Chapter 44

Chapter 44: Chapter 44

Chapter 44

As though to reveal the answer, Nathan chanted spells into my blood, turning it into a glowing flow of crimson before injecting it into his veins. The words spilled from his lips in a low, rhythmic cadence that made the air itself seem to thicken. My blood left my body in a slow, luminous stream, each drop pulsing with an inner light that should never have belonged outside my veins. When it entered him, his eyes sparked, a dangerous glister of amber that burned too bright, too sharp, and the entire tower pulsated with unregistered powers.

One he was never meant to have.

The stone walls trembled. Dust sifted down from the high ceiling. The ancient runes carved into the pillars flared and dimmed in uneven waves, as if the tower itself recoiled from what Nathan had done.

"He’s stolen a fragment of Aetherblood’s magic. You must take it back from him." The One Tree didn’t sound like itself.

It raged. Its tone was full of vile and a life-shattering bass that vibrated through the floorboards and up into my bones. The voice was no longer the calm, distant presence I had grown used to. It was furious, layered, as though every root and branch spoke at once.

"I... but I don’t have any powers."

"We don’t have time. You must. Now!" it claimed.

Then, all of a sudden, a great power surged through me. My blood rose in pressure, my stomach twisting and my head hammering as every fiber of my existence accepted the magic coursing through me. All the powers of every Aetherblood that had once lived.

I felt their strength and weakness, their powers and fears, their confidence and losses.

It all coursed through me.

The sensation was overwhelming. Heat raced along my veins, followed by a cold so sharp it felt like ice forming beneath my skin. Memories that were not mine flickered behind my eyes—battles fought under strange skies, quiet moments of grief, the weight of centuries of bloodlines collapsing into a single heartbeat. My lungs burned. My vision narrowed to a tunnel of green and gold. I could taste metal and earth and something older than language.

Slammed back into my mortal body, my eyes snapped open and I saw Nathan forcing the power into himself. It was rejecting him, but he refused to let it go. His body jerked with each new surge. Veins stood out dark against his skin. The amber in his eyes flickered, unstable, as though the magic itself was trying to tear free.

He chanted more of the language and this time, I understood it. And I could speak it too.

It was the ancient rune of Adamic language.

The words settled into my mind with terrifying clarity, as if they had always been waiting there. Each syllable carried weight and shape. I could feel the structure of the spells, the way they bent reality around them.

"Give it back!" I growled in a voice that wasn’t mine alone. It was layered with the echoes of every Aetherblood who had ever spoken the same command.

Nathan turned around to face me, a wide grin stretching across his lips. There was triumph in it, and something darker—greed that had finally found what it had been hunting for years.

I curled my hands into fists as I muttered, "Brith forth thy wrath. Cast thee down."

The power spiraled and blasted Nathan through the roof, sending him soaring into the air. Stone exploded upward. Dust and shards of tile rained down. The force of the blast knocked the breath from my lungs, yet somehow I remained standing. As though my body had recognized the strange power within me, I floated and managed to fly without crashing. The air itself seemed to cradle me, lifting me through the ragged hole Nathan had left behind.

In the distance, I saw Nathan crash into the clearing outside the tower. The impact sent a shockwave through the ground. Trees at the edge of the clearing leaned away from the force. The air carried me closer, but when the dust dispersed and my vision locked onto him again, he was gathering magic of his own.

Thunderclaps surged across the sky, booming with devastating intensity, and shattered the ground beneath me. My body jolted as the attack split my skin apart. Pain flared white-hot along my ribs and arms. I expected to die, but somehow, I recovered. The wounds sealed themselves with a wet, burning sensation, leaving only thin lines of blood and the memory of the strike.

Before I could rise again, Nathan pinned me into the mud, speaking in a voice that no longer sounded entirely his. He wasn’t merely Nathan anymore. Something older and hungrier had taken root inside him.

"Five years since I’ve been learning about the One Tree and you think once I gained a fraction of its power, you could take it from me? You are a child in this game, Alex. You know nothing."

He used his Alpha strength to restrain me while chanting another spell. His weight was crushing. Mud pressed into my cheek and mouth. The smell of wet earth and ozone filled my nose.

