(POV: Ava)
The sound grew louder.
Boots on gravel. Branches cracking. Metal shifting. They were close.
Kael stood still as stone at the chapel's shattered archway, his back to me, chest rising and falling with eerie calm. But I knew better. I could feel the tension vibrating off him like a string pulled taut to its breaking point.
His eyes were glowing again.
Not softly. Not gently.
Dangerously.
"Kael," I whispered as I approached him, slipping my hand into his.
"They brought Hounds," he murmured.
I froze.
The Hounds weren't beasts. They were people—once. Twisted by the First Ones, their humanity stripped down to instinct and violence. Fast, rabid, and loyal only to the shadows that made them. I'd seen what they did to towns. To survivors.
"Then we fight," I said. My voice shook. I didn't care.
Kael turned to me, gaze burning like embers about to consume wood. "You don't understand. The Hounds can't be reasoned with. They don't stop. And if they sense me—"
"They'll come for you."
His jaw clenched. "For both of us."
A long pause.
Then I stepped forward, until our foreheads touched, until his breath warmed my lips.
"Then let them come."
***
The moment shattered with a bang.
The stained-glass window exploded inward, shards scattering like deadly rain. Something screamed—inhuman, guttural—and then a blur of black muscle crashed into the pew beside us.
The Hound rose.
Its face was half-human, half-nightmare. Eyes glowing white. Mouth split open with jagged teeth too long for its face. And its voice—
"Found you."
Kael pushed me behind him just as two more burst through the opposite wall. One dropped from the rafters.
We were surrounded.
And Kael—Kael snapped.
The roar that ripped from his throat wasn't human.
It was pain and rage and power colliding into a sound that shook the chapel walls. His blade was in his hand before I could blink, and then he was moving—a blur of shadows and fire, slashing, dodging, breaking bodies with raw force.
The Hounds were fast.
Kael was faster.
But the more he fought, the more I saw it happening.
His body—changing. His skin cracking with red light. His movements becoming less controlled, more animal. The black veins flared, and a second mouth split across his shoulder—inhuman, opening with a hiss.
He was losing himself.
I screamed his name, but he didn't hear me.
He wasn't there.
***
I ran toward him as he threw the last Hound across the altar, its skull shattering with a sickening crack. He turned toward me, face twisted with fury, blood dripping from his hands, from his mouth—
And his eyes weren't red anymore.
They were black.
"Ava," he said, voice distorted, layered, deeper than it should be. "You need to run."
"No," I said, tears in my throat. "Come back. Come back to me."
"I can't hold it. I can't—" His body seized. He dropped to his knees, hands slamming into the ground as a wave of heat blasted out from him, cracking the stone.
I knelt in front of him, grabbing his face between my hands.
"You can."
He looked at me, trembling. "I don't want to hurt you."
"Then don't."
Something inside me flared. Hot. Bright. Ancient.
The power surged up from my chest and into my hands, into him. Golden light spilled between my fingers and poured into his skin, sinking into every crack, every broken vein, pushing against the darkness trying to take him.
Kael screamed.
The second mouth on his shoulder sealed shut. The black in his eyes shattered. His body collapsed into mine, and he sobbed into my chest like a boy dragged from a nightmare.
"I'm here," I whispered, rocking him. "I've got you."
And something whispered back inside me:
"He is yours. As he always has been."
When the last echo of the Hounds faded into the night, Kael lay with his head in my lap, eyes closed, face slack with exhaustion. His skin was pale. His body still flickered with heat beneath my fingers. But he was human again. Whole again.
I stroked his hair as the firelight flickered around us.
I should have been afraid. Of the monsters. Of him.
Of what I had just done.
But I wasn't.
Because for the first time, I understood.
That power inside me—it wasn't a weapon.
It was a bond. A lifeline.
Meant for him.
And when Kael finally opened his eyes and whispered, "Ava?" in that broken, boyish voice, I felt my heart splinter and reforge itself.
"I'm here," I said.
"I saw… everything. When you touched me."
"So did I."
His hand rose to cup my cheek. "Then you know."
"I know we were something before," I whispered. "And we're more now."
He nodded.
Then he said the words that made me breathless.
"I'm in love with you."
***
I kissed him again, slow this time. Deep. Not from panic or adrenaline—but from truth.
And when we finally lay down in the quiet rubble of the chapel floor, his arms around me, the fire burning low, I didn't feel broken.
I felt chosen.
***
But the night had one more secret to give.
Because just before sleep took me, I saw a shadow move in the broken doorway.
A woman.
Draped in black and gold. Her eyes glowing like dying stars. And her voice cut through my mind like a blade dipped in honey.
"Finally. The priestess awakens."
And then—
Darkness.