Chapter 965. It’s Finally Time To Stop Acting Gentle... And Show My True Face!
Veylor’s translucent features didn’t just fall; they crumbled. It was the specific, devastating collapse of a soul hearing a truth that had no mercy and no exceptions, the kind of certainty that makes the universe feel suddenly, terrifyingly small.
The silver light that composed his body flickered like a candle caught in a death wind, casting jagged, dancing shadows across the room.
"Then let me have a moment longer," he whispered.
His voice was no longer the melodic echo of a spirit; it was thick, raw, and human in its desperation. "Please... I am not asking for a future."
"And I am not asking for a miracle as well, but just... let me look at her. Properly." A shudder ran through his spectral frame, sending ripples through his form like stone dropped in still water. "I didn’t get to look at her last time..."
"Everything moved too fast: the steel, the blood, the screaming... I want this to be the last thing I carry."
"I want this image to be the only thing that remains when I slip into whatever comes after this... If there even is an after."
Rex remained silent, but the cost of his silence—Rex’s silence—spoke volumes, evident in the violent strain of his body. Iris could feel the tremor running through him; his grip on her hands tightened instinctively, knuckles grinding against each other.
She could hear the wet, labored sound of his breathing, the sound of a man pushing his own life force through a needle’s eye. His jaw was set so hard she feared she might hear his teeth crack under the pressure of maintaining the necromantic tether.
He was fighting the very laws of reality to keep this door from slamming shut prematurely.
"You have it," Rex gritted out through clenched teeth, his voice strained by the effort of holding the magical current steady. "As long as I can keep the thread from snapping."
"Take the time, Veylor... I am not going anywhere."
Veylor turned his gaze fully toward Iris, and Iris turned hers toward him. For a long, suspended moment, the world outside the circle ceased to exist.
There was no ritual, no necromancy, no bleeding necromancer; there was only the devastating silence of two people existing in the same space for one final, stolen heartbeat.
It was a communication beyond language, a silent collision of memories, shared touches, and the hollow ache of what had been severed. They simply were, two halves of a broken whole, staring across the impossible divide between life and death.
Then, Iris made her choice.
Without releasing Rex’s blood-slicked hands, she shifted, turning her body toward the living man. She pressed herself against Rex’s side, seeking the solidity of his heat, the reality of his pulse.
She buried her face against his shoulder, inhaling the salt of his sweat and the metallic tang of the ritual’s blood. Rex didn’t falter; despite the agony of the work demanding his absolute focus, his arm came around her, pulling her close, anchoring her to the earth while she faced the sky.
Iris lifted her head slightly, her eyes locking onto Veylor’s luminous gaze one last time. Her voice was thick with unshed tears, but the waver was gone.
The breaking had finished. What remained was something tempered, something forged in the fire of her grief.
"He is who I love now," Iris said, the words quiet but carrying the weight of an unbreakable vow.
She spoke directly to Veylor, offering him the truth as a final gift: the truth of her survival. "I want you to see that too, before you go..."
"I want you to know that I am not walking away from this conversation into some empty void... I am not walking into nothingness either."
She tightened her hold on Rex, grounding herself in the present. "I am walking into something real, Veylor... I am walking into a life."
The admission hit Veylor with more violence than any blade could have. His entire spectral form convulsed, the silver light turning a sickly, bruised violet before flashing white.
For a moment, he couldn’t speak; he could only stare at the way Iris clung to Rex, the way her body instinctively sought the heat and strength of the necromancer. The shock was absolute, a metaphysical earthquake that seemed to crack the very air around them.
"You... you can’t mean that," Veylor stammered, his voice rising in pitch, cracking like breaking ice. "Iris, no...! "That’s—that’s not you!"
"That’s the grief talking! That’s the trauma clinging to the first solid thing it found! You can’t replace what we—"
"I’m not replacing anything, Veylor," Iris interrupted, her voice muffled against Rex’s shoulder, but her words cutting through his panic like a scalpel. "I’m simply choosing to live."
