Kessal's POV:
I don't know exactly when I felt the pull start. One minute I'd been playing around with Braeden, our wolves fighting finally returning to full strength from the moonstone power damage a few days before, and the next Alex howled in my head, a low mournful sound that tears at me. Whining a word urgently.
Mate, sad. Mate needs us. Now. Halting in what I'd been doing, I'm almost knocked off my feet when I got an image of my Kalli sitting in a small dark alcove with her cousin, tears streaming down her face. Sitting with her knees drawn into her chest, hands around them the images of her parents, aunt and uncle's deaths played on a loop inside her tortured mind like a broken record. Mate needs us, Alex reminds me soberly and I nod, shaking off my fur and taking off, surrendering control over to my wolf in the hopes that he can get us there faster than I can.
Opposite me Braeden stopped at the same time I did, his eyes lost in thought before both of us simultaneously set off running towards the palace. Both were drawn by the mournful calling of a mate's wolf in pain who needed us more than we knew. And both praying that we'd make it there in time to be able to save them from the horror that was coming. So we could keep them safe and make sure we could be there for them before it got out of control. Before we were too late.
But no matter how hard we tried or how fast we ran we still were. We're too late.
Eris's POV:
I have been sitting by my phone all day. A bad feeling has nagged me in the pit of my stomach since I woken up. Like an itch under the skin that you can't scratch but can feel anyway. Niggling at me all day until at last, the phone rang.
Seeing Hunter's name listed on the caller ID I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding as I answered the phone, more than eager to ask him about the strange feeling I'd been putting up with all day. Breathing a sigh of relief I unlock the phone and answer as chirpily as possible. "Hunter? I was just about to-"
But he's not the one who answers me. In fact for a few seconds, no one does. But then I hear a voice on the other end. A tearful, shaken voice that does little more than confirm my bad feeling. It's Mara. "E-Eris?" Mara's voice is thick and shaky. Tears damn up her throat as she tries to push the word out. "Eris, you need to come back to the palace now. S-something's-s-s h-h-happened-d-d." Her words get shakier the minute and I can hear steady, soft crying behind her. But she manages to pull herself together enough to speak one last time, though upon hearing the pain in her voice and the words I wish she hadn't "You need to come back. There's.....there's been an accident. And we need you."
Silence passes again, bar the sound of crying before the line goes dead a few seconds later and I'm left clutching my phone like a lifeline, tears already dripping down my cheeks as a part of me realises what Mara was meaning. There's been an accident. You need to come back. We need you. And then there was the crying. A sound that I knew only because I'd spent so much time with the two since they were hours old. Just as I had with my daughter and the three's friends. Meaning that I could identify them easily. Kalli and Dana.
Wiping my eyes and taking a shaky breath I leave where I'd been and lock away emotion for as much as I can, the last thought in my head being this: It finally came true. The prophecy finally came true after all these years and all that hope. They're dead. They're all dead. Amber got her way and the four are all dead. This is it now. This is the beginning of the end.
Edana's POV:
The pain hurt. But not so much that I couldn't deal with it. No, it hurt but I found I could push it back if I embraced the numbness that came after. The one where if I closed off to feeling and shut my eyes meant I could figure out how to live without seeing the images of those I lost loop around inside my head. The numbness that came from not feeling. From turning it off just for a short while to deal with the pain.
I wasn't a fool. I know that others from my and Kalli's group of friends had been around during the day and would have been heading home. However, I also know that Amber would have torn through all the realms just to get back at each one of us just for thinking we could get away. That we could run far and fast enough that she wouldn't be able to find us. Because she did. She did find us and she punished us in the most effective way possible: By tearing us from those we loved.
I can see Kalli though, she looks so small curled up like that. Like I was. Because as much as I hated being like this, I couldn't deal with the pain, I wasn't strong enough despite telling myself for years that I could handle anything. That was until I saw both my parents get murdered in front of my eyes by a woman who was so twisted she'd stop at nothing to win a game that should never have started and certainly have been finished by now. Finished and buried in the past where it should never have been revisited, just like the four mortal wars that aren't spoken about but people still remember. That's what should have happened.
Instead, Amber's selfishness and willingness to embrace the darkness that Laurel and the others spouted meant that not only did I lose both my parents but so did Kalli. The king and queen of the realm since Kalli was still training with Kessal to take over, assuming she even wanted the job after what happened to her parents. Same as I had been told I was to train to take over from my dad with his seat on the council, but now had no idea if I was brave enough to do that given what would happen to me if I crossed the line too many times. Would what happened to them happen to us next if Amber had her way? What would she do since according to that vision it was worse? Much much worse.
