Page 249 of Eternal Ruin

“This can’t be happening.” Her voice was thinner than air.

Trembling, Kidan reached for the cursed blades. The swell of power inside them surged into her veins, the tug between her will and something larger. She tried to break it, but it was forged with ancient steel, and it refused to bend. She tried to return the laws, to make them crawl back onto the steel, but they only glowed on her brown skin.

They had it so wrong.

The artifacts were no different than houses. They carried a law to be inherited and absorbed. Hadn’t the professor warned her?

A house master is a soul imprisoned with one law. A Sage is a soul imprisoned with many laws. And Kidan had built herself nothing but a cage.

Quickly, Kidan cut a thin slice along her arm, hissing at the pain. If she was a vampire, it would heal by itself. The cut remained open, burning. Slow realization trickled in. It was only the First Bind she’d absorbed, which meant Kidan was still human everywhere but in her teeth. In what she drank.

Breathless, she let the blades slip from her fingers. They met the stone with a furious impact, rattling the sink and mirror.

GK knocked on the door, asking if she was okay. She could barely hear him.

She met her dark gaze. Terrified pupils. Sharp fangs.

You’re human, she begged.

But she’d known long ago that word failed to describe her. There was no good here, no fragile beauty, and certainly no mercy. She was no divine thing.

The burning taste in her mouth was clear now. She should have recognized it earlier.

In the end, after all these months, only her true companion remained—an unimaginable thirst for blood.

EPILOGUE

Varos the Night Lion sat above the death arena, in a chair made of onyx stone, surveying three acti children who trembled in fear.

They were not allowed to begin until he raised his hand. The Lusidios, red-eyed and black-fanged, salivated and pounded around the arena.

The promise of acti blood, one without poison, was a rare event.

The acti children had been starved and beaten. And today, the child victor believed they’d dine lavishly. This was not a simple brawl. Only those willing to kill would truly win.

Sure, the acti would dine. But they would also be dined on.

Varos, restricted to feed only on vampires, observed the act with boredom. He missed the taste of human blood, the delicate, terrified flesh under his claws, the consumption of their innocence. He yearned to drink from the very earth once again, drain life from ageless trees into his veins. But the Last Sage, curse his soul, had prohibited him sustenance from such feedings.

For centuries now, human blood burned a hole in Varos’s tongue, a poison.

Varos lifted his hand, a sign to begin the fight when his vampires all shouted in pain and collapsed to one knee, clutching their fangs. His own teeth rang, an odd sensation.

It had been centuries since he felt this trace of pain but he would never forget it. This was the Last Sage’s power, silent and binding, traveling through the roots of the trees. Just like Yonas’s.

Varos rose to his feet and descended the bone stairs. He touched the closest acti’s cheek with a single black claw. At once, the child’s gaunt skin was veined with black threads. The child gasped, their eyes rolling to white. But Varos wasn’t looking to kill. He wanted a taste.

To confirm what surely was a mistake.

He cut deeper, cleaving the thin skin and drawing glistening red blood that he brought to his lips.

Divine, forbidden pleasure coated his tongue, gliding down his throat. His vision became a burning, violent red.

It was rare for Varos to be surprised but he was. After all these years, someone had broken the First Bind.

It did not matter who.

It was time to gather his old friends. Ralonar, Lidia, Helenik, Nira.

Even the traitor Demasus. He’d reunite with him soon and the world would bleed black.

Varos smiled, fangs the color of liquid crimson.

The child began to cry.