"You’re choosing a monster!" Veylor screamed, the sound tearing from his throat in a raw, inhuman wail that made the candles gutter and die. "Iris, look at him!"
"Look at what he’s doing to you! He’s using you as an anchor, a battery for his filthy necromancy!"
"He doesn’t love you; he’s consuming you!"
At that moment, the atmosphere in the room shifted. The fragile, solemn sanctity of the farewell evaporated, replaced by something far more predatory.
Rex’s shoulders relaxed, but it wasn’t the relaxation of relief; it was the casual slouch of a predator who had finished playing with his food. The bloodshot eyes, once strained with effort, suddenly cleared, revealing pupils that burned with a cold, calculating malice.
His gentle mask didn’t just slip; it shattered, revealing the grinning villain beneath.
"Oh, let him scream, Iris," Rex said, his voice dropping to a smooth, terrifying purr.
He didn’t look at Veylor; he kept his eyes on Iris, savoring the way she shuddered against him. "Let him play his part..."
’It’s adorable, really... The ghost trying to protect a woman who has already surrendered her soul to someone far more interesting."
Rex turned his head slightly to acknowledge Veylor, a cruel, mocking smile twisting his lips. "Rest assured, little ghost."
"She is in excellent hands. Better than yours, certainly." Rex laughed. "I don’t just hold her heart; I own the very rhythm of it."
"I don’t offer her dreams; I offer her reality... It’s a harsh, bleeding, and beautiful reality, to be exact."
"You... you bastard!" Veylor lunged forward, his hands outstretched as if he could physically tear Iris away from the necromancer. "I will destroy you! I will--"
"You will do nothing," Rex interrupted, his tone turning glacial. "Because you aren’t going anywhere."
Rex’s grip on Iris’s waist tightened painfully, his fingers digging into her flesh. "Iris, darling, you’re getting so worked up."
"Can you feel it?" His voice became a hypnotic murmur. "The way your heart races when I touch you like this?"
"The way your body betrays your pretty little words?"
As Rex tapped into the full, unholy potential of his soul manipulation, the room exploded in sensory overload. The air became thick with the smell of burnt copper and something sweeter, something almost cloying: the scent of raw spiritual energy.
A low, thrumming vibration shook the floorboards, a sound that felt less like noise and more like a heartbeat pulsing through the bones of everyone present.
Iris let out a sharp, involuntary cry halfway between a sob and a moan as Rex’s power flooded her system. It wasn’t gentle. It was invasive. His magic crawled under her skin like liquid fire, claiming every nerve ending.
"Rex... please... it’s too much..." she gasped, her head rolling back, her eyes fluttering.
The pleasure and pain were so intertwined she couldn’t distinguish between them; her body arched against his, a desperate, involuntary response to the overwhelming stimulation of his necromantic touch.
"It’s exactly enough," Rex whispered against her ear, his breath hot and mocking.
With a guttural incantation that sounded like bones grinding together, Rex unleashed a shockwave of pure soul force. "You wanted to stay, Veylor? Fine... Stay as long as you want before you go back."
The silver light that made up Veylor’s form was suddenly seized by invisible chains of black ichor. Veylor’s scream became a prolonged, agonized shriek as the magic tore into his essence, not to destroy him, but to bind him.
He was slammed backward against the far wall, his form pinned there by crushing gravitational force. The magic didn’t just trap his body; it trapped his consciousness, forcing him to remain conscious and watch.
"I want you to witness this," Rex said, his eyes glowing with a hellish intensity as he watched Veylor struggle against the invisible bonds. "I want you to see exactly what happens when a ghost tries to interfere with a god."
"You wanted to watch her? Fine... Watch how she belongs to me."
The room echoed with a terrifying chorus: Veylor’s desperate, impotent screams of rage; the wet, rhythmic sounds of Rex’s magic working through Iris’s body; and Iris’s own broken, high, keening moans that tore through the air as she drowned in the overwhelming, terrifying ecstasy of being completely, utterly consumed by the man who had stolen her life and replaced it with something far more dangerous.