CHAPTER 51: NOT ME

The alarm did not simply sound. It shrieked, a thin, slicing wail that tore through the stillness of the night like an executioner’s blade dragged across stone. It vibrated through the walls, the glass, the air itself. It was the kind of sound meant not to warn, but to declare war.

For a heartbeat, Reichardt allowed himself denial.

A drill. A false trigger. A glitch in outdated perimeter wards.

But the estate shuddered beneath his feet.

Then came the scent, iron-rich, raw, and rotten, tinged with something prehistoric and cursed. His instincts, honed not in courtrooms or banquet halls but in blood-soaked battlefields, ignited like flint.

He knew the truth before the second shutter rattled.

They had found them.

The hybrids had come to collect their debt.

"Stay here."

The command ripped out of him, not noble, not composed, but sharp, guttural, soldier-born. It was muscle memory given voice as he pivoted toward danger.

But Ahce did not flinch. She did not protest. She did not soften. She turned toward him with eyes forged in hardness and loss, eyes that did not tremble at apocalypse, but measured it. They were not the eyes of a future Duchess meant for diplomacy. They were the eyes of someone who had stared at death, memorized its shape, and learned where to shoot it.

Before Reichardt could reach for a weapon, she was already at the security panel. Her fingers flew, fast, precise, fearless, typing an override only a hacker or a trained infiltrator would know. Silent authorization. Encrypted bypass. Zero hesitation. The wall panel clicked. Then slid open.

A hidden armory revealed itself in clinical silence. A rifle, matte obsidian, monolithic, hungry. Two pistols, silver-barrelled, engraved not for artistry, but to carry rune-coded rounds.

"What..."

She chambered the rifle with practiced grace.

Click.

Clack.

Her voice was cold iron.

"Protection clause. The Duchy allows every Pentecase matriarch to keep her own weapons inside these walls." She slung the rifle over her shoulder, meeting his gaze with unshakable clarity. "So, Duke Razalo, move with me, or move out of my way."

Reichardt did not get the chance to reply.

The explosion came. Not fire, not powder, impact. Flesh and force slamming into warded stone. Chandeliers shuddered above them, sending crystalline shards singing like bells of a funeral procession. Hairline fractures spider-webbed across the marble floor, branching like frost over winter panes.

Reichardt vaulted toward the balcony window and wrenched the curtains aside.

The fog was alive with movement. Loping, distorted, monstrous silhouettes crawled over stone like living shadows stitched from nightmare hide. Red eyes burned like dying suns. Limbs twisted in ways evolution had never dared. Fur, bone, talon, sinew, weaponized chaos.

His wrist device snapped open, projecting a translucent battle interface. Lines of code scrolled in a language older than the empire itself, Division Protocol, archived from a life he was never meant to reveal.

Before his fingers finished tracing the lockdown sequence.

BANG.

The shot thundered beside him like judgment itself. A hybrid at the gate collapsed instantly, skull split open, body limp before gravity remembered to claim it.

Ahce was already moving. Boots pounding upstairs, rifle secured, robe billowing like a war banner behind her. Her hair, loose, unbound, looked like flame caught between darkness and warning.

He chased her, heart warring between fury and dread.

"Ahce! Stop! You don’t understand!"

"Then learn faster," she threw over her shoulder.

She perched at the second-floor window like a gunslinger sculpted from moonlight and consequence. Knee braced, spine steady, breath measured. Wind tore through the opening, dragging in pine, fog, and the promise of death.

Exhale.

Trigger.

BOOM.

Another hybrid dropped.

Reichardt felt it then, not awe, not fear, but a sharp, piercing realization. This woman had not survived tragedy. She had been forged by it. No wasted motion. No emotion leaking into aim. Only precision, absolute, terrifying, professional.

He drew the black combat knife from the sheath hidden at his spine, the blade humming faintly with stored resonance.

"You’ve changed," he said, barely audible over the wind.

No glance, no pause, just a razor-thin smirk.

"You’re one to talk, Reichardt Razalo."

A blur of claws erupted upward toward the window. Reichardt lunged without permission, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her back as talons raked steel, carving gashes deep enough to scream.

"Close range!" he barked.

She reacted faster than instinct.

Kick. Roll. Gun lift.

BLAM!

The hybrid’s skull exploded into ruin. The body crashed, twitching, smoking where silver rounds met cursed flesh. They breathed together in the aftermath, harsh, synchronized, electrically alive. She gave him a sidelong glance, one brow sharp.

"Still think I should’ve stayed in the kitchen?"

He couldn’t answer. Because the woman in front of him was not someone meant to stand behind shields. She was the storm shield that was built for. More howls. More gathering. A tightening circle.

"They’re not here for the Duchy," she said quietly, eyes fixed on the dark horizon. "They’re here for us."

Reichardt felt the words land like prophecy.

Not Duke and Duchess.

Not kingdoms or titles.

They were hunting ghosts.

Richard Jing.

Ahce Shang.

Two names buried in graves history pretended never existed.

He didn’t understand her pain, at least, he told himself he didn’t.

Because he was not Richard Jing.

The ache in her eyes, the tremor hidden in her voice whenever she said that name, that grief was not his to claim. Yet... every time she spoke it, something ancient and submerged reacted. A distant echo. A locked door was rattling.

Because he had met the man.

It was after the war, when Xirudah was still choking on corpses and cinders.

Reichardt found Richard Jing half-collapsed against a battlefield altar, body fractured, corruption blooming from his chest in blackened veins. The taint was alive, pulsing like a disease pretending to be divine.

He should have screamed.

But Richard only smiled.

A knowing, tired, heartbreaking smile.

"You’re strong," he said, voice feathered with death’s coming. "Stronger than I ever was. But strength... it won’t save her."

Before Reichardt could demand an explanation. Richard reached into his own chest. Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. Physically.

His ribs cracked like opened gates. Blood glowed, a black-crimson aurora, as he pulled out something impossibly radiant. A core heart. The crystallized essence of corrupted god-blood. A power source, a curse, a confession.

"My heart," Richard whispered, pressing it into Reichardt’s hands. "My sin. My love. My end. Take it... if you can endure it."

Reichardt remembered only sensation after that. Heat. White rupture. Blinding rebirth pain. It felt like melting, reforging, unmaking, remaking, like a star collapsing inside his veins.

The curse tried to devour him. But he lived. Richard did not. The man who loved a woman fierce enough to burn fate itself... did not.

He turned to ash in Reichardt’s arms, the storm claiming his remains like the world was ashamed to keep evidence of his existence.

Now, years later, standing beside a woman who hunted like vengeance incarnate, Reichardt finally understood. The hybrids were not chasing borders. They were not seeking kingdoms. They were answering a summons older than death. And they would not stop.

Not until the past finished what it began.