened a path. Something came through them." Her entire body went rigid.

"It was perhaps fifteen or twenty feet tall. Pitch black with no face. Only crimson eyes and horns shaped like a broken crown." Akane's tails shifted around us.

"It looked at me as though I had already belonged to it." Her voice dropped almost to a whisper.

"Did it speak?"

"Yes."

"What did it say?" I closed my eyes. The words returned far too easily.

"Little ruin." Akane trembled.

"It said it wondered which of us would break first. It called you the fox who burns loudly, then told me I tasted like a soul that refused its cage." Akane's gaze dropped as if in deep contemplation about something.

"It threatened to devour me slowly and wear my power inside its darkness." I swallowed.

"Then it said that when you came for whatever remained of me, it would let you hear me screaming from inside it." Gold flared through Akane's eyes even as tears gathered within them, fury and grief twisting across her face so completely that neither could hide the other.

"That was when I woke." For a while, neither of us spoke. The bedroom felt too small for everything I had brought back with me. Akane eventually cupped my face, wiping away tears I had not realized were there.

"You are here; that creature is not."

"It will be," I couldn't help mumbling out.

"Yes." Her expression hardened.

"Then we kill it." She spoke with certainty.

"I was helpless."

"You were trapped."

"That distinction offers very little comfort."

"It should offer some." Akane rested her forehead lightly against mine.

"Being overwhelmed doesn't make you weak."

"I could not reach you."

"This time, you will not have to." Her words pulled my attention back to her.

"We know what happened," she said, her voice steadier now.

"Whatever that memory truly was, we understand the mistake. We will not enter the Demon Continent believing our power makes us untouchable." Akane's hand settled against the back of my neck as her gaze held mine.

"Aura and Celeste will be with us. Adrian, Vera, Malcolm, Nadia, and Rowan are preparing everything behind us. We have routes, signals, contingencies, and people who already understand what's coming." Her voice trembled slightly, but her gaze remained steady.

"We decide where we stand. The enemy does not." I closed my eyes, but the fear remained.

"I'm still angry."

"At me?"

"At how helpless I felt." It was something I never wanted to experience.

"That seems reasonable." A faint smile threatened before I pressed my hand over the shard within my body.

"You're still hiding things from me." My eyes fell on here. Akane fell silent.

"I'm not asking tonight," I told her.

"Mostly because I'm beginning to think you understand what's going on with me." The hesitation in her expression was answer enough.

"Whatever this shard is doing, these experiences are becoming too vivid to dismiss. I cannot tell whether I'm witnessing another life, fragments preserved inside it, or memories my mind is constructing from everything I have learned."

"But you believe there is something behind them," Akane asked carefully.

"Yes." There was no doubt in my mind. I rested against her again, allowing the last of the trembling to fade.

"And none of this changes our departure." Even though I had true fear of that place now, I knew it was what I had to do. Akane's hand paused in my hair.

"Hela."

"They could not overpower us, so they separated us and wore us down instead." Akane's expression hardened.

"We made their strategy possible because we became careless. A ritual engine appeared in one direction, a behemoth in another, and we reacted exactly as they wanted." I took her hand and pressed it against my chest, over the shard and the heartbeat beneath it.

"So we do not make that mistake again. Whatever they place in front of us, we remember what they're actually trying to accomplish." Her fingers curled against me.

"Agreed."

"Even if Celeste begins screaming about something ridiculous." A small laugh escaped her.

"Especially then." This time, I managed a smile. The red battlefield lingered behind my eyes. If that battlefield was waiting for us, then this time I intended to enter it knowing exactly how it had defeated me before.