But I couldn't think about that right now. Not when doing so just let the pain rush in like a waiting tide to drag me under. No, I embraced numbness instead, choosing to hold the idea that if I couldn't hear, see or feel what had happened then it would be ok. After all evil things had happened to take my parents, aunt, uncle and whoever else we'd lost and if ignoring it meant we were ok for just a little longer then fine. I agree to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. As long as it means I can disconnect a little longer.
Can be free just a little longer before it's too late and I'm forced to live it all again. Be lost again. Just let me be free a little longer.
Kalliope's POV:
It hurts. It hurts so bad to even breathe that Lana just gives up and lets me take control fully without a hint of complaint. I can smell it, smell the blood that lies thick in the air from where it's smeared all over the walls. Where my mom's corpse lies in pieces is a hairsbreadth from where I took shelter before Dana ran back to me. Meaning I can see someone else's body as well in the same state. But I don't question it, not ready to hear whoever else died in front of me since I think I forgot what I saw.
Better to forget than to remember, at least for a little while, I think dejectedly, hoping that Lana will help me bear some of the pain. So we can be as strong as possible without breaking down and having to figure out how to rebuild our lives more than we've already had to do given what Amber did.
What Amber did. The three words fill me with immense hatred and anger underneath the numbness that I hold onto and pull around me like a comfort blanket since the person I need right now isn't here. And is probably trapped in LoupArgent unless he's already dead as well. When I even let that thought into my head the crushing numbness I'd felt before triples and I struggle to breathe around the knot of emotion in my throat for a second before Lana's urgent whining gets my attention. What is it, Lana? Is he....is he........
No Kalli, we'd know for sure if he was dead. And I can still feel Alex, he's sad. Sad because we are and because he can feel our pain. See what happened here. Lana shivers then and I get a sense of what's going on from her eyes. The bloody bodies were left all around the palace and surrounding borders. The signs inked on the walls and floors with it, that double ouroboros that has me shivering in fear. The way so many lie dead and dying because of Amber's incessant need to be right and claim that she can win. Because of her. The prophecy came true and it's up to us now. I just wonder why Artemis, Storm and Luna didn't say anything to either you or Midnight.
They probably didn't know it was going to happen. I reply to her, jumping to my parents' defence faster than if she'd accused them of doing something unnatural. Maybe they didn't know and that's why we didn't. Because they didn't tell us before it happened? Oddly I find myself phrasing it as a question but only then do I realise I've found that and discover that I'm dreading hearing the answer to my question. Almost as if I know it's not what I want to hear but now that I've committed to asking it I have to figure out how to bear whatever Lana has to tell me. Lana? Do you think they didn't know or what?
They did know Kalli. They knew long before you and Dana were born but chose to keep it from you in the hopes that they could outrun or outlive it. That Amber would perhaps forget and let them live their lives and watch you two grow up. They've known for years. Lana's words stick in my chest like a barbed instrument and I see when my mom and uncle Ash first saw the vision with Eris during that initial round my mom became a player. I see them lose it last round only to have it returned just after the two of us were born. I see them carry the knowledge around for the entirety of our lives, and how they reacted to seeing it in our heads after the vision when we blacked out. I see it all and it makes me mad and devastated at the same time. How could they have kept it from us? And so well as well?
Pain rips through my chest, sharp and fresh, then like someone had torn a hole in me and left me to bleed out. Like I'd lost something vital the second I allowed myself to realise, quite possibly for the first time, that my parents were gone. That my aunt and uncle were gone. That I was possibly all one in this world besides Dana assuming aunt Selene was also gone. Something that could very much be possible since Amber proved she had no qualms about killing off all my family until only Dana and I remained. And even then that was only so she could torture us for eternity if that vision of pressed together silver cages was to be believed.
"They're gone," The words come out as a whisper but the second I let them I wish I hadn't since they then just proceed to loop around inside my head like a broken record to accompany the images already there. Images made twice as bad since I had all the memories of what Dana saw on top of what I witnessed first-hand. I had all of it stored away where it could hurt me time and time again. Ripping into me like a feral wolf determined to break you until you couldn't fight. Couldn't stand. Because that's what Amber wanted to do to us. To break our fight and it was working since by killing off what I thought was the whole of my family she'd pulled the ground out from underneath me. Dana too.
"Don't think about it, or anything, it's easier that way," Dana's voice is rough with tears and I realise that this is the first time in a long time I've ever seen her so open about how she felt. But that also broke me more since she sounded so lost like she'd given up what was happening to her and just accepted it. "Seriously, don't think Kalli, it hurts less and if it doesn't hurt then...." She lapses into silence then and I don't blame her since the pain of the people I'd lost hits me again and that closes my throat right up. Making speaking near enough impossible.
