Chapter 70: His Brother’s War

Aerion tore the shadows off his chest with a scream that wasn’t for battle.

It was of pain.

The older prince raised both hands and a barrier of Holy Light condensed in front of him, golden and vibrating.

To contain, not to destroy.

“I’m not going to attack you,” Aerion said, his voice broken. “Listen to me, what they did to you has a cure.”

Ayres tilted his head.

The black veins on his neck pulsed like worms under the skin.

“Cure?”

Ayres raised his left hand and a spear of darkness pierced the barrier.

CRACK!

Aerion rolled to the right.

The spear stuck into the wall behind him and the stone rotted on contact, crumbling into gray dust.

“I don’t need your cure,” Ayres said. “I don’t need your pity.”

He moved forward and every step left a footprint of black frost on the ground.

Raziel watched from the floor, his knees dug into the stone.

His mind calculated at full speed looking for an opening, a pattern, something he could exploit.

[Activating: ECHO OF THE SHADOW]

[Analyzing target combat patterns…]

The pain arrived before the information.

The parasite encapsulated by Arawn vibrated like a caged animal responding to its owner’s call.

Ayres’ magic woke it up with every pulse of darkness that flooded the chamber.

Raziel opened his mouth to scream but what came out was black blood.

It burned his lips.

[ALERT! PARASITE-SOURCE RESONANCE DETECTED]

[CANCELLING ECHO OF THE SHADOW]

[Mental Stability: 22%]

“Raziel!”

Lucian appeared at his side.

He grabbed him under the arms and dragged him back.

A black spell passed inches from their heads.

Lucian ducked by instinct, throwing himself to the ground with Raziel on top, and they rolled together until they were behind a half-collapsed stone pillar.

BOOM!

The impact shook the pillar.

Cracks ran through it from top to bottom.

“Don’t move,” Lucian panted. “Don’t you dare die here, did you hear me?”

Raziel didn’t answer.

He spat another black clot and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

On the other side of the chamber, Aerion dodged but didn’t attack.

Every barrier of Holy Light he conjured lasted less than the previous one.

Ayres’ darkness ate the light.

It corrupted it from the inside, turning the gold into a sick gray before making it burst.

Aerion raised another shield.

Ayres punched through it with his bare fist.

The light cracked around his corrupt knuckles and fell apart, then, the fist connected with Aerion’s jaw.

The prince crashed against the wall and spat blood.

Ayres walked toward him without rushing.

“All your life,” Ayres said. “All your life you were the first, the heir, the perfect one and I was the shadow no one wanted to see.”

“That is not—”

“Right?” Ayres stopped two steps away.

Dark energy swirled around his forearm like a snake, forming a blade of pure blackness.

“Father didn’t even ask for me when he got sick, Only for you.”

Aerion gritted his teeth.

Tears mixed with the sweat and blood from his split lip.

“Brother—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Ayres raised his arm.

The blade descended and the ceiling exploded.

CRAAASH!!

Rotten wooden beams, fractured stone, floorboards from the brothel upstairs: everything fell on the ritual chamber.

A column of dust and debris rose to the ceiling, blinding everyone.

Among the debris, an armored figure fell.

Odessa Grand landed with both boots on the chamber floor.

The impact made the foundations shake.

Her sword, wrapped in Holy Light, stopped Ayres’ dark blade a palm away from Aerion’s face.

SHIIIING!

“Get up,” Odessa ordered without turning her head.

Aerion got up.

Both planted themselves back to back.

Odessa at the front, sword high, barrier of light covering her flank.

Aerion behind, conjuring whatever Holy Energy he had left in his fists.

Ayres looked at both of them.

He tilted his head like a bird studying an insect.

Then he attacked.

The three clashed in the center of the shattered chamber.

Odessa blocked and counterattacked with brutal precision: every strike of her sword sought to disarm, not kill.

Aerion covered her flanks, launching bursts of light that Ayres dodged with an agility a human body shouldn’t have.

But together they pushed him back.

Step by step, blow by blow, they forced him back to the edge of the broken ritual circle.

Aerion was panting.

“Stop!” he shouted. “I don’t want to fight you, brother!”

Ayres wiped the blood from his lip.

“Then die on your knees, like you always wanted.”

Seraphina moved.

Raziel saw her from behind the pillar.

She took a black crystal from her robe, opaque and pulsing, and smashed it against the floor.

The crystal broke.

A vortex of shadows opened in the center of the chamber, swallowing light and sound.

Angelina was the first to enter, disappearing without looking back.

Ayres backed toward the portal without taking his eyes off Aerion.

Seraphina was the last one, She stopped at the edge of the vortex and turned her head.

Her eyes found Raziel, held up by Lucian, barely standing, with black blood on his chin and glassy eyes.

“The next time we see each other, it will be you on your knees, ’hero’.”

She paused and The smile sharpened.

“…if you don’t understand why your chest hurts so much… ask your Assistant who really planted that seed.”

The vortex swallowed her and The ceiling finished falling.

“RUN!” Odessa roared.

Raziel didn’t remember how he got out.

He remembered Lucian’s hands on his arm.

Odessa’s scream.

Stone falling and dust in his lungs.

He was lying in an alley sixty feet from what had been The Withered Rose.

The building collapsed on itself in a cloud of debris and dust that covered half the street.

Lucian coughed beside him.

Odessa had Aerion leaning against a wall.

The prince looked at the debris as if he expected his brother to walk out of them.

He didn’t.

Raziel sat up.

Everything hurt, his chest more than anything, where the parasite beat with a new rhythm, agitated, as if the proximity of Ayres had fed it.

But it was what Seraphina said that ate at his mind.

Ask your Assistant who really planted that seed.

Raziel looked at the air in front of him.

The blue interface flickered, trembling and the blue text froze.

Blinked.

Erased itself.

And rewrote itself in red.

[DATABASE UPDATE]

[PREVIOUS ANALYSIS ERROR CORRECTED]

[The mana signature of “The Shadow” shares 100% of your Spiritual Genetic Code.]

[CONCLUSION: The Parasite was not an external attack. It was a transfer.]

[AUTHOR: RAZIEL CELESTE (Previous Iteration / Cycle #00)]

[REASON: CORRUPTED DATA / PENDING RECOVERY…]

Raziel read the message three times.

He did it to himself?

A version of him from another life.

Why?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep