CHAPTER 574: CHAPTER 576: BOND FORGED IN SHARED RUIN

Death was just the natural end of life. For those still alive, what was there to fear from death?

From the vast emptiness of your soul leaving your body...

No one alive truly knew what death felt like. It was one of those things you could only experience once.

Death was an unknown to the living, and the unknown was to be feared. Life was horrible, it was hard, but it was an evil you recognized, one you were intimately familiar with. Death could be a mercy, or it could be a greater evil. But no one would know until it came.

’I’m just so tired of it.’

This was the first thought that crossed Damon’s mind.

All this came in the form of rushing images, words and feelings forming faster than they could truly be expressed.

Damon didn’t know what condition he was in, but he knew he was alive. Somehow, impossibly, he was still alive. He almost didn’t want to open his eyes.

This peace was something he had craved.

If he had been asked before he was born, he would have regretted making the choice to come into the world. And if he hadn’t been asked, if he was here because of someone else’s decision... then he prayed for it to end.

His eyes weakly fluttered open. His eyelids felt heavy, as though made of lead. His head throbbed like a blacksmith’s workshop, hammering away at an unrelenting pace.

Damon took a shallow breath, not sure how he was still alive at all. He didn’t doubt that he had been killed by Ashcroft, his body split in half by the demon lord of domination.

His legs felt numb. The thought of having legs at all was so surprising that he had to look down to make sure they weren’t ghost limbs. He half-expected it to be that strange phantom sensation people felt when a limb was missing.

Tilting his head, his eyes widened with shock.

His limbs still existed. That alone was the biggest surprise.

"Where... am I..."

Damon didn’t fear death. He knew he would not die. Deathless would make sure he was revived.

Skill – [Deathless]

The more you desire your own death, the more improbable events happen to prevent it. Death will follow when you least desire it.

Even if he wished for it... no, because he wished for it, he would not die.

Damon had never been worried Ashcroft would kill him, because fate itself seemed to be against his death. When he stepped forward to face Ashcroft, he had been hoping for death. That meant he had fulfilled the condition for this cursed skill.

But that didn’t explain where he was. Damon was surrounded by a soft glowing light, the glow a faint blue. The cave around him felt familiar, and yet not.

He spread his shadow perception. The area was full of glowing crystals, their azure light spilling across rough stone. Monsters stirred in the distance.

This was a dungeon.

Glancing to his side. It seemed his request had brought them here.

He had said "them" because she was here too. Damon didn’t fear death, but Deathless didn’t mean he couldn’t be captured, tortured, or worse.

She sat leaning against a jagged blue crystal rising from the ground. Her wings were torn, one nearly cut in half. Blood had dried on her pale skin. Bandages were wrapped around her arms, her abdomen, her head—clearly the bare minimum she had managed just to keep herself alive.

A pang of guilt spread through his chest. She must have risked everything to bring him here with her.

Damon had only mouthed vague instructions.

He raised his hand, looking at the chains she had placed between them. If she died, he would die too. It went both ways.

A small, paranoid part of him whispered that she hadn’t done this out of kindness. That maybe she had kept him alive to protect her own skin.

"Even then... she still did..."

Damon gasped, trying to move his body. His small motion seemed to jolt Abellona awake. Her long black hair was dried and tangled, lacking even the slightest trace of the regal princess he had first met days ago.

Her eyes opened wide as she raised a trembling hand to stop him.

"Do... don’t move. You’ll tear your body apart..."

Damon didn’t like ominous words, but he forced his body to stay still.

Abellona didn’t seem like she could stand, and he knew it, because she tried. She pushed herself up only to collapse to her knees. Damon noticed the strip of cloth ripped from her lower garment, tied tightly around her thigh as a makeshift bandage, soaked through with blood.

He had given her some of his potions. It was clear she had run out of the ones he shared. Damon had been stingy with the high-quality ones from his system, most of which he had collected after destroying the orcs with the Staff of Carnage. At the time, he hadn’t understood why he had been given so many. After this, he did.

Abellona limped toward him, trying to carry herself with the grace of a princess. But the pain and helplessness overwhelmed her with each step.

Damon narrowed his eyes, noticing a faint black mark spreading along her neck. Her face was pale, yet feverishly red.

She collapsed beside him with a dull thud, breathing heavily, and dragged herself closer until she was seated at his side.

Only then did Damon see the full extent of her damage. How she was even alive was a miracle in itself.

Her lips were cracked, her eyes dull, her body broken. Yet she looked at him as though he were a miracle.

"Don’t move... please, don’t move... please don’t die..."

Her pleading made Damon narrow his eyes. It was as if she were hallucinating from blood loss... or perhaps she had simply become vulnerable enough to show a weaker, less aloof side of herself.

She bit her dried, cracked lips.

"You’ll live... you lived. I put you back together..."

Hearing those words, Damon’s heart twisted. He had not cared if he died to Ashcroft. But Abellona had cared. And when he had survived, she had wanted him to live.

He could see it now. The people who fought by her side always died, leaving her as the survivor.

’She must have hated her name, Abellona of Destruction. But she still carried it, because it carried the wishes of the fallen.’

Damon, who refused to die twice, must have touched something inside her.

Her eyes, dull as they were, still carried hope.

Damon bit his lip. He hated that he had been paranoid of her.

He glanced at her with a frown. The blackness on her neck was spreading.

"You’ve... been cursed..."