Chapter 223 – The end?

Unlucky for Luke, Elliot didn’t take long to find him and kept attacking. Despite having two serious wounds, his fury seemed to grow, and his attacks became more aggressive.

The battlefield was a disaster. The northern part of Sunnyvale, where the fight had taken place, was reduced to rubble and flames. Entire streets were destroyed, with deep cracks and overturned cars, while several buildings had holes in their structures or were collapsing from the destruction.

Luke barely had time to notice the devastation. He was panting, his body screaming in pain with every movement. The serious wounds he had accumulated during the fight were taking their toll. His breathing was heavy, and his limbs felt slower than usual. He had pushed past his limits.

Just like in his fight against Dolores Spellman, he felt his head pounding violently, as if his brain was about to escape from his skull.

On the other hand, Elliot had suffered two serious blows and a few minor ones. His abdomen was still bleeding, and he didn’t look as good as when he first arrived. However, he wasn’t in as bad a state as Luke.

Floating in the air, Luke sensed the danger before he saw it. His Observation Haki activated.

A bolt of lightning tore through the short distance between them, and Elliot appeared instantly in front of him, his electrified sword raised high. He slashed at Luke, who barely had time to dodge.

The electricity that filled the air reached him, momentarily paralyzing his muscles, just enough time for Elliot to spin and kick him directly in the stomach.

Luke was sent flying like a projectile, crashing through a streetlamp before slamming into the pavement, skidding across the ground until his back hit the remnants of a collapsed building. He coughed, tasting the metallic tang of blood in his mouth. Pain spread through his body, every wound protesting.

His blurry vision settled on something just a few meters away. A lifeless body.

A man who probably hadn’t had the chance to escape and got caught in the crossfire. His face was covered in dust and blood, his eyes open but devoid of life.

At the start of the battle in Sunnyvale, Luke had saved the civilians Elliot tried to kill. Many of them were his schoolmates from Shadyside.

But as the fight went on, as his body accumulated wounds and his energy drained, he stopped.

If he had tried to keep saving people in his current state, he would have been dead long ago. Elliot wasn’t giving him a chance. This wasn’t a fight where he could afford to be a hero.

He stopped looking at the normie’s corpse and turned his gaze to Elliot, who was walking toward him.

Even though the bastard was in bad shape, he wasn’t as injured as him.

‘Was this a lost battle from the start?’ Luke thought, feeling that these might be his last moments, or seconds, alive.

“You look bad, Poe,” Elliot remarked with a slight smile, though his voice carried a faint tremor from the damage he had taken in this battle. He was forcing his body, but he still had energy to keep fighting.

“You look like shit too, great patriarch of the Spellmans,” Luke shot back with sarcasm, spitting blood as he used his telekinesis to force himself to his feet. Every fiber of his body protested, but he ignored the pain.

Elliot frowned. Without warning, he disappeared. Once again, he used his teleportation.

Luke’s Observation Haki sensed a murderous intent, and his gaze shifted in that direction, finding Elliot just a short distance away, brandishing his sword.

But his body didn’t react in time.

Elliot’s sword pierced his throat.

The blade sliced through flesh with ease. Luke felt the edge burning through his trachea, his breath blocked by the metal tearing it apart. But Elliot didn’t stop. He dragged the sword downward in a single motion, carving a crimson line through his torso.

With a sharp yank, Elliot withdrew the blade, and Luke fell. His vision blurred. His once-bright eyes began to dim.

The ground rushed toward him, and when his body hit the shattered pavement, blood spread beneath him, soaking the concrete.

“I feel a little better now,” Elliot murmured, cracking his neck. This battle had been far more interesting and exciting than he initially expected.

He knew Luke’s history. A psychic with three auras.

Having two auras was already a rarity. Even among the most prestigious psychic families, those born with two auras were scarce.

But three… that was almost nonexistent.

Even in the most distinguished bloodlines, the emergence of a three-aura psychic was little more than a myth. In the Spellman family, there had been only one recorded case in their entire history. The Poe family was the same. Only the Addams had ever produced two individuals with three auras, but they were no longer alive.

And Luke Poe wasn’t just born with that power; he knew how to wield it. His combat record spoke for itself.

But Elliot had never doubted his mission from the moment he arrived. From the very beginning, he knew he wouldn’t lose.

Not against a boy the same age as his deceased sons. No matter how many auras Luke Poe had.

“NOOO!”

A heart-wrenching scream shattered the silence. The voice rang out with fury and desperation.

Elliot turned his head toward the source of the scream. He saw a red-haired woman. She wasn’t in the best condition, her wounds told the story of a previous battle.

“You killed Amelia?” Elliot asked, his tone flat, though somewhat surprised that his servant had lost to Natasha, or rather, the servant who had once served his late wife.

They had come here prepared. They knew Luke had the help of his housekeeper and his girlfriend. So they brought three people, one for each enemy, ensuring their extermination.

Natasha didn’t respond. With an expression of absolute rage, her right arm shifted, transforming into a machine gun, and she fired without hesitation.

A storm of bullets surged toward Elliot. He merely sighed in disdain and raised his hand.

His palm glowed with electric energy, lightning crackling across his skin, and as the bullets struck, they shattered instantly.

But by the time he lowered his hand, Natasha was already upon him. Her body had transformed into compact rock.

With incredible speed, she unleashed a brutal spinning kick. Elliot raised his forearms in an X-shaped guard to defend himself.

The impact sent him skidding back several meters, his feet dragging across the shattered ground as the force of the blow echoed through the air.

