Chapter 962. Do Not Recoil, Let It Happen, I Coached Her Through Terror
Iris sat on the edge of her bed, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had faded to a bloodless white.
Her spine was held in a rigid, unnatural line, the posture of someone performing a role of composure while their entire nervous system was screaming in protest. Every muscle in her body felt coiled like a spring, ready to snap at the slightest provocation.
Rex had demanded the room be purged of any distractions. The quiet, methodical preparations had been unnerving; she watched from her perch as he moved with a predator’s economy of motion.
He shoved the small table toward the window with a deliberate scrape that set her teeth on edge, drew the heavy curtains to choke out the afternoon sunlight, and finally knelt on the floor.
He placed a single candle at the room’s center, its flame casting dancing, skeletal shadows across the walls. According to the archive documentation Elaris had unearthed, soul manipulation required this specific low-light environment to prevent ambient energy from contaminating the spiritual tether.
Rex moved with a calm, unhurried competence that made Iris feel like prey being prepared for ritual slaughter. She watched him, her chest tight with an emotion that fluctuated violently between a desperate gratitude for his willingness to help and a primal, bone-deep nervousness she hadn’t anticipated.
"You do not have to do this today," Rex said.
His voice was low, carrying that same unshakable authority that always seemed to command her surrender. He didn’t even look up from where he was kneeling beside the candle, adjusting its position by a fraction of an inch with terrifying precision.
"If you need more time to gather your courage."
"I do not need more time," Iris snapped.
The sharpness of her own voice surprised her, cutting through the heavy silence like a blade. "I have had twenty-six days of time, Rex..."
"Thirty-two days of waking up with this hollow ache in my chest, wondering if I’ll ever feel whole again."
She took a shuddering breath, her gaze fixed on the flickering candle flame. "If I wait any longer, I am going to talk myself out of it entirely..."
"I’ll find excuses. I’ll convince myself that the pain is manageable, that the emptiness is just part of living."
"And I cannot. I will not lose this chance simply because I let myself get too comfortable with the idea of losing it."
Rex turned his head toward her then, his dark eyes catching the amber glow of the solitary candle. Something shifted in his expression; the predatory edge softened into something far more dangerous: a quiet, genuine respect.
It was the kind of respect he reserved only for those who possessed the rare fortitude to be brutally honest about their own vulnerabilities, rather than those who donned a mask of false courage to impress him.
A slow, devilish smirk began to tug at the corner of his mouth, breaking the solemnity of the moment. His gaze raked over her flushed face, lingering on the way her pulse fluttered visibly at the base of her throat.
"Well," he purred, his voice dropping to a husky, teasing register that made her skin prickle. "I have to hand it to you, Iris."
"After yesterday... after everything we did... I honestly didn’t think you’d be this eager to get back to work."
"I half expected you to be unable to walk straight today, let alone crave another session with me." He let out a low, amused chuckle, leaning in slightly. "Most women would need at least twenty-four hours to recover from how hard I fucked you last night."
"But here you are, rushing straight into the fire."
Iris felt the heat explode across her cheeks. A furious, involuntary blush flooded her entire face, spreading down to her collarbones.
The memory of his relentless thrusts and the way she had begged for more flashed through her mind like a lightning strike, making her stomach flip with shame and arousal all at once.
"Shut up!" she hissed, though the effect was ruined by the breathless tremor in her voice. "Just shut up, Rex! This is serious!"
Rex laughed again, a rich, warm sound that filled the cramped, shadowy space, before he composed himself. The playfulness vanished as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by the focused intensity of a craftsman preparing for a delicate operation.
"Then we begin," he said, his tone turning steel hard.
He moved with fluid grace, crossing the small distance to sit directly across from her on the floor. He positioned himself so close that his knees nearly brushed the edge of the mattress where she sat.
The proximity was overwhelming; she could feel the heat radiating from his massive frame, the faint scent of musk and sweat still clinging to him.
He reached out, extending both hands toward her, palms upturned. It was an invitation but also a ritual, the specific, sacred requirement of a soul manipulation working that demanded physical contact to act as a conduit, an anchor between two spirits.
