Page 22 of Infernal Crown (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #3)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DATHAN
Watching Lysithea fight a cosmic force that has existed since before time was invented feels like watching someone try to hold back the ocean with their bare hands.
Omnipotent power crackles between them in torrents that make my nightmare magic twist in recognition, but even channelling the Crown’s authority, she’s outmatched.
The grimoire’s ancient intellect cuts through her defences, cosmic experience trumping raw power in ways that make my chest tight with terror.
There are new occurrences with the Soul Scar.
I can feel her exhaustion bleeding into our shared consciousness.
Every second of direct conflict drains her reserves, her new energy burning through her transformed body like acid through cloth.
She’s magnificent in her fury, silver fire tracing patterns across her skin that rewrite local reality according to her will, but magnificence won’t be enough.
The grimoire has had aeons to perfect its understanding of cosmic forces. Lysithea has had a couple of days.
Around us, Verik’s false realm collapses in cascading failures that turn paradise into debris.
The crystal streams boil away into nothing.
The perfect trees burn with colours that hurt to look at.
Grass dissolves into components that spiral into a dimensional void, leaving patches of raw randomness where beauty used to exist.
“The structural integrity is failing faster than I calculated,” Verik shouts over the sound of reality tearing itself apart as he blasts hellfire at the grimoire.
It deflects, and we duck as it races back towards us.
“The power levels are fucking insane; beyond anything the realm was designed to handle. It was meant to be used to blow this fucker up, not be an arena for a god fight!”
“No shit,” I growl. But even my sarcasm feels inadequate when watching universes die as collateral damage.
Through the dimensional barriers surrounding our failing trap, I sense other realities winking out of existence like candles in a cyclone.
Entire civilisations that never knew we existed, paying the price for our arrogance.
Evren moves closer to the conflict, death magic probing for connections he can sever to disrupt the grimoire’s working. But cosmic forces operate on scales that dwarf even his enhanced abilities. It’s an ancient power that recognises no authority save its own perfect vision of truth.
“I can’t find a clean severance point,” he says, frustration bleeding through his careful composure. “The grimoire’s power is too integrated with fundamental reality. Cutting those connections might unmake everything.”
Everything is already being unmade, just more slowly than the grimoire would prefer. Our trap has become the launching point for universal catastrophe, providing exactly the stable platform the grimoire needed to reach beyond our ability to contain its influence.
Through my nightmare magic, I sense the terror of beings dying in dimensions I’ve never even heard of.
Creatures whose concepts of existence are so alien that my mind can’t process their nature, crying out as the grimoire’s vision of absolute truth rewrites their fundamental essence.
The accumulated terror is feeding me in ways I could only ever dream about.
Lysithea staggers under another assault from the grimoire’s power.
Blood runs from her nose, bright red against skin that glows with barely contained starlight.
The Crown’s influence keeps her upright, but I can feel through our bond that she’s reaching the limits of what her transformed body can endure.
“You cannot preserve imperfection forever,” the grimoire says. “Truth will prevail, as it always has.”
“Not today,” Lysithea snarls, but her defiance sounds hollow.
She rallies her power for another attack, silver fire erupting from her hands in streams that could crack continental plates. But the grimoire deflects her assault with casual ease.
The counterattack nearly kills her.
Power that operates on universal scales crashes into her defences, overwhelming every protection the Crown can provide. She screams, fracturing reality around her, and collapses to her knees as this overwhelming energy burns through her nervous system like liquid fire.
That’s when I make the decision that will either save everything or damn us all.
I’ve always been the one who acts on instinct rather than careful planning. Verik calculates probabilities and structural weaknesses. Evren observes with death-taught patience until he identifies the perfect moment to strike.
But me? I see the woman I love dying by degrees, and I throw myself at the force that’s killing her.
Nightmare magic isn’t designed for direct confrontation with cosmic powers. My abilities specialise in subtle manipulation, crafting fears and anxieties that eat away at an enemy’s confidence from within. Against the grimoire’s absolute certainty, my usual tactics are worse than useless.
So, I don’t try to fight it. Instead, I do something that violates every principle of magical theory I’ve ever learned: I offer myself as a sacrifice to disrupt its working.
“Hey, you fucking dick!” I shout, channelling every ounce of power I possess into the words. “You want absolute truth? Here’s one for you: we’d rather die than let you perfect us!”
I launch myself at the grimoire with nightmare magic blazing around me like wings made of concentrated terror.
Not attacking, but presenting myself as a target too tempting to ignore.
A chance for the grimoire to demonstrate its superiority by crushing the insignificant being who dares to challenge it.
