Chapter 257: I missed you

A repulsive, wet, and unnatural sound erupted from Vespera’s body.

Her arm.

It was growing.

Where once there was only a bleeding stump, flesh began to bloom in reverse, as if time were compressing itself, accelerating regeneration. Bone, muscle, skin, all reconstructed in a matter of seconds. Her cracked ribs shifted back into place beneath her pale skin, and the blood, once gushing out, was reabsorbed as if the air itself refused to let her die.

Enid and Reina came to an abrupt halt.

Luke raised an eyebrow, “Interesting,” he murmured.

But it wasn’t just the regeneration that caught his attention. There was a visible change.

Vespera’s icy, ethereal beauty vanished. The delicate features of a woman who looked no older than thirty suddenly withered. Her skin dulled, her cheekbones grew sharper. The veins in her hands bulged. Wrinkles carved deep lines across her forehead like trenches etched by force. She now looked like a woman in her sixties.

The price of her regeneration had been time. A loan paid with youth, and perhaps, with power.

Luke didn’t strike. Not yet.

Enid and Reina did.

Both advanced with renewed ferocity. And this time, they noticed the difference. Vespera was still strong, still wielded darkness skillfully, and her physical strength remained formidable. But something had diminished. Her reflexes, her pressure, her endurance, it was as if her body could no longer keep pace.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, Nyra and Alecto were fulfilling their task with flawless precision: keeping Aldric busy. It was a titanic effort. Aldric showed no signs of exhaustion, but he couldn’t advance either. His momentum had been sealed in a tactical stalemate. And that was enough for now.

Wednesday, who had already defeated two of the hooded figures and trapped them in shadow, now fixed her gaze on her old “friends.” She began walking toward them with firm steps.

Anna and Jane Spellman.

Dark mist coiled around her fingers, and her scythe still crackled as if yearning for a second dance.

Anna and Jane had regrouped after barely dodging Luke’s earlier attack. They were injured, but still standing.

Margaret, seeing this, rushed to help her granddaughters, but had to defend herself immediately against an attack that would have torn off her arm had she reacted a second too late.

Eclipse hovered in the air like a living blade.

’Damn Poe…’ thought Margaret. She realized Luke hadn’t even tried to kill her, just to amputate her remaining arm.

Wednesday wasted no time.

“This is for my scorpion,” she whispered, as if she had been waiting years for this moment: revenge.

And then she attacked.

The sisters fought. They struggled. They even managed to wound her superficially.

But Wednesday was no longer the weak girl with a murdered pet. She was a genius, one far stronger than both of them combined. One of the most dangerous teenage outcasts, just like Luke, far above average for her age.

Now that she no longer had to defend herself from Vespera or other attacks, fighting Anna and Jane felt like switching to easy mode.

With a sweeping motion, she struck Anna in the chest with the scythe’s handle, folding her like paper.

Anna then took a spinning kick to the jaw, sending her reeling and knocking out several teeth.

“Bitch!” Jane shouted, trying to summon her power, but before even a spark could ignite in her right hand, Wednesday sliced it clean off. Not the whole arm. Just the hand.

Before Jane could scream or her sister react, dark cords erupted from her own shadow and wrapped around her, slamming her to the ground.

“Sister!” Anna cried out, about to lunge at Wednesday, but she couldn’t move. Shadows were binding her limbs.

’What the…?’ Anna thought, trying to struggle, but it was no use. Then black tendrils emerged beneath her, wrapping her tighter and tighter until she was forced to her knees, completely paralyzed.

Wednesday approached and looked down at her with an icy gaze. She placed the blade of her scythe under Anna’s chin, lifting her face to meet her eyes.

“If I had the time, I’d torture you until you begged me to end it… but lucky you.”

And with that, she punched Anna square in the jaw, knocking her unconscious.

The Spellman twins: captured.

Luke wasn’t looking toward Wednesday, nor was he helping Enid and Reina. His attention was now locked on a tall, disfigured figure moving to assist the enemy.

The Spellman servant.

Over two meters tall. His face looked as if it had been torn off and sewn back on. One of those bodies that inspired fear just by existing, a nightmare to any normal person.

’He reminds me of the Tyrant from Resident Evil…’ Luke thought as he headed toward him. He planned to fight him hand-to-hand.

He raised his fists.

He wasn’t just trained in telekinesis, telepathy, and clairvoyance. His body now had the physical strength of five tons thanks to the awakening of his fourth aura. His muscles were denser, his speed sharper, his endurance greater. But that wasn’t all.

His fists were wrapped in telekinetic energy, not a diffuse aura, but compact spheres so dense they looked like liquid crystal.

Twenty-five tons of contained force. Each strike was a divine hammer.

And besides… he always liked fighting this way.

The servant roared and charged.

Luke dodged the first strike effortlessly. His intent-sensing alone was enough, he didn’t even need to use his future vision.

He struck the enemy in the stomach with his reinforced fist. A crunching sound echoed. The servant doubled over but didn’t fall.

Luke spun on his heel and delivered a second blow to the face.

Jaw, shattered.