But it doesn't stop the hurt though. It still rages on and on until it's near enough impossible to figure out how to manage it. If we ever could. If we ever could....
Eris's POV:
It was too silent when I came through the portal the second I'd put down the phone with Chalice and Mara before. But that emptiness that had started in my chest when I'd heard didn't get any better when I came into view of the property. When I saw the extent of the bloodshed and horror that Amber had left behind. The pain she'd caused.
The palace itself looked almost as if a bomb had hit it with charred marks on the walls and outer doors with the magic fire that Amber and the others had used to break through. Not to mention the oily residue from the Shadows that I remember being prominent figures in the vision before. Though strangely the Dark Ones left no shadow, no trace of what they were. As if they were never there. And that made me feel worse since it means that Amber had managed to figure out how to gain an enemy that we can't see or hear. Feel or touch without exquisite agony. One we may not be able to defeat.
Walking slowly around the walls I come to a break where there should have been a statue, path and archway that had stood ever since I'd been a little girl and had people teach me about what was happening in other realms. Before I ever met Hunter or Ash. before all of it involved me. Before I was dragged into it as a teenager just because on the other side of the war I found two friends who meant enough to me that I stuck with them. No matter how it was now ending.
But that is what made all this worse. What made it worse seeing the bodies of fallen friends and those I'd come to see as a family when they'd come to help since it looks like Amber had staged an attack on the palace as a whole. Bodies of vampires, wolves and witches all littered the ground surrounded by puddles of red that seem to scream accusations at me that I can't understand and can't process. All were bodies of family and friends. All the people I'd gotten close to since Rosa and Leila had been introduced. All people like Hunter and Ash who I'd known going back years. People I loved before.
But worse than that is that I knew all the bodies I saw as I moved through the outer doors, tracing the charred in ouroboros and other designs that Amber had left there. Could see the mothers, fathers, sisters, and all the other people who meant something to people close to me. I could see the parents of Kalli and Dana's friends, some dead and some alive but all missing one parent, mostly two.
I can see the bodies in varying states along the palace walls, blood smeared all over just as Rosa's vision had been when she'd seen what Ash and I had that first time. Remember how it stuck with her and the rest of us for so long that it was near impossible for us to forget it. But that was hard because I also saw the bodies. The same as we all had. The ones that were covered in blood and all dead. The people we'd loved. There was Selene, lying too still with her heart pulled out of her chest but that was all that happened to her. Outside I'd seen one of the Cassidy wolves - Jackson - almost torn apart but I had yet to find Mae. Hoping against hope that she was ok.
I could see them all and it hurt me almost as much as....no.....no, no, no. That was the one word that comes to mind when I see the familiar figure on the floor that I'd do anything to erase from my mind. He hadn't moved when I'd appeared so I either had imagined it or.....or he was dead. "Phoenix?" My voice shakes and I hope that when he hears it he'll sit up and stop scaring me. Never mind that I could see the symbols and ouroboros all over the walls, floors, windows and doors. On every surface. Or the others dead that I knew of. He was all that mattered at that moment as I tried to hold my already broken heart together to prevent it from shattering once and for all.
Running over I pulled him towards me the second my knees touched the floor, feeling the cold of the stone seeping through the thin material. Not care that the blood was staining it either. All I cared about was seeing if he was alive. But he didn't move, didn't respond to me. By now from traipsing through the palace I was covered in ash and blood but that didn't matter. Smoothing my hair away from my face I ignore the blood covering me, as well as the ash, and shake him slightly but he doesn't respond, the feeling of grief clamping down on my chest and holding me down.
"Please, please wake up, I ...I can't lose you too." Memories of the last lover I'd had to leave during the last war fill my mind and I struggle for a second to separate that image of Alex from the one that I saw once he came back two rounds ago. But that's gone the second I see that Phoenix still hadn't moved, that he was still lying there covered in blood and magic marks as if a spell of deadly power had been thrown right at him in the hopes that he'd be....be... "No. No, no, NO! YOU CAN'T BE DEAD! PLEASE COME BACK TO ME, I STILL NEED YOU!" Strangled screams like those I'd heard from Rosa the time we almost lost Hunter two rounds ago tear out of me. Raw animalistic moans of a creature being torn apart from all angles and just waiting for the pain to end. Because it would have to. He'd wake up. He had to. He had to, I just know it. He was stronger. "Please nix," I whisper, the nickname slipping out without warning and causing a crack down my heart that, despite all I'd seen so far and still had yet to see, was trying its best to hold itself together. "Please come back to me Nix, for Livy." I try again but this time I feel it. That snapping part of me that had been connected to him and that makes the pain so much worse since he'd been the one for me, Hecate had shown me as much when she'd found me crying over what I believed to be Alex's pyre after the last war. He'd been my soulmate, just as everyone else had one. Only mine was gone.