"Give me your hands," he commanded softly.
His eyes locked onto hers, demanding she meet his gaze without flinching. "And listen to me carefully, Iris."
"Remember what I told you back in the archery yard when your hands were shaking on the bowstring... which is stillness."
"I am not talking about the absence of feeling that is impossible, but it’s more like I am talking about the absence of fighting what you feel."
His fingers twitched slightly in anticipation. "When this starts, your soul is going to react..."
"It might burn, it might feel like it’s being torn apart, or it might feel like you’re drowning in ice," Rex grinned. "Do not recoil and do not try to suppress the pain or control the shape of the sensation."
"If you fight it, you will break yourself."
"Let whatever happens... happen. Let it flow through you without resistance."
Iris tentatively placed her hands in his. Her palms were ice-cold, not from the draft in the room but from the paralyzing chill of raw, unadulterated terror that seemed to have crystallized in her bones.
Rex didn’t flinch at the cold; instead, his grip closed around hers like a vice warm, steady, and impossibly grounding.
She watched as his eyelids fluttered shut, and she witnessed something terrifying: the last vestige of the man who teased and laughed vanished, replaced by the flat, hollow stillness of a surgeon about to make the first incision. His entire presence shifted into a focused vacuum, as if he had ceased to be a person and had become merely an instrument of the ritual.
The candle flame did not flicker. It didn’t dance or sway as if caught in a breeze. Instead, the physics of the room simply seemed to fail.
The light began to bend unnaturally, stretching thin and pale, warping toward a point in space that shouldn’t exist. The flame took on a sickly, ethereal quality, a color that defied description, something caught halfway between a dead man’s blue and a tarnished silver.
Iris felt the air around them thicken. The atmospheric pressure dropped so suddenly her ears popped painfully, and a heavy, charged sensation settled over her skin, like the moments before a catastrophic lightning strike.
The space was being violently reorganized around a purpose it had never held before.
"I have it," Rex said.
His voice was barely a whisper, stripped of all emotion, vibrating not from his throat but from somewhere deeper in his chest. His eyes remained closed, his jaw set in stone.
"The thread is there... twenty-six days old, exactly as I told you it would be..."
"The temporal residue is still clinging to the ether like blood on a blade."
A bead of sweat rolled down Iris’s temple, but she didn’t dare move. Her inner voice screamed at her to run, to flee this cursed room before whatever he summoned tore her apart, but she remained frozen.
"I am going to reach for it now," Rex continued, his grip tightening on her hands until it was almost painful. "This part may take a moment."
"The tether is stubborn... It will resist being pulled back into the light." Rex gritted his teeth. "Iris, listen to me... do not let go of my hands."
"No matter what you see, no matter how much your mind screams that it is impossible or wrong, do not break contact..." Rex closed his eyes. "Whatever you see, stay here with me."
Iris managed a sharp, jerky nod, though she knew he couldn’t see it. She squeezed his hands so hard her own fingers began to ache, anchoring herself to his physical warmth as the room’s light died away.
The strange, pale glow of the candle became the only thing left in existence, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to writhe independently of the flame.
Then, in the space above and slightly behind Rex’s head, something began to manifest.
It did not arrive with a crash or a flash of light. There was no thunderous proclamation of its return. Instead, it bled into reality.
It arrived the way a figure emerges from a suffocating fog: first the edges, then the suggestion of form. A shoulder materialized out of the gloom; the vague outline of a jawline appeared.
Then, slowly, painfully, as if the universe itself were reluctant to allow it, color began to seep back into the void. The grayscale haze bled into flesh tones, into the fabric of clothing, and into the unmistakable texture of human existence.
Iris felt her breath catch in her throat, trapped behind a wall of rising panic. Her heart hammered against her ribs with such violence she feared it would crack them.
The fog resolved, the edges sharpened, and the silhouette solidified into something so familiar, so achingly real, that the recognition hit her like a physical blow to the solar plexus.
The ghost of her past was no longer a memory; he was standing three feet away, solid and breathing, emerging from the silver fire of Rex’s magic.
It Was Veylor...