Chapter 119: Crystal Vigil: The Rebirth
While Lyra knelt beside the crystal, shaking, Maeve forced herself to step forward. Her hands trembled but she managed to clean her eyes with her sleeve, and looked at the blue shell encasing her brother.
She pressed her palm flat against the surface.
"It’s warm," she said, her voice thin but steady. "There’s a faint pulse. This is not just a shell. It’s... keeping him alive. Like a life-support system. His heart is still beating inside."
Emric was already moving. He grabbed the heavy wooden desk and placed it in front of the destroyed doorway. Renna dragged the bookshelf over to block the window. Together they piled furniture, torn bedframe pieces, anything they could find, creating a barricade that would at least slow someone down.
"Nobody gets into this room," Emric said. His voice had lost all its usual academic calm. This was something rawer.
"Nobody."
Renna notched an arrow and stood at the gap in the barricade, her eyes red but her hands steady.
"I’ll take first watch. Emric, get the medical kit from the bathroom. Maeve, keep monitoring that crystal."
Maeve nodded and sat on the floor beside her brother, her hand resting on the blue surface.
Lyra didn’t move. She stayed on her knees, her forehead pressed against the crystal.
Morning came fast.
The news of Holden’s attack hadn’t spread yet. The villa looked normal from the outside, the barricaded room invisible behind closed curtains.
Then the Sterling carriage arrived.
Emric saw it from the window and his blood went cold.
"Lyra. Your father is here."
Lyra stood up from the floor and putting her spear behind her back. She’d been beside the crystal for seven hours straight. Her eyes were swollen and her dress was stained with dried tears.
But when she heard those words, something shifted behind her eyes.
She walked to the door.
"Lyra, don’t—" Renna started.
"Move the barricade," Lyra said.
Emric hesitated. "Lyra, if he’s here with guards—"
"I said move it."
They moved it.
Lyra stepped outside into the morning air.
The Duke of House Sterling stood in the courtyard with eight elite guards in formation behind him. He wore a long black coat, his silver hair combed perfectly, his expression carved from sympathetic concern.
It was a good face. The face of a father who had come to comfort his grieving daughter.
"Lyra," he said softly, opening his arms. "My dear girl. I received the bad news this morning. I came as soon as I heard."
Lyra stopped a few feet away from him.
She looked at his face closely. The fake sorrow. The careful softness in his voice. And the way his eyes flashed once toward the window of Holden’s room, checking if it the job was done.
"You did this, Didn’t you?" she said.
The Duke’s expression didn’t change. "Lyra, I understand you’re distraught. Grief does terrible things to judgment. Please, come home. Let us care for you during this difficult—"
"You hired an assassin."
The words landed like hammer blows.
The Duke’s mask slipped for a second.
"That is a serious accusation," he said, his voice hardening by one degree. "I suggest you—"
"I saw your face yesterday." Lyra’s voice was quiet. "When you broke that teacup. You told mother to contact them tonight. And last night, someone broke into his room with a cursed blade and put a hole in his chest. You thought i didn’t hear you right?"
The guards shifted uncomfortably. They hadn’t been told the details of their mission. They were starting to realize something was very wrong.
"Lyra, you are being hysterical," the Duke said, taking a step forward.
"Take one more step."
The temperature plummeted.
Frost erupted from Lyra’s feet, racing across the courtyard grass, coating the path in a thick layer of ice. The air itself crystallized, tiny ice particles floating around her like snow falling upward. She pulled her spear from her back, the blade humming with so much cold energy that the metal turned white.
Her eyes were no longer red from grief.
They were glowing blue.
She raised the spear and pointed it directly at her father’s throat.
"You are not my father anymore," she said. "House Sterling means nothing to me. Your name means nothing to me. If you or your men take one more step toward that room, I will freeze your blood where you stand."
The Duke’s composure finally cracked. True panic flashed across his face, and it had nothing to do with the spear. It was his daughter’s eyes that scared him. He had never seen her look at him like that.
"Lyra, put the weapon down. We can discuss this like—"
"There’s nothing to discuss."
"Guards, restrain her," the Duke ordered sharply.
Two guards stepped forward.
They made it three steps before a crushing weight slammed into all of them at once. Both men dropped to their knees, their armor buckling under an invisible pressure that pinned them flat against the ground.
Instructor Vespera walked through the villa’s front gate.
She wore her usual black coat, her cold eyes scanning the courtyard with zero expression. Her Rank 4 aura pressed down on the area like a mountain sitting on everyone’s shoulders.
"Duke Sterling," Vespera said, her voice flat. "I believe you are lost. This is Competitor Village territory. And you are threatening my personal disciple’s team."
The Duke straightened his coat, fighting to maintain dignity under the crushing aura. "Instructor, this is a family matter."
"No. A family matter is what happens behind closed doors. This is eight armed guards at my student’s home. That is something else entirely." Vespera took a step forward, and the Duke actually stepped back. "Leave. Before I forget my manners."
The Duke looked at Lyra one last time.
She didn’t blink. The spear didn’t waver.
He turned, climbed into his carriage, and left.
Vespera watched the carriage disappear down the road. Then she turned to Lyra.
"Inside," she said gently. "He’s still alive. I can feel it."
Lyra’s frozen aura shattered. The cold vanished. Her legs buckled, and Vespera caught her before she hit the ground.
Forty-seven hours and fifty-three minutes.
Maeve counted every single one.
She sat beside the crystal, watching the faint blue pulse, tracking its rhythm against her own heartbeat.
Emric brought her food to eat. Renna held her hand when the shaking got bad. Lyra sat still on the other side, her hand pressed flat against the crystal, whispering things too quiet for anyone else to hear.
At forty-seven hours and fifty-four minutes, the pulse changed.
It sped up.
Maeve’s head snapped up. "Something’s happening."
Emric and Renna rushed to the door. Lyra pressed both hands against the crystal.
Craaaack.
A thin line split across the surface, glowing white at the edges.
Craaaack. Craaaack.
More lines appeared, spreading across the blue shell.
The hum intensified, vibrating through the floor.
"Get back!" Emric shouted, pulling Maeve away.
Lyra didn’t move.
SHATTER.
The crystal exploded outward into harmless blue dust that dissolved before it hit the ground. The light flared bright enough to fill the room, then faded.
Holden stood in the middle of the dust.
He was shirtless. His chest was smooth, unmarked, without a single scar. The wound that should have killed him had been erased completely.
His eyes opened.
They found Lyra instantly.
She was on her feet, tears pouring down her face, her whole body shaking.
Holden stepped forward and pulled her into his arms.
He held her tight, one hand on the back of her head, the other around her waist.
Over her shoulder, his eyes found the broken window. The morning light streamed through the gap where the assassin had entered. His gaze tracked the path. The route a shadow had taken to reach his bed.
His eyes went dark.
No anger, no sadness. Just something far beyond both.
Somebody had tried to assassinate him in his sleep with a cursed blade. And somebody had brought Lyra to tears.
He closed his eyes, leaning his chin softly against her hair.
He didn’t say a word.