BLADE OF THE FALLEN

Chapter 7 – The Mark Left Behind

The silence after the breach collapsed was deafening. No distant voices. No hum of unstable magic. Just the faint creak of warped boards beneath Axel’s boots as he forced himself to stand.

Kael straightened slowly, pressing a palm to her ribs. “That… wasn’t a clean closure.”

Axel looked around the safehouse, his pulse still hammering in his ears. “Where did Ethan go?”

Kael’s jaw tightened. “You think I know? One second he was here ” She gestured sharply to the space where Ethan had stood. “The next, he’s gone. That’s not normal magic.”

He didn’t leave, the goddess said, her voice curling around Axel’s thoughts. He was pulled, Axel’s fingers tightened around the sword hilt. “Pulled? By what?”

By me, she whispered, almost teasing, but there was something underneath. Not pride. Not malice. Something Axel couldn’t name.

Kael bent over the floor where the breach had been. Frost still coated the boards in jagged, uneven patterns, as though a storm had frozen the space mid-movement. She touched it, then jerked her hand back with a hiss. “Still cold.”

Axel stepped closer. The frost wasn’t just frost. Up close, it shimmered faintly, with tiny veins of blackness running through the ice, twisting like living threads.

“Don’t touch it,” Kael warned. “Not unless you want whatever’s in it crawling under your skin.”

Axel straightened, uneasy. “So this… is from that thing?”

Kael shook her head once. “No. This is from her.” Her gaze flicked to the sword, and her tone hardened. “That breach didn’t close because of you. It closed because of what’s inside that blade.”

She’s afraid of me, the goddess murmured, and Axel could feel her smirk through the connection. Good. She should be.

Axel ignored her. “Then why didn’t you say something earlier? Before the thing came through?”

Kael’s expression was unreadable. “Because it doesn’t matter how many warnings I give you, you don’t seem ready to hear them.”

That stung. “I just saved both our lives.”

“You bought us time,” Kael corrected sharply. “Don’t confuse the two.”

Axel opened his mouth to argue, but the goddess’s voice slid in like a blade between words, Tell her about Ethan. Axel hesitated. “Ethan said you were a… breach point.”

Kael’s gaze sharpened instantly. “He’s not wrong.”

That was not the answer Axel expected. “So you’ve known this the whole time?”

Kael didn’t flinch. “Yes. But knowing what she is and knowing why she’s here are two different things. I don’t think Ethan knows the difference. And I’m not sure you do, either.”

She thinks she knows why I’m here, the goddess purred. Ask her, Axel kept his voice level. “Then tell me.”

Kael hesitated, and that hesitation was more telling than anything she could have said. “Later.”

The goddess laughed in his mind, low and slow. She’ll never tell you, Axel. She’s hiding it because the truth would force her to treat you like the enemy. Axel’s stomach twisted. “And you’re just so trustworthy?”

More than her.

The boards groaned under Kael’s boots as she moved toward the safehouse door. “We need to move. That breach wasn’t random. Someone either knew where we were, or they tracked you.”

Axel’s mind flashed to Ethan’s face, calm, knowing, deliberate. “Ethan.”

Kael paused, her hand on the doorframe. “If he’s working with whoever’s trying to force breaches open, then he’s not just dangerous, he’s the kind of dangerous that doesn’t stop until someone puts him in the ground.”

Axel’s grip tightened on the sword. “So we find him.”

Kael turned to look at him fully for the first time since the breach. “And what will you do when you find him? Hand the sword over? Kill him? What if both are the wrong choice?”

Axel didn’t answer. He didn’t know the answer, They stepped out into the night. The street was empty, but the air was wrong, too still, too heavy. Every shadow felt stretched, as if the lamps were pushing light into shapes it wasn’t meant to make.

Kael’s eyes flicked up to the rooftops. “We’re being watched.”

Axel followed her gaze, but saw nothing. “By who?”

“Not who,” she said grimly. “What.”

She’s right, the goddess murmured. But she doesn’t see all of them, The voice carried no urgency, no fear, almost as if she welcomed it.

They didn’t make it far, Three streets away, Kael stopped dead. Axel followed her gaze to the far end of the alley. There, kneeling in the dirt, was Ethan. Only… it wasn’t him.

His coat was torn, hanging in tatters from his shoulders. His head was bowed, and in the lamplight, Axel could see black frost crawling up his arms and across his face, veins of darkness branching beneath the skin like spiderwebs.

“Ethan…” Axel called carefully.

Ethan lifted his head. His eyes were gone, two hollow sockets filled with the same shifting black that had laced the frost on the safehouse floor. Kael hissed a breath. “Back up.”

Ethan stood slowly, the movement too fluid, too deliberate. When he spoke, his voice was layered with something else, low, resonant, and wrong. “She’s waking.”

Oh, the goddess said with something that might have been delight, this is going to be fun, Axel took a step forward before Kael yanked him back. “Don’t,” she said sharply.

Ethan tilted his head, the black frost crackling faintly across his cheekbones. “The Seal is weaker now. I can hear the others. They’re coming.”

“Others?” Axel demanded.

Ethan’s mouth curved into something that might have been a smile if it hadn’t been so empty. “You’ll meet them soon.”

Ask him what he saw, the goddess whispered, Axel’s throat felt tight. “What happened to you?”

Ethan’s head twitched as though listening to something just out of earshot. “I saw… her. Not the blade. The one she serves.”

The goddess’s voice cut through Axel’s thoughts like a whip. Don’t listen to him, But Ethan’s words kept coming, his voice sharper now. “She’s not trapped here, Axel. You are.”

The air around him shimmered, the same heat-haze twist that had preceded the breach in the safehouse. Kael’s dagger was in her hand before he finished speaking. “Move.”

But Axel didn’t move. His eyes locked on Ethan’s, and for a moment, just a moment he thought he saw something human behind the black frost. A warning. A plea. Then the ground under Ethan split.

A jagged seam of darkness tore the street open, swallowing him in a rush of freezing wind and whispering voices before snapping shut like it had never been there.

Silence.

Kael exhaled hard. “That wasn’t possession. That was a message.”

Axel’s hand trembled around the sword hilt. “From who?”

Kael’s gaze dropped to the blade in his hand. “From your side.”

Not from me, the goddess said, almost amused. From the other one, Axel froze. “Other one?”

The one who put me here, she said, her tone like velvet over steel. And if Ethan’s right… she’s almost free.