Chapter 2751: Story 2752: The Brother Within

Ronan’s tears fell onto the stone.

Each drop turned black before it touched the ground.

“Ronan, listen to me!” Darian shouted, gripping the ancient sword. “You were a child when this happened. You never chose it!”

The masked stranger stepped forward.

“Choice is meaningless when blood has already decided your fate.”

Ronan slowly raised his head. Black veins pulsed beneath his skin, spreading across his face like cracks in broken glass.

“Kill me,” he whispered.

Lyra froze.

For the first time since the transformation, she heard Ronan’s true voice.

“Please,” he continued, fighting against the darkness. “Before I hurt you.”

The stranger struck him across the face.

Ronan crashed against a pillar, and the black energy surged back into his eyes.

“Silence!” the stranger roared. “You are only the prison. You do not command what sleeps inside you!”

Darian lifted the sword.

“Then I’ll free him.”

Kael seized his arm. “The blade carries your mother’s memory, but it cannot distinguish between the blood inside Ronan. If you strike carelessly, you may destroy them both.”

“Then tell me where to strike!”

Kael looked at Ronan’s chest.

“The fifth symbol.”

Before Darian could move, the mountain groaned.

A gigantic hand emerged from the fissure, its fingers covered in ancient chains. The enormous eye beneath the gate opened again, illuminating the chamber with a sickly red glow.

“THE FIFTH BLOOD MUST NOT BE SEPARATED.”

The voice shook dust from the ceiling.

Cael stumbled backward.

“It fears the separation,” he murmured.

The stranger turned toward him. “Because the fifth is not merely a prisoner. It is the blood that existed before the kings, before the crowns, before this kingdom was built.”

Elias struggled to his feet, black energy flickering around his hands.

“Then what exactly is inside my brother?”

The stranger removed one glove.

Beneath it, his fingers were not flesh but twisted black roots, crawling with tiny red veins.

“The first hunger.”

Silence swallowed the chamber.

“The creature beneath this mountain gave the kings their blood,” he continued. “But something older gave that creature its hunger. Your mother discovered it before your birth. She placed its living heart inside Ronan and sealed the memory away.”

Lyra stared at Ronan.

“Why would she do that?”

“Because the hunger was waking,” Kael answered. “And she believed love could teach it to be human.”

Ronan suddenly screamed.

The black symbol on his chest split open, revealing a pulsing red light beneath his ribs.

A second heartbeat thundered through the chamber.

Then a third.

The dead soldiers dropped to their knees. The giant hand withdrew into the darkness, trembling.

Even the masked stranger bowed his head.

Ronan rose slowly, his body suspended above the ground.

When he spoke, two voices emerged together.

“One mother. Four brothers. One stolen child.”

His black eyes turned toward Lyra.

“But I remember her now.”

Lyra stepped forward, tears streaming down her face.

“Ronan?”

He smiled.

It was not his smile.

“Mother is waiting beneath the first grave.”

Far above them, every newly risen corpse turned toward the mountain.

And beneath the oldest cemetery in the world, something began digging its way out.