Chapter 94: Scars

Chapter 94

Caleb reached for the silver chalice resting on the scarred wooden table. He didn’t offer it to Isabella; instead, he dipped his fingers into the dark, viscous liquid and turned toward her, his movements precise.

“The bond is anchored in the blood and the name,” Caleb whispered. His voice took on a hollow, resonant quality that made the candle flames dance in frantic agitation.

“To break it, you must renounce him. Not just in your heart, Isabella, but in the very air of this realm.”

Isabella felt the mark on her neck flare with white-hot intensity. It wasn’t just stinging anymore; it felt like a branding iron being pressed into her pulse.

As the heat peaked, an image tore through her mind—a vision of a man’s chest and back, a landscape of silvered skin and rugged strength.

“Say it, Bella,” Caleb urged. He moved his hand toward her throat, the liquid on his fingertips smelling of stagnant iron and old earth.

“Say: ’I, Isabella, reject Lucian as my fated.’”

Isabella’s tongue felt like lead. A primal “homesickness” roared through the bond, a psychic scream pulling her soul toward a distant, invisible door.

It made her head spin, her stomach churn with the weight of a betrayal she didn’t fully understand.

But as she looked at Caleb—her past lover, the man who healed her from the blight, who had supposedly lost his soul for her—and steeled her heart.

“I…” she started, her voice cracking. “I, Isabella… reject Lucian… as my fated.” The moment the words left her lips, the room groaned.

A violent snap echoed as a hairline fracture spider-webbed across the stone wall behind the bed.

Miles away in the East Wing, Lucian let out am unexpected strangled, choked sound. His body slammed against the stone floor as if struck by an invisible hammer.

The bonded thread within him frayed, slipping through his mental grasp like sand through a sieve.

“Again!” Caleb commanded. His eyes gleamed with a hunger he could no longer mask behind a smile. He pressed his cold, wet fingers directly onto the pulsing mark on her neck.

“Tell the shadows he has no claim.”

Isabella winced as the liquid seared her skin. “He has no claim over me,” she whispered, her voice growing unnaturally steady as she fought the rising tide of guilt. “I choose my own path. I choose… I choose y—”

The shadows on the wall detached themselves. They began to swirl around the bed in a suffocating dance.

Isabella’s words died in her throat as she caught Caleb’s reflection in the polished surface of the silver chalice.

For a heartbeat, she didn’t see the man she knew. She saw a flicker of an ashen, hollowed creature with a slit for a mouth.

Her heart skipped a beat. “Caleb?” she breathed, her hand coming up to his chest to push him back.

But Caleb didn’t budge. His grip on her neck tightened, his fingers no longer feeling cool, but dead—like the touch of a statue.

“Don’t stop now, Bella,” he hissed, the soothing balm of his voice replaced by a monstrous, clicking edge. “We are so close. Tell the bond it is dead!”

Through the fraying, battered tether of the mate-bond, Isabella felt a sudden, agonizing thud of pain.

The scars. The image returned, more vivid than any memory. She saw a broad chest and a powerful back, crisscrossed with jagged white lines and deep, puckered craters—the map of a thousand battles and a body broken for the sake of another.

She had seen those exact marks on Lucian when she’d pulled the glass from his skin, yet they had appeared on the man in the vision too.

And that man was undoubtedly Caleb but as Isabella looked up at the man pinning her down, the familiarity she felt thinned.

Caleb’s breath came in shallow, frantic hisses, terrifying Isabella.

In her confusion and fear, Isabella’s hand flew up, shoving hard against his chest to create space.

Her palm caught the edge of his shirt and the fabric, seemingly high-quality and sturdy, tore with a sickening ease under her touch, pulling away from his shoulder and baring his chest to the flickering orange candlelight.

Isabella froze. Caleb’s skin was perfect. It was smooth, unblemished marble, devoid of a single scratch, a single mole, or a single scar.

It was the skin of a statue, a hollow shell that had never bled, never fought, and never suffered.

The realization hit her. The man in her visions—the one who had carried her through the mire, who had screamed her name until his lungs burned, who had fought for them—wasn’t the man standing over her now.

“Where are they?” Isabella whispered, her voice trembling.

Caleb stiffened. His eyes darted to his bared chest, and he moved to pull the fabric back together, his face twisting into a grimace of pure panic.

“Bella, what are you talking about? Focus on the ritual—”

“The scars, Caleb!” she cried, scrambling backward toward the headboard. “You had scars in the vision! But you don’t have a single mark on you. Not one!”

Caleb’s expression shifted instantly. The desperation vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp stillness that was infinitely more terrifying.

“Power remade me,” he said, his voice dropping into a smooth, artificial frequency. He stepped toward the bed, hands raised like he was taming a beast.

“The price I paid… it made me whole. Why would I keep the marks of our past cruelty for you to see?”

He pushed, his fingers clawing for her neck to force the dark liquid back onto the mark. “Don’t let a stray thought ruin centuries of waiting! Say it! Tell the bond it is dead!”

“No!” Isabella shoved him again, her palm striking his chest like it was a block of ice. “The man in the vision… he wore those scars. He wore them like a trophy of what he had been through but you…You’re just… empty.”

Caleb stumbled back, his face contorting into a mask of unadulterated rage. “Bella—”

“Oh, drop the pretense, Caleb. I warned you this wouldn’t work your way.”

An annoyed groan vibrated through the stone walls, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Isabella froze as Caleb’s face shifted from rage to bitter annoyance. The shadows swirling around the bed stilled instantly, then began to dissolve, swirling toward the center of the room like water down a drain.

One by one, the candles flickered violently, their flames bending inward as the air turned deathly cold.

Isabella’s breath hitched. “Caleb…?”

He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the gathering darkness. The shadows thickened, rising from the floor like smoke forced into a solid shape.

A silhouette emerged, and Isabella’s heart slammed against her ribs as the darkness solidified into heavy folds of midnight silk.

The figure stood motionless, the hood of the robe drawn low.

The room went silent. Then, the figure lifted a pale hand and pushed the hood back. Isabella’s soul nearly left her body.

The woman’s face was beautiful, but it wasn’t human. It was smooth and pale as moonlight, but where her eyes should have been, there was nothing.

Only empty, bottomless darkness—two hollow voids that seemed to look through the world rather than at it.

A cold shiver ran down Isabella’s spine as recognition struck her like ice water.

“…Elena?”

The woman’s lips curved into a sharp, bloodless smile.

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