Page 24 of Infernal Crown (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

LYSITHEA

The moment I give up the crown’s power, everything changes.

The grimoire stares at me with confusion that ripples through space, its ancient intellect struggling to process how I can still exist without the godly power flowing through my veins.

Around us, the false realm continues its death spiral, Verik’s paradise cracking apart under the weight of forces it was never designed to contain.

“Now would be an excellent time for everyone to get very close to me,” Verik’s voice cuts through the haze.

Something in his tone makes my blood freeze. Not panic, not fear, but the calm certainty of someone about to do something catastrophically final. His magical signature shifts into patterns I’ve never encountered before, power flowing through pathways that taste of endings and absolutes.

“Verik, what are you doing?” Evren demands.

“What we came here to do,” Verik replies, his genius focusing with laser intensity on calculations that make reality shiver. “Eradicating this realm, along with everything inside it.”

The Armageddon spell. The final contingency we were going to use in the first place.

“The spell will kill us too,” I point out, though I’m already moving towards him as instructed. “And probably all the realms that are being unmade through this one.”

“Not if we’re very fast and very lucky,” he says, power surging as he accesses the fundamental equations that define this reality’s structure. “The spell takes thirty seconds to cascade through the realm’s foundation. The portal back to DarkHallow will remain stable for some of those seconds.”

Some seconds of margin for error.

“Lysithea,” Verik says, his magic building to levels that make my eyes blur. “I need you to channel whatever power you have left into reinforcing the portal stability.”

Giving up godhood doesn’t mean I’m powerless, just that I’m back to the magical abilities I had before the divine transformation. Still more than capable of supporting Verik’s working, even if I can no longer reshape reality with a thought.

I place my hand on his arm, over the Soul Scar, feeling the familiar tingle of magical resonance as our abilities synchronise.

His architectural genius flows through the connection, showing me the elegant framework that defines how this realm fits together.

Every support beam, every structural joint, every point where force transfers from one system to another.

And threaded through it all, the Armageddon spell. A spell of such devastating completeness that it will annihilate everything, causing the entire false realm to collapse into its component parts within seconds.

“Beautiful,” I murmur, genuinely impressed despite the circumstances.

“Initiating cascade in five seconds. Everyone ready? Evren grab Dathan.”

Evren moves to haul our dead soulmate over his shoulder. I look away. I can’t think about that right now.

The grimoire’s power lashes out desperately, trying to disrupt our spell before Verik can trigger the realm’s destruction.

“Three. Two. One.”

Verik’s power explodes outward in waves that blasts each atom of this realm into smithereens. The Armageddon spell cascades through the realm’s structure like wildfire through dry grass, unmaking paradise with a preciseness that makes me shudder.

The portal back to DarkHallow shimmers into existence beside us, a dimensional gateway crackling with energy that tastes of home and safety and the familiar magical signatures of our territory.

But the gateway flickers unstably, power fluctuations that threaten to collapse the connection before we can escape.

“GO!” Verik roars, even as we are already moving.

The blast zone is about to reach critical point, and we are standing right in the middle of it.

We dive through the portal as the realm explodes in a bomb of hellfire that burns through the portal and whooshes over our heads as we roll away from it to opposite sides of the tower room.

The gateway slams shut behind us with the finality of a closing coffin.

The transition hits like being turned inside out and reassembled according to different principles.

I roll over and stare at the ceiling, magical exhaustion combining with dimensional displacement sending me into a state of shock.

“Everyone okay?” Verik asks.

“Define okay,” Evren mutters.

The magical drain hits me with full force, leaving me exhausted in a way that goes deeper than physical tiredness.

I spent everything I had left reinforcing the spell with Verik, pushing magical abilities beyond their normal limits to ensure our escape.

Combined with the trauma of surrendering godhood and watching Dathan sacrifice himself, my body simply decides it’s had enough.

Consciousness flickers like a candle in a strong wind. The last thing I see before darkness takes me is Evren’s face hovering over mine, his death magic probing my condition with the careful precision of someone who understands exactly how fragile the boundary between existence and void really is.

“She’s alive,” I hear him say, voice coming from very far away. “Powerless, but alive.”

Powerless. The word should terrify me, but instead it feels like laying down a burden I never realised I was carrying.

No more cosmic responsibility. No more forces beyond my comprehension flowing through transformed flesh.

Just Lysithea, Nox Siren—maybe—connected to the people she loves through bonds that transcend rational explanation.

We stopped the grimoire, saved existence from a shithole utopia and prevented the systematic elimination of everything beautiful and flawed and worth preserving. Save for maybe a realm or two.

But the cost...

Dathan’s absence is like a missing limb.

The bond that connected us flickers weakly, carrying echoes of consciousness that no longer has a source to sustain it.

He gave everything to buy us the opening we needed, throwing himself at the grimoire without hesitation because he saw the people he loved in danger.

The others are alive. Bruised, drained, probably traumatised by the experience of fighting forces that operate on universal scales, but alive. We’ll heal from the physical damage, recover from the magical exhaustion, find ways to cope with the memories of cosmic conflict.

But Dathan is gone, and no amount of victory can change that fundamental truth.

Darkness is my only friend as my consciousness finally surrenders to the weight of everything we’ve endured. My last coherent thought is gratitude—for surviving, for succeeding, for the bonds that held us together when cosmic forces tried to tear everything apart.

We won.

But gods, the price we paid for that victory.

The world fades to black.