Chapter 128: Changed
Elisa hesitated, her gaze caught between distrust and exhaustion. Then she yielded. Not to him, but to what he represented in that instant: Maggie’s last chance. She stepped back just slightly, just enough to not be in the way. Dylan knelt beside the torn flank.
"Sorry..." he whispered, but that word wasn’t meant for anyone. It was a murmur to the universe, to his own body, to the absurdity of the act he was about to commit.
He pushed aside the soaked fabric, pressed his open palm against the wound. And on his back, beneath skin stained with soot and dried blood, the stigma began to glow.
It wasn’t a gentle light. It was raw. Harsh. As if the flesh refused to yield, but opened anyway under the force of a silent oath. A gash slowly opened on his own flank, exactly where Maggie was bleeding. A perfect mirror. The transfer had begun.
A stream of blood immediately seeped from him—warm, thick, more black than red. Maggie, meanwhile, stopped bleeding. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, her breathing grew less ragged.
Dylan was already faltering.
The pain speared through him like a blade. Each heartbeat was a hammer blow. He felt the muscles in his legs give way, and had to brace against the ground to avoid collapsing face-first. But he didn’t let go of her wound. He had to see it through. He had to. He didn’t want his body to keep living if not to mend what he had broken.
Spiritual essence coursed upstream through his veins like a wild torrent. It wasn’t just a wound he was taking—he was taking all the pain, all the trauma of that night, all the invisible blades that had torn Maggie from the inside.
And it was breaking him.
He screamed this time. A hoarse, strangled, animal cry. The wound on his side widened. Blood, tears, saliva—everything mingled with the cold earth beneath him. He thought he might die. He realized, with horror, that Maggie had borne this all this time without collapsing.
His mind was fracturing.