Chapter b210 /b

*Jiselle*

“Don’t leave me,” I gasped.

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My fingers clutched Nate’s wrist, slick with sweat and blood, as my body arched from another contraction that felt like it had split me down the center.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, voice low, fierce, shaking.

Another scream wed its way from my throat as fire rippled under my skin, not metaphorical, not imagined -but real. Every contraction came with a pulse of heat that red out across the room, singeing the air, making the floor tremble.

Outside, chaos screamed.

Roars. Steel. Shouts. Bones breaking.

But I wasn’t out there.

I was here. Trapped in this room.

My body was a battlefield, and the war hadn’t waited. It hade for us now, with talons and ash and blood- soaked teeth.

“They’re inside the walls,” Eva said sharply.

She knelt beside me, pressing damp cloths against my burning skin, not wincing even when her palms sizzled from the contact.

The midwife was already gone–her neck snapped before she could draw breath for a scream. A Hollow–born had breached the northern side. Bastain had dragged the beast’s body away and mmed the door shut, warding it with everything he had.

But he was pale. Drained. And the chalk runes were already dimming.

“It’s not holding,” Bastain muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “It’s drawn to the me. To her.”

“I’m not ready,” I whispered. But it was a lie.

I wasn’t ready for the pain. Or the screams. Or the way the child inside me wed her way out not with cries or kicking feet–but with fire and pressure and a will that wasn’t entirely mine..

But I had been ready since the moment I chose her.

Since the moment I let go of the de and believed she’d bring something better into this world.

Even if I didn’t survive it.

8:58 Thu, Sep 18 d

Even if none of us did.

Another contraction ripped through me, and the windows cracked.

“Hold her down!” Eva shouted.

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“I can’t-“Nate tried, but his arms were trembling, his strength no match for the force bursting from my skin. “She’s burning-”

“I don’t care!”

Eva pped another sigil onto my forehead, sweat running down her temple. “You’re not going to lose her to fire now. We’re past that.”

I screamed again, but this time, I felt something give. A shift.

The child was moving.

“She’s crowning,” Eva said breathlessly. “Goddess, she’s-”

A st echoed in the corridor. Bastain staggered back from the door, runes sparking red.

“They’re breaching,” he growled. “I can’t hold it.”

“Then let theme,” Nate snapped. “You’ll have to kill me to get to her.”

The room lit up–walls glowing gold and violet, pulsing with each of my contractions. My vision blurred.

I wasn’t sure if I was still screaming or if the me had swallowed the sound whole.

I felt my body stretch. Tear. Shift.

But still, she did note.

Not yet.

“Jiselle,” Nate’s voice cut through the roar. “Breathe. Just breathe. Look at me.”

I tried. Gods, I tried. My eyes burned, but I found him.

He was crouched at my side, shirt stained with blood, fingers tangled in mine, forehead pressed to mine.

“I’m here. I’ve got you.”

“I can’t-”

“You already are.”

Nate’s voice was steady, but I could hear the edge in it–the way he was holding himself together for my sake, even though the world around us was already splintering.

8:58 Thu, Sep 18 bd /b

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Another contraction rolled through me. Not just worse. It felt ancient. Woven from fire and bone and prophecy. My back arched off the floor, and my vision blurred. My scream never left my throat this time. It was caught, strangled by the sheer force of what was happening inside me.

And then-

The wall behind us shattered.

The sound wasn’t just a crash. It was a breaking. A rending. Like the stone itself had finally surrendered to something darker. The entire room seemed to hold its breath as debris exploded inward, and dust swallowed the air. I felt the pressure shift–the heat surge–and then the temperature dropped to something cold and cruel and unnatural.

Stone cracked like thunder, and every me in the room flickered in retreat.

Through the smoke, something stepped into view.

Calling it a creature didn’t feel quite right. There was something wrong with its shape, like it had once tried to be wolf but failed. It was stretched unnaturally, its limbs too long, its bones jutting out like broken branches. Smoke coiled around it like veins. Its ribcage rose and fell in a pattern too slow to be alive and too deliberate to be dead.

Wings dragged from its back—if you could even call them wings. They looked like shards of shattered ss strung together by shadow, twitching and rattling every time the thing moved. And its mouth… gods, its mouth was stretched wide, hanging open as ck fire dripped from it in slow, thick droplets.

It had no eyes. Only a single glowing crack across where a face should’ve been, pulsing like a wound that never healed.

It didn’t roar.

It breathed.

And that breath reeked–of rot, of time lost and twisted, of a magic that didn’t belong to any realm I knew. It was a smell that sank beneath the skin and settled in the bones.

Bastain moved instantly. He threw a ward with one hand–bright and white, a desperate barrier of old magic -and hurled a de with the other. The dagger spun through the air, fast, true. It should’ve struck dead.

center.

But the Hollow–born didn’t flinch.

The de hit its shoulder and bounced off like it had struck stone. The ward cracked, fizzled out, and vanished.

Eva didn’t scream. She didn’t freeze. She knelt beside me, shoving hot cloths into my fists and muttering a chant under her breath. I recognized the cadence–it was a healing rite, one used when no healer was left to call. Her voice trembled, her palms singed when she brushed my arm, but she didn’t stop.

Nate rose.

8:58 Thu, bSep /bb18 /bbd /b

He didn’t hesitate.

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There was no fear in his eyes, only fire. The kind that burned low and steady when everything else had gone

cold.

He stepped between me and the Hollow–born like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He didn’t look back. Didn’t speak to me. He faced the creature with shoulders squared, arms loose, ready.

“Touch her,” he growled, “and I’ll rip your spine from your mouth.”

The thing tilted its head. Slowly. As if curious. As if mocking. The crack in its face pulsed again–this time brighter, sharper.

And then it lunged.

Nate didn’t wait. He charged forward, meeting it mid–air with a roar of his own.

Flesh mmed into twisted bone. me collided with something colder than the void between stars.

Steel met ash.

The impact sent a shockwave through the room, and everything lit up–walls, ceiling, air. It was as if the world had been dipped in light and split in half.

And through it all, I felt her.

The child.

Moving.

Coming.

Not gently. Not quietly.

She came like the fire had imed her and turned her into something more.

The pain shattered me.

I could no longer tell where my body ended and where the me began.

So I let go.

Not of her.

But of everything else.

The fear. The doubt. The rules. The warnings.

I released it all.

8:58 Thu, Sep 18 d

And the me that surged out of me wasn’t mine.

It was hers.

Bright and wild and uncontainable.

It poured through my veins and out my mouth in a scream that cracked the floor.

It was the scream of birth.

The scream of a gate being forced open.

Of a name written in stars and finally spoken.

I felt something tear inside me–not just flesh, but something deeper.

Bone, Soul. Time

And then-

She came.

With light.

With silence.

Wrapped in violet fire, swaddled in power.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t scream.

She opened her eyes.

And the leyline pulsed beneath us like a drumbeat reborn.

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