Page 80 of The Midnight Death Match

The blade drives through him with a sound like tearing silk.

Time fractures.

My mouth falls open. Merely a croak escapes. The world becomes a series of crystalline moments.

The widening of his eyes, not in surprise but in relief.

His free hand rising to cup my face, fingers trembling but sure.

The warm splash of his blood on my hands, my arms, my face.

He gasps once, a sound like air escaping from a punctured lung, but his eyes never leave mine. “I knew you wouldn’t do it,” he whispers, voice thin but proud, blood flecking his lips. “That’s why it had to be me.”

I catch him as he falls, my sword clattering forgotten to the stones. His weight is sudden and terrible, heavier than it should be, as if death has gravity all its own.

“No, no! Please don’t…” My hands flutter over the wound, trying uselessly to stem the flow. The blood is warm and sticky, and so very red against the pale stone.

His fingers curl into mine, slick with his own blood but holding tight.

“Remember what I told you,” he murmurs.

I have to lean close to hear him over the sound of my own sobs.

“You’re the one meant to change everything. My death… is my choice. The rest… is up to you. You’ll do more than… I ever could.”

Each word costs him. I can see the effort it takes, the way his chest rises and falls in increasingly shallow breaths.

“Don’t leave me,” I beg, pressing my forehead to his. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

But his eyes are already growing distant, looking at something beyond the sanctuary walls, beyond this moment. His lids close.

The curse shatters.

It doesn’t merely break. It explodes, like a dam bursting after holding back a flood for too long. A soundless explosion of silver and orange light bursts outward from where we kneel, rushing over the ruins like fire and wind. The very air splits apart, reality tearing like fabric. Through the gaps, I see glimpses of what might have been—other lives, other choices, other endings where we both lived.

The light burns through me, rewriting something fundamental in my bones. My wolf inside goes quiet—not dead, but at peace. Free. The hunger that has driven me for so long simply… stops.

I’m left holding the body of the only father who ever truly understood me. One I barely had any time with, and now will never get more.

As his blood soaks into the ancient stones beneath us, I wonder if this is how all curses end. Not with victory, but with loss so profound it transforms the very nature of what it means to win.

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

All I feel is Einar.His weight heavy against me, his blood soaking into my clothes, still warm, as if some part of him hasn’t realized he’s gone.

“Please,” I whisper, fingers curled into the fabric of his cloak. “Come back to me. Please, not like this.”

But itislike this. It always was. Our predecessors before never could break this curse. What made me think I could?

Light erupts again—brighter this time, flooding the sanctuary with searing warmth. Silver tendrils spiral into the air, curling through the broken columns, etching ancient runes across the walls. Orange fire swirls in their wake, not consuming, but cleansing.

The curse is unbinding itself.

I can feel it unraveling deep inside me like a second heartbeat being pulled apart thread by thread.

It hurts. So much. Not in my body, but in my soul.