Page 177 of Haunted Crowns
“Look well, Lycan. Etch her into thy soul. For once I end thy wretched life, never again shalt thou lay eyes upon what was never thine to claim.”
Kareon tried to rise, but his body refused to move. The sword came down, and Eris screamed.
Then came the clash.
Steel met steel as a shockwave rippled through the battlefield. Kriponius’s blade was stopped and forced back. His eyes widened. Eris gasped. Stephan Dragov stood before them, bloodied and unyielding. Alive.
Kriponius’s lips curled in fury. "Thou," he seethed.
Stephan’s grip tightened, his dark eyes burning like a dying star.
"Thou shouldst be rotting in the crypt where I cast thee," Kriponius snarled, disbelief curdling into wrath.
Stephan smiled, steady and unshaken, his stance unbroken. "Yet here I stand."
The storm raged like a god unchained. The sky, a black abyss split apart by veins of lightning, turned the battlefield into a world of flickering shadows.
Stephan Dragov stood by sheer, unrelenting will. He should have been broken, trapped in agony, sealed beneath stone and fate. But he had dragged himself back from the brink. He had stalked the battlefield, sinking his fangs into fallen Obsidian soldiers, breaking the sacred bans, drinking real blood like the Firstblood kings of old. He did not care, so long as he could save her. War rebuilt him—bone, blood, rage—piece by piece, until fire in his chest consumed the agony, until vengeance ceased to be promise and became certainty.
"You made a fatal mistake, Kriponius," Stephan’s voice rasped with wrath.
The Dread King tilted his head, amused. "Oh? And what folly dost thou claim as mine error?"
Stephan stepped forward, voice dipping into a lethal whisper. "You left me alive." The air shifted, thick and electric, charged with something ancient. "I have come back from oblivion to fulfill my vow," Stephan said, eyes blazing. "You will not see the end of this night."
Kriponius smirked, mocking and unbothered, but Stephan was already moving. His sword screamed through the air, relentless and precise.
Kriponius met him, blade to blade.
The battlefield roared to life with the clash of gods.
Eris gasped. Her body would not obey. She was too broken to rise, but her heart, by the gods, her heart was coming undone. He stood before her. Glorious. Unyielding. Alive.
"Stephan…" His name left her lips like a vow remembered across lifetimes. Tears spilled as she shook, caught between awe and disbelief. "You are alive."
The words rose as a cry, as a sacred invocation. Her fingers clawed through blood and ash, reaching for him, as if will alone could bridge the space between them. If this was a dream, let it take her wholly. She would not wake.
Kareon’s lips parted, but no sound came. His trembling gaze said what his body could not.
Stephan had returned. There was still hope.
Kriponius tilted his head, his smirk pure malice. "How moving," he murmured. He opened his arms, a shadowed herald summoning the final act. "Behold the sacred triad. Bound by fate, torn by desire. The stars weep, no doubt, for such a tender farce." He laughed, low and cold, void of mercy. "I did unmake the spirits’ design once. By mine own hand, I shall undo it anew, and again, and yet again." His gaze fell on Eris, burning with something eternal and absolute. "Until the heavens themselves concede their folly and return thee unto me, Seraphina."
Stephan lunged. The storm answered him. Winds howled like vengeful ghosts through the blood-soaked field. "I will not let you break her, not like you broke your queen, Kriponius."
Steel struck, sparks leaping like dying stars. Stephan moved with the violence of prophecy, vicious and unrelenting. His blade fell with the judgment of thunder.
But the Dark King only smiled. He parried, deflected, played. He drank Stephan’s fury like wine, savoring every moment. Then, with a flick and a cruel turn, Stephan was cast backward. He struck the ground, breath driven from his chest.
Kriponius laughed, soft and knowing. "Thou art so sure of her love, art thou not, boy?" He stepped forward, smirking cruelly. "Tell me this. Wilt thou still hold such certainty when she offereth her sacred flesh unto the beast?"
Stephan halted, his breath stilling.
The tyrant’s voice darkened. "When she whispereth eternal love unto thee…and her womb beareth the mongrel’s spawn?"
Eris could not breathe. Her gaze snapped to Kriponius, wide with disbelief.
Seraphina and Kaelioth had birthed a child. Would fate now compel her to bear a child of her own with Kareon?