Natasha’s eyes flicked to Luke’s lifeless body sprawled on the ground, his face pale, blood slowly spreading across the broken pavement. His vacant eyes no longer held a breath of life.

Her vision turned red, fury surging within her. She locked eyes on Elliot.

‘It’s my fault for taking too long…’ Natasha thought bitterly.

She had gone to retrieve the evidence Luke had hidden without much care, but after that, she had been ready to help him.

To her, Luke’s life mattered far more than any evidence. What purpose did it serve if he died? But she had arrived too late because of the Spellman’s servant.

Natasha lunged at Elliot, the ground trembling beneath her feet as her body shifted once more. Another layer of thick stone wrapped around her limbs like a second skin. Her fists morphed into massive rock hammers, and she shot toward Elliot with incredible speed.

“Die!” she roared, determined to make him pay, even knowing her chances of victory were almost nonexistent.

“Nothing you do now will change anything,” Elliot said with disdain.

As Natasha fought desperately against Elliot, Luke lay motionless on the pavement.

‘Have I died?’ Luke wondered, the words echoing in his mind like a distant whisper.

The overwhelming sense of peace surrounding him felt too intense to still be in the physical world. He felt no pain, neither physical nor emotional.

It was as if everything he had ever experienced, every scar and every wound, had vanished.

Everything was calm, still. He felt weightless, as if floating in a vast, serene ocean.

‘A better place…’ he thought.

A place without the suffering of his fight against Elliot, without the constant paranoia of having to survive in a world full of supernatural beings and monsters. Without the threats from the most powerful outcast family that wanted him dead. Without that pressure.

Then, his mind drifted, as if an invisible current was pulling him toward memories he had long buried.

The image of a weak boy, completely different from who he was now, began to take shape in his mind.

His first life, where he died at the young age of thirteen. In that life, there were no psychic powers, no werewolves, nothing. Just the silence of an empty house, the clacking of his keyboard, absent parents consumed by work, bullying at school, and little else worth mentioning.

Then, the scene shifted to a memory from his new life. His new identity as Luke. Life in the orphanage.

The first time he used telekinesis, he was only three years old. A memory so vivid that even now, it felt like it had happened just yesterday.

He was in a shared room with all the other children. Scattered across the floor were old, worn-out toys. Being a poor three-year-old sucked.

Out of sheer boredom, something clicked in his mind as he stared at a battered ball that suddenly lifted into the air. A surge of excitement filled him at using his telekinesis for the first time.

The next memory took him to when he was eleven, at school. He recalled the feeling of studying a history textbook. The next day, when he tried to remember the passage he had read, he could recall it perfectly.

Without realizing it, his mind had sunk into an eidetic memory, awakening his blue aura for the first time.

The next awakening came with a more recent memory. He was in a dark, eerie forest, locked in a life-or-death battle against a grotesque, hideous hag.

His first fight to the death in this world, the same year he entered Nevermore, met his first girlfriend, and made his first friend.

In that battle, Luke awakened his Observation Haki for the first time, sensing the witch’s murderous intent.

That was how he awakened his white aura: clairvoyance.

After that, more fragmented memories surfaced, intertwined with voices and moments flashing like scenes from a movie.

His two friends: Xavier and Ajax. All the good times he spent with them—late-night gaming, eating pizza, attending classes, hanging out in Nevermore’s cafeteria, and more.

But then, those memories faded, replaced by the Addams family—Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Fester, and Thing.

That strange family… but one that had accepted him and given him a home.

Next, Natasha’s face appeared—her ever-serious expression, yet she had always watched over him in silence, throwing away her own life to protect him since he was a baby.

Then, the figure of a talkative ghost appeared, his great-great-grandfather, an eccentric specter who had helped train him and made him feel like he had a grandfather, even if he was just a ghost.

The ghost always said that the legacy of the Poe family would never end, that their lineage would always live on, and that Luke had to be the one to continue that history. Though the way he said it was somewhat unsettling, his great-great-grandfather’s words had been engraved in his mind.

And then, Wednesday appeared.

The person with whom he shared a connection so deep that, at times, it felt as if the rest of the world ceased to exist when they were together. The girl with whom he could be vulnerable. A soulmate with whom he could let go, lean on her shoulder without feeling like it made him any less strong.

Wednesday understood him in a way no one else ever had. The way their gazes met held something profound that bound them together.

Perhaps there had been someone else like that…

A memory of Enid flashed through his mind—a sudden burst of all their moments together. She had been his first love, his first crush, the person who had lit up his world and pulled him out of his lonely life.

In this state of near-death, he realized that he had never truly stopped caring for her in some way. Though their relationship had ended, Enid had been a turning point in his life.

At that moment, everything faded back into complete darkness and an eerie silence.

Until suddenly, the dark void was illuminated by a faint green glow that gradually grew stronger.

The warmth intensified, enveloping his entire being, and the green light began to shine brightly, like a beacon in the darkness. In that very instant, a surge of psychic energy coursed through him, carrying with it a vital force that pulled him back to life.

Luke felt his consciousness, which until then had been slowly dissolving into fleeting memories and fragmented moments, snap back into sharp clarity.

A torrent of sensations flooded his mind, the sound of his breathing, the rhythmic beat of his heart, the pulsing of his body.

He realized he was still there, still in the physical world, still alive.

And then, his wounds, the ones that had left him on the brink of death, began to heal.

Luke felt his battered, dying body start to mend at an inhuman speed. The sword scars, the torn flesh, everything began to knit itself back together, regenerating under the influence of a healing energy he had never felt within himself before.

With a sigh, Luke opened his eyes and slowly sat up, his wounds healing as he rose.

‘This isn’t over yet.’

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