Chapter 136: The Last Oath
The air inside the ruined Black Citadel pulsed with tension, thick with blood, magic, and ash. The great obsidian walls, once symbols of Blackwood might, now stood fractured, scarred by betrayal and war. Crimson banners that once bore the sigil of the Vale Dynasty now hung in tatters, fluttering in the wind like ghosts of a fading era.
Cambria stood alone at the top of the throne dais, her blood-stained armor cracked but gleaming in the torchlight. Behind her, the shattered remnants of the God Engine pulsed erratically, flickering between realms a dying heart on the edge of implosion. She had bound it to her soul, sacrificed part of her humanity to control its power, and now she could feel it unraveling inside her.
Her hands shook, not from fear, but from restraint. Every breath she took was a battle between godhood and mortality.
Below, on the marble floor, lay Maddox Raye, motionless.
Knox knelt beside his brother, the shock in his eyes far deeper than any wound he’d suffered. Blood streamed from his shoulder where Cambria had cut him down, but his gaze was only on Maddox the one man he had never intended to lose.
"He shouldn’t have jumped in the way," Knox whispered, his voice cracking. "That blade was meant for me."
Cambria’s jaw clenched. "He knew."
Silence fell again, broken only by the distant clash of the final battles raging across the kingdom. The Rebellion had fractured. The Pandora Protocol had collapsed. The perfected weapons had begun turning on each other when the command hierarchy was severed thanks to Evelyn’s sacrifice.
Now only ruins remained.
A slow, steady clapping echoed from the shadows.
Lucien Vale stepped forward, draped in a dark velvet cloak streaked with gold and ash. His once-golden hair had gone white, his face gaunt and twisted by the unnatural rituals he had used to extend his life. He looked like a man who had stared too long into the abyss and made it bow.