CHAPTER 52: CHANGING HEART

Reichardt Razalo stood at the edge of the splintered battlements, smoke curling upward around him like a serpent tasting the air.

The remnants of the night’s carnage scattered across the Duchy’s stone courtyard, dark, mangled bodies of hybrids dissolving into nothingness as dawn’s light crept in. The sun had always been merciless to the abominations. Heaven’s fire, the old scholars once called it.

To him, it was only a signal.

Survival, for now.

Ahce Shang reloaded her rifle with steady hands, metal clicking with crisp composure. No hesitation. No fear. Just pure, disciplined precision. She moved the way seasoned generals breathed, with intent, purpose, and lethal grace. And every second Reichardt watched her, that foreign pulse in his chest beat louder.

She was not merely a soldier shaped by tragedy. She was a war sculpted into a woman. He inhaled once, slow, steady, weighted with truths he was not allowed to speak.

She isn’t looking at you, he reminded himself bitterly. She is seeing him.

Richard Jing.

The dead man whose heart, no, core, now throbbed beneath his ribcage like an unholy second drum. The rhythm was subtle most days, a faint reminder. But in moments like these, blood soaked, adrenaline high, emotions sharp, it roared. Not beating. Remembering.

Reichardt clenched his fist, feeling the unnatural warmth coiling from his sternum, spreading through his veins like vines branched. The corruption lines were mercifully hidden beneath gloves today. They weren’t merciful every day.

"Ahce..." His voice was barely above a whisper.

She didn’t hear him, not over the clamor of cleanup crews, patrol reports, and the distant sobs of servants mourning freshly dug graves. Perhaps that was for the best.

The stench of the battle still lingered, iron-heavy blood, scorched gunpowder, something sour and sickly-sweet that could only belong to hybrids unraveling back into cursed essence.

Reichardt had fought wars. He had lived through wars. He had become a war general.

But hybrids?

These weren’t soldiers.

They were screams given skin.

They marched with purpose. They hunted with memory. Their erratic fighting style was gone. Coordination had replaced savagery. A commander lurked behind their ranks. Someone intelligent. Someone intentional. And that made them infinitely worse.

Ahce had been the eye of the storm the entire night, relentless, brilliant, terrifying. She moved like someone forged from smoke and ammunition, and even surrounded, she shone with a kind of violent elegance that demanded the eye, even from death itself. To anyone watching without context, they’d call her heroic.

But Reichardt knew better. She wasn’t fighting for glory, nor duty, nor survival. She was fighting for a ghost. For him. For the man whose heart beat in Reichardt’s chest.

The corruption surged without warning, a violent throb, jagged, furious, clawing upward like molten claws. Reichardt staggered, breath catching painfully in his throat.

Not here. Not now.

Black veins flared beneath his skin, faint but hungry, branching like ink splashed beneath paper. His vision splintered in shades of red.

A voice sliced through the tide.

"Reichardt!"

Ahce was there instantly, gripping his arm, not with fragility, but certainty. The way one soldier anchored another on the brink of collapse. She thought of injury. Fatigue. Weakness. She didn’t know it was an inheritance. It took everything in him not to flinch away.

"I’m fine," he lied, but his voice cracked like a man forged from breaking things. He forced himself upright. "North side. Barrier’s thinning."

She scrutinized him, sharp-eyed, tactical, but trusting. She didn’t push. Didn’t pry. She only turned, lifted her rifle, and walked back into chaos like it was home.

He followed. Because not following her was never an option.

Hours later, morning cracked its golden knuckles across the horizon. And as always, the hybrids hated God’s gaze. They fled in shrieking masses, unraveling into the forest’s unseen heart where mist swallowed sins it didn’t want witnessed.

Silence came after.

Ragged breath. Ringing ears. Bodies too tired to collapse gracefully.

Ahce exhaled, lowering her rifle at last. "Looks like we survived another night."

Reichardt swallowed the molten ash in his throat. "Yeah," he replied. "We did."

He did not tell her what else survived. The core pulsed again, slow, amused, awakening.

The days that followed were quieter, but quieter only meant sharper edges. Reports replaced battles, strategy replaced screams, and diplomacy replaced gunpowder. He should have thrived in it.

Instead, he unraveled. Because every moment he spent near her, the foreign emotions grew roots. It was supposed to be admiration, respect, and tactical pride. Yet, it was turning into the very thing he feared.

When she laughed, soft, unguarded, stolen between responsibilities, his chest tightened with a familiarity that wasn’t his. When she frowned at the paperwork, tapping her pen impatiently, he tensed with the urge to ease the weight from her shoulders. When dawn painted her in amber as she silently drank her tea by the terrace... he felt like he was looking at home.

But the ache that followed always soured the warmth.

These are not your memories. These are not your feelings. These are not yours to keep.

He repeated it nightly like a prayer. But the core did not listen to logic.

It whispered.

Her hair smelled of rain the night you kissed her under broken streetlights. Her hands are warmer when she lies about being cold. Her voice is softer when she thinks no one’s listening.

Reichardt would press a palm to his chest, jaw clenched, bracing against memories he never lived and longing he never earned. Because loving her meant chaining himself to a destiny that was never meant to be his.

Still.

When threats returned, and the alarms wailed again with teeth in their voices, there was no thought. No hesitation. Ahce ran toward danger, rifle in hand. And Reichardt ran after her, heart hammering a war-drum tattoo that belonged to two men at once.

"Ahce!"

Not because Richard would have. But because he would. Maybe the feelings were borrowed. Maybe the heart inside him once belonged to someone worthier. Maybe loving her meant losing himself piece by piece.

But gods or ghosts be damned. If the world wanted her dead, it would have to kill him first. The alarms wailed again. This time, sharper. Smarter. The kind that meant intrusion, not warning.

Stone tremored beneath their feet. The mist beyond the walls had a pulse now, alive, shifting, watching. Even the air felt heavier, saturated with intent.

Ahce didn’t look back. She never did. Fear had no seat in her spine. Reichardt, however, felt something far more dangerous than fear, recognition. Because as the fog curled inward like grasping fingers, something inside his chest jolted violently in reply.

The core was no longer whispering. It was calling him.

He staggered half a step, breath thinning. Images, not memories, not exactly, but impressions, flashed like fractured glass behind his eyes.

A battlefield painted in red rain. A woman reaching through smoke. A vow unfinished, torn apart by death. His pulse thundered against bone.

Not yet.

He forced it down.

Not now.

Ahce was already halfway to the gates, cloak flaring like a war banner.

"We end this before it reaches the estate," she declared, voice forged from command.

Reichardt unsheathed his blade, not the polished ceremonial steel of a Duke, but the darker one hidden beneath titles, beneath lies. Runes crawled along its edge, glowing faintly crimson, responding to the same ancient power housed beneath his ribs.

"I’ll handle the vanguard," he said.

"No," she corrected, cocking her rifle, gaze gleaming like a star collapsing into violence, "we handle it."