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CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

IRENE

J ace was finally dancing with the winds.

Irene saw his body swallowed by the void, carried away by the fury of the storm. Yet, he seemed to float—his arms outstretched like a bird torn from the sky.

After 124 days imprisoned, 47 days at sea, many deaths, tears and bloodshed, Irene lost everything once again. And this time, only a few feet away from her ultimate prize. She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. She simply stared into the void where Jace had fallen. A part of her went with him—perhaps the last shred of her sanity.

The wind howled. The stones cracked beneath her feet. But she heard nothing.

The world blurred. Muted. Deafening.

A raw ache pressed against her ribs, crushing her beneath its weight. But movement caught her eye.

Dax.

He was running toward the opening, where the sapphire still glowed. But the mountain was alive. The entrance groaned, stone grinding, shifting, sealing away his last hope.

Irene watched. Empty. Detached.

The jaws of the rock clamped shut, swallowing the blue light beneath a thousand tons of stone.

Too late.

A sacrifice had not been enough. Nehalannia still cried for blood.

A choked sob split the air behind her. A scream, muffled by the storm.

Then—a shadow in the chaos. A ripple in the fabric of fate. Magic.

The witch cut through the storm, dragging something—someone.

A girl. Fragile. Bruised. Weeping.

She thrashed against Keegan’s grip, her voice raw, breathless.

An offering.

Keegan shoved the girl toward Dax.

And Irene understood.

Dax drew his knife.

She took one last look behind her. Javier and Zahra stood frozen, too far away to intervene.

And then, Jessalyn emerged from the mountain’s shadow, her arms flailing as she ran with all her might, her face contorted in rage.

Her voice pierced through the eerie silence inside Irene’s mind.

"Stop her! Before she ruins everything!"

The blade flashed.

Ready to slice.

Ready to draw blood.

Ready to finish it.

But Irene refused this future. If she couldn't win—then no one would.

No voices spoke to her now. No whispers in her mind. It was her. Irene Delmare decided.

Jessalyn screamed. “Keegan, stop her!”

Irene frowned, tilting her head slightly, her gaze flickering between Jessalyn and Keegan, as if she were tracing an invisible thread connecting them.

And in that fleeting moment of clarity, amidst the raging mountain and the sky ablaze with fire, Irene knew.

She knew the cold truth.

She had been fooled once more.

And so, as this tale began, one timeless truth resonates through this world:

History, in its relentless cycle, always repeats itself.

Without a word, she turned. One step. Then another. Toward Keegan.

Before anyone could react, she threw herself at the princess.

With one brutal shove, she sent her crashing into the void.

The girl’s scream tore through the air, sharp and desperate, then vanished into silence.

She too fell into the abyss, carried away by the raging winds.

"No!" Jessalyn and Keegan screamed at the same time.

Dax staggered back, shock crashing into him like a tidal wave. His knees buckled beneath the weight of what he had just seen.

He collapsed. Hands pressed to his face. A silent scream dying in his throat.

Then—a horn, ancient and earth-shaking, wailed across the abyss, heralding the end. A sound of judgment, of finality. A deep, dull sound echoed through the mountain. The horn’s tone was long and ominous, like a call from beyond. The mountain trembled.

And the sky darkened.

Black clouds churned, twisting into a monstrous, writhing vortex. Birds fled in desperate, panicked spirals, their cries swallowed by the rising storm. The air turned thick, sulfurous, the stench of burning, of rot, of something crawling up from the bowels of the earth.

The ground beneath Irene splintered. Cracks ran like veins through the stone.

She looked down just in time to see the opening to the sapphire cave collapse. A deafening roar of stone upon stone, an avalanche sealing away what they had fought so desperately to claim. The sapphire was gone.

Then came the fire.

A massive fissure tore through the mountainside—gaping, alive, ravenous. Black smoke erupted. Then lava—liquid fire, hungry and relentless, spewing upward in a tidal wave of burning ruin. The trees didn’t just burn. They disintegrated. The rocks didn’t just crack. They exploded. The very air boiled.

The mountain was not dying. It was awakening.

Jessalyn slapped Irene. Her head snapped to the side, but she barely felt it.

“What have you done?!” Jessalyn’s scream cut through the chaos, raw, hysterical. She seized Irene by the shoulders and shook her violently. “You stupid fool! You’ve killed us all!”

The mountain convulsed. A second fissure tore open, spewing fire and death.

A second slap. Harder.

Irene's vision blurred. She turned, her wild, burning gaze locking onto Javier, crying. His lips trembled as he looked up at the sky. "Now, little saint… now you can pray for our souls," he whispered to Zahra.

The words shattered what little control she had left. Irene screamed.

Her body convulsed in sobs.

“It’s not me,” Irene stammered, gasping for breath, “It’s him! IT’S HIM!”

Through the rising inferno, she saw Keegan disappear in a shadow of smoke.

Dax stood, his face hollow, drawn with something deeper than exhaustion. Regret. Madness. Slowly, he stepped back. Then, like a man realizing he was staring into his own grave, he turned away and ran.

Irene moved before she could think. She shoved Jessalyn back and bolted.

Smoke swallowed her whole. Fire licked at her heels. The earth crumbled beneath her feet, but she didn’t stop.

She couldn’t.

Because Dax would not escape her.

Irene left Jessalyn standing frozen, her face ashen, fists clenched. The mountain shook, the horn wailed through the heavy air, and everything she had plotted was falling apart.

For years, Lady Death and The Witch had schemed in the shadows, weaving lies into the fabric of fate. But what they could not foresee was the depth of Irene’s madness—a storm that would shatter even the darkest ambitions.