A low kick, reinforced with telekinesis and his physical strength.

Knee, broken.

The servant collapsed sideways but was still alive. Gasping. Trying to move.

Luke had no intention of dragging this out.

He placed his hand over the bald head, fingers tightly gripping the deformed skull like he was holding disposable trash. The servant barely managed to lift his eyes. There was no plea in them, only the dark resignation of someone who knew this was the end.

Luke clenched his grip.

And then, with a swift twist of his wrist, he tore the head from the body like one opens a bottle, effortlessly.

A brief spray of blood burst forth like a black flower in the air, hot and silent. The spine snapped with a wet crack, and the body collapsed without ceremony.

The head remained suspended in Luke’s hand for a moment, still frozen in a snarl of rage.

Then he let go.

It fell with a dull thud, bouncing once on the grass.

“Tsch,” Luke muttered, wiping his hand on his pants as if brushing off some bothersome dust.

The Spellman servant hadn’t lasted even a full minute against Luke.

But even as he dispatched that threat, Luke never stopped controlling his sword.

Eclipse was now teaming up with Wednesday, fighting Margaret.

The dual-aura psychic, now missing an arm, wounded, and exhausted, was barely hanging on.

Luke knew that between Eclipse and Wednesday, it was only a matter of seconds before they brought her down… and more importantly, captured her alive.

She was a high-ranking Spellman, full of information that could be extracted. Far too valuable to kill unnecessarily.

However…

His clairvoyance, a constant flow of possibilities, flickered with a brutal vision.

Margaret, once overpowered and captured, was going to self-implode.

A suicidal act, her last resort.

’Crazy old hag,’ Luke thought, frowning, and vanished in a flash.

He propelled himself upward with telekinetic flight at impossible speed, and at the same time extended his telekinetic power.

With it, he seized Margaret’s body just before the energy inside her collapsed.

Margaret, already on the verge of imploding, couldn’t fight against Luke’s telekinetic grip.

’To the sky, old woman,’ Luke thought.

And hurled her.

Margaret’s one-armed body shot upward like a vertical projectile, piercing the sky in the blink of an eye. Barely a second later…

BOOM.

A titanic explosion lit up the heavens as if the sun itself had erupted.

The shockwave was visible for miles, forming a cloud of fire and black energy with violet edges, expanding slowly like an apocalyptic mushroom.

Luke landed in front of Wednesday just before the blast reached them.

He gently extended a hand and placed it around her waist to shield her.

A telekinetic barrier unfolded around them like a perfect dome, protecting them from the searing wind.

Wednesday looked at him.

Luke looked back, straight into her eyes.

“I missed you,” Luke said softly, as if the battle had momentarily paused.

Slowly, he raised his other hand and caressed her cheek. There was a cut, barely bleeding. A crimson line across her pale skin.

A green shimmer ran along his fingers. The healing aura flowed, closing the wound as if it had never been there.

Wednesday rolled her eyes subtly, but a faint smile, almost imperceptible, formed on her lips.

“You shouldn’t be saying that,” she whispered. “There are still two demonic elders standing.”

“I know,” Luke replied, unmoving.

“But I missed you too,” she added.

She stood on her toes, and kissed him.

Behind them, in the sky, the explosion still burned. The kiss was short, but intense. Not passionate, intimate.

Wednesday pulled away first, just slightly. Her lips still parted, her breath quiet. In her eyes, the perpetual storm of her mind still raged, but for a moment… it seemed calm.

Luke lowered his head slightly, resting his forehead against hers for an instant.

Then, a faint smile, the half-smirk that both annoyed and charmed her, curved on his lips.

Wednesday saw it coming.

“Don’t say it,” she warned in a dry tone.

“I brought our daughter,” Luke said anyway, with a calm, teasing, and yet strangely sincere voice.

Wednesday closed her eyes for a second, not in affection, but in pure frustration. When she opened them again, they were sharp as blades.

“She’s not our daughter.”

“She calls us Mom and Dad,” Luke replied, raising his eyebrows slightly.

“And I brought her to fight. So technically… it’s a family activity.”

“Luke,” said Wednesday, with a coldness that could freeze the air, “You’re using a battle against two demonic elders to reinforce a parenthood narrative that doesn’t exist.”

“Hey, don’t say that in front of the kid, it’ll hurt her feelings,” Luke said with a regretful expression.

Wednesday shot him a deadly glare. Then she sighed.

In the distance, the roar of a new impact echoed through broken trees and darkness. Aldric was still standing. So was Vespera.

But the battlefield had changed, it was far more manageable.

“We’ll have this conversation later,” she declared, turning with elegance to return to the fight.

Luke watched her walk away, a look of both pride and love in his eyes.

Eclipse flew back to his hand, tracing a curve in the air like a sharp, loyal shadow. He caught it effortlessly, like the weapon and its master were one.

His expression, which moments before had been warm, softened by Wednesday’s presence, shifted instantly.

The loving gaze vanished, replaced by a cold gleam in his eyes.

His lips curved slightly.

“Let’s finish this…” murmured Luke.

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