The grimoire’s attention fixes on me with the weight of collapsing stars. “Oh, I’ve been waiting for this.”
“So have I,” I spit out. “But it’ll piss off my woman, and you will get your paper arse handed to you.”
The grimoire’s power hits me like being struck by a mountain made of pure concept.
Every atom in my body screams in protest as forces meant to reshape universes focus their attention on unmaking one Sovereign of Nightmares, banished though he may be, but far more powerful than even this dickhead knows.
I feel my magical abilities burning away like chaff in a furnace, connections severing as the grimoire’s influence rewrites the fundamental equations that define my existence.
But even as the fire consumes everything that makes me who I am, I hold onto one last piece of defiance.
Through the Soul Scar, I push every ounce of attachment I feel for the three people who matter more than existence itself.
Not words or coherent thoughts, just pure emotion distilled into its most essential form.
Love for all of them together, the impossible bond that transformed four broken people into something stronger than the sum of their individual parts.
Lysithea screams blue murder as I unravel.
But I feel the grimoire’s confusion as it encounters emotions that resist rational categorisation.
Love transcends logic, defies the precision that governs gods.
The grimoire can unmake my body, burn away my magical abilities, reduce me to component particles, but it can’t eliminate the bonds that connect me to the people who chose to love someone as fundamentally flawed as me.
It reaches deeper into my consciousness, trying to understand how emotional bonds can persist despite the logical impossibility of their existence. And that’s when I spring my real trap.
I’ve spent years crafting nightmares that exploit the gap between rational thought and primal fear. The grimoire’s absolute certainty makes it vulnerable to the one thing it can’t logically process: doubt introduced through emotional channels rather than intellectual ones.
As the power burns through my mind, I feed it every nightmare I’ve ever created.
Not the elaborate constructions designed to terrify specific individuals, but the raw terror that lurks beneath conscious thought.
Fear of abandonment, fear of meaninglessness, fear that everything we care about is ultimately temporary and fragile.
The grimoire recoils as emotions that defy rational analysis flood through our sizzling connection. For the first time since this conflict began, I feel its certainty waver as it encounters concepts that resist perfect categorisation.
“What are you doing?” it demands.
“Showing you what you’re trying to destroy,” I gasp, my consciousness fragmenting as it unmakes the neural pathways that define my personality. “Beauty that exists because it’s imperfect, not despite it.”
I feel my awareness dissolving like sugar in rain, connections severing as the fundamental forces that bind thought to flesh come apart under pressure they were never designed to withstand.
But I’ve bought us something more valuable than time: I’ve given Lysithea a reason to stop holding back.
Through the Soul Scar, I feel the precise moment when she understands that I’m dying to give her the opening she needs. The way grief and rage and protective fury combine into something that transcends every limitation the Crown has tried to impose on her.
“DATHAN!”
Her scream carries power that makes the dying realm convulse around us. Raw emotional energy that burns with the intensity of every star that ever lived. The Crown’s influence amplifies her fury beyond anything the universe was designed to contain, fuelled by love that refuses to accept loss.
Lysithea’s power explodes outward like a storm. Her rage tears through the perfect order that the grimoire tried to create. Her grief fights back against its cold calculations. Some things deserve to live because they can’t be measured.
The blast hits every weak spot Verik had hidden in the realm’s structure. What should have fallen apart slowly instead shatters all at once. Paradise crumbles like a house of cards.
“The realm is collapsing!” Verik shouts, but his voice sounds distant.
I watch through dying eyes as our carefully planned trap finally activates, but not the way we intended.
Lysithea’s emotional outburst has triggered premature collapse, the realm coming apart faster than anyone calculated.
Instead of containing the grimoire’s power within controlled parameters, we’re all going to be crushed when paradise implodes.
The grimoire’s attention snaps between the dying realm and Lysithea’s uncontrolled fury, its intellect finally recognising that something has gone seriously wrong with its perfect plan.
Evren and Verik struggle to reach us as reality fractures around the epicentre of Lysithea’s rage. But her power breaks the rules of space. Verik and Evren might be inches away or worlds away—I can’t tell anymore as everything twists apart.
I’m dying. The grimoire tears through my mind, pulling me apart thought by thought. But before I go, I understand one last truth with perfect clarity.
We’re all going to die here. Our clever trap has become my tomb. I just need Verik to get it together long enough to get them out of here.
My awareness finally dissolves completely, the last of my thoughts scattering like stars going dark across an infinite sky. The Soul Scar holds for a few seconds longer, carrying echoes of consciousness that no longer have a source, then fades into silence that tastes of endings.
Everything goes black.