"Sever thy skies. Let thunder obey."

The heavens split again, his eyes glowing amber while mine glowed a deep emerald green. Like me, his veins radiated with power, but his carried a dreadful shade of crimson, as though his body was cracking apart along the paths of his veins. Fine fractures of light ran beneath his skin, pulsing in time with the thunder.

Quickly, I pressed my hands into the ground and muttered as realization struck me about Nathan’s next attack.

"Shieldeth mine flesh. Bend fate aside."

As the words slipped from my lips, I braced myself for what came next. The shield formed like a second skin of hard air, humming against my body. I could feel the magic straining to hold.

This was the final part of my plan, and I could only hope it unfolded the way I imagined. It had led me to this very junction, and all I could do was pray it ended the way I wanted. Every step, every risk, every moment of silence I had endured had been for this single chance.

A swordlike bolt of thunder hovered above my head, and Nathan hurled it downward toward my face. The light of it burned white against my closed eyelids. Just as I closed my eyes, clinging onto faint hope, I heard the hooves of horses and my heart surged with excitement.

It worked.

"It’s true! There’s a witch in the Pack!" Alpha Frederick yelled, thrusting his hands forward as his armies spread behind him.

"Attack!"

The sky became coated with arrows, darkening the beams of moonlight beneath their overwhelming numbers as they rained toward us. The sound was like a sudden storm of hail against leaves. Wood and steel filled the air.

Nathan quickly shifted his spell into one that shielded him, while I muttered yet another Adamic sentence.

"Veil mine spirit. Let shadows carry me."

I vanished from beneath him and reappeared at the edge of the woods across from the clearing, now transformed into a battlefield. The transition left me dizzy for a heartbeat. The shadows released me like cold hands letting go.

The arrows landed everywhere except Nathan. They struck the ground around him, embedding in mud and grass, some glancing off the shimmering barrier he had thrown up. As he prepared to destroy the forces of MoonBlade, I cast a spell of my own.

"Bind thy limbs. Silence thy power."

Nathan’s hands were wrenched behind him, his powers restrained as he fell to his knees. The collar of magic tightened around his wrists and throat like invisible chains. My smile widened as Frederick and his men locked a magic dampening collar around his neck. The metal clicked shut with a finality that echoed across the clearing.

Nathan would have killed them all if I hadn’t helped them. He was a narcissist who had only needed MoonBlade and me for this very reason, to steal the power, and once he had it, he no longer needed any of us. The truth of it settled in my chest like a stone.

As I ran into the woods, escaping, one question echoed endlessly inside my mind: why would Nathan want magic? Why did he desire the power of Aetherblood?

What mission hid behind his motives?

Branches whipped against my arms and face as I pushed deeper into the trees. The forest was dark and wet. My breath came in ragged gasps. Behind me the sounds of the battlefield faded, replaced by the quieter noises of night—wind in the leaves, distant thunder still rolling across the sky.

My thoughts spiraled back to the One Tree, its powers leaving me. The magic oozed out of me in streams of glowing essence. It drained slowly at first, then faster, as though the Tree itself had decided I was no longer worthy to hold it. My body began to weaken, reminding me what it meant to be an ordinary Omega once again. The strength that had held me upright drained away. My legs trembled. The emerald glow in my eyes flickered and died.

Tears filled my eyes and I collapsed to the ground. The dirt was cold against my palms. I pressed my forehead into the earth, breathing in the scent of moss and decay.

"No, One Tree. Please, don’t leave me."

"You betrayed us," I heard the voices say.

Not one voice, but many. They spoke from every direction at once—from the roots beneath me, from the canopy above, from the very air that still carried the last traces of power.

"No, please. I didn’t know. Please, One Tree." I cried as the feeling of emptiness intensified. It felt like I was losing my parents all over again, except this time, I was losing every lineage of Aetherblood. Every ancestor connected to me. The absence was a hollow ache that spread through my chest and into my limbs until even breathing hurt.

And it shattered me. It ruined me. I wept with my face pressed into the night, repeating over and over again, "Please... please don’t leave me. Please..."