"NO!" I scream the word this time and let the pain come in, not caring for a second that we still had a war to win and that every reaction we gave her made Amber more powerful. More vengeful. I couldn't care less since doing that hurt too damn much. Too fucking much for me to be able to do it again after Phoenix. "Please come back to me," Now crying softly I bend my head over his body and try to save him using as much magic as I could spare without burning out or using it all up in case I was needed. Not realising that I'd had a guest until it was too late.
"Mom," Livy's voice sounds shaky and when I look up I can see that all hers, Dana's and Kalli's friends were gathered with her besides Kessal and Braeden who I theorised either weren't here yet or had gone straight to find Kalli and Dana after what happened. "Mom, uh what happened?" Livy's voice shakes but I can tell she hasn't seen what I had since my back had been turned. "Mom, what happened here?" She sounds angry now and that's good. Anger is good because then you get things done. Only I know when she sees what happened to her dad she'll lose that anger since the only more powerful emotion than anger was sadness, specifically the type of sadness that comes from losing someone important to you. "Mom, what happened? Where is everyone?"
Around her people had begun to split off, pairs looking for parents who may and may not have been here. Heartbroken screams and cries echoed back and bounced off the cold walls that seemed so empty without the people who should have been there. But I still couldn't move, couldn't make myself leave him even though I now know without a doubt that he's gone. That my soulmate was gone. Not minding my hair in disarray, the blood or the ash I keep holding him to me as if to will the life back into his limbs, but Phoenix remains dead. And I have to be the one to tell Livy that he's gone. And that I could be next if Amber figures out that I'm still alive.
"S-something happened sweetheart," My voice shakes when I reply to her and I know she catches on when her eyes narrow, those beautiful blue flecks she gained from Nix fading as the gold swallowed them, lighting up her face like searchlights as she tries to figure out what I was hiding from her. "Something happened and we have to..." Now my voice breaks and I see that she's frowning.
"Mom where's dad? I can't find him and he said he'd be here," She sounds a tad afraid now and I don't blame her since I would be too if not for me knowing I had hold of him for what I know will be the last time. "Mom? Do you know where dad is? Is he here? Please tell me he wasn't since I can see what happened to the other's parents since they found Mae eventually, Jackson as well though he was outside and her in her." She frowns and fixes her eyes on me, trying to deduce from my silence why I looked to be on the verge of exploding from the emotions inside me. "Mom? Where is dad?" She sounds more afraid now and has hold of Russel's hand tightly as if she subconsciously already knew what was happening. "Mom, what happened here and where's dad?"
Swallowing once and trying to compose myself I can feel the sadness and grief inside me threatening to take over, pull me under and break me to pieces without a chance to make it better in the future. Because despite all the horrors she'd thrown at us over the years - her group as well - nothing Amber had done yet had managed to break me quite like this. Because that's what taking my partner and Livy's father from her had done. It had broken me in a way I'd never felt but had heard plenty of people speak of. Rosa had said it when she'd been both separated from and when she fought with Hunter. Ash when he'd almost lost Leila before she was returned to us when we first found the moonstone power that day he lost control. Leila when she spoke of her parents when she had to try and save her and Hunter from being mauled to death by Rosa and Ash after Amber's manipulations. Hunter showed me what this was when he thought he lost Rosa before I used damnatio memoriae to keep them both safe. Rosa and Ash showed it when they realised what Amber had made them do last round. The four's nightmares. Leila's terror when she thought she'd lost Ash.
All that showed me what heartbreak looks like but none could have told me how it felt. How the feeling was like someone lodging a blade inside your chest and waiting for you to heal around it. Waiting so every time you tried to move it jabbed in a little deeper and tore a little wider a hold inside you. How missing your other half left you feeling like you would never be whole again. "There...there's been an accident," I admit to her, seeing how Livy's eyes tear up immediately. "Something happened."
"Mom, where's dad? "What happened?" Livy's voice shakes again this time and she sees over my shoulder when she stepped forward, Russel staying with her. "No. No, no, NO!" Like I had before she screams the word and I see her crack under the pain the way I'd been holding back from doing. And that was enough for me to snap as well, holding her close and trying my best to figure out how to tell her to go on when it looked like we were done. Like we'd lost.
Because this was it, Rosa and Leila, Hunter and Ash had been right, this was the beginning. The beginning of the end.