Chapter 73 Love Really Hurts

I used to believe that people were shaped entirely by what had happened to them from their scars, their tragedies, and the pain carved into their bones. Everyone around me had a story like that: fathers who left, brothers who died, betrayals that cut so deep they festered for years. And yet, when I really looked at them, at myself, I realized those pasts didn’t decide anything. What decided was what we did now, in the present.

My mom used to tell me, “We’re the sum of our choices.” I used to think it was a comforting phrase. But as I lay there half-conscious, bandaged and broken, I finally understood it for what it was: a warning. If I died here, in this cramped little room, then that death would simply be the end result of every choice I’d made. Nothing more and nothing less.

When I woke fully, the ache hit me in layers. First the throbbing in my ribs, then the sharp pulse in my arm, then the dull fire running across my back. My body was a map of pain. A couch wasn’t exactly where I expected to find myself, but there I was, staring at a stained ceiling, the smell of disinfectant faint and failing. I tried to shift and a groan slipped out before I could stop it.

“You’re awake,” a voice muttered from somewhere near the door. I turned my head and saw a silhouette, someone who had tended me, obviously, though I could not yet trust them.

“Barely,” I rasped. My throat was sandpaper. “What… happened?”

Bits and fragments returned in my head like jagged glass. My intangibility faltering mid-fight, the terrifying drag of power fatigue pulling me down into the dirt, and then everything going black.

“You lost,” the voice said simply, without malice. “But you didn’t die. That’s what is important.”

I closed my eyes, breathing through the pain. So what next? I asked myself. If everything was consequence, then what did I choose now?

The TV in the corner blared to life humming with static before the anchor’s voice cut through the room. “Breaking news tonight. Citizens are urged to stay home. Police warn that splinter groups are clashing violently following the Monster’s slaughter. Gang wars are expected to erupt across multiple districts…”

The silhouette wavered in the dim light, edges blurred by the haze of my pain and half-consciousness. When it turned, the shadows peeled away just enough for me to recognize her face. My throat tightened before I even managed to speak.

“Onyx?”

She gave me a troubled smile as she sat beside me. The couch creaked under the shared weight. I lifted my hand, sluggish and trembling, until it reached hers. Her skin was warm against mine, grounding me in a way nothing else could.

“Don’t strain yourself too much,” she said softly, her voice low but insistent. “The sniper bullet tore through your side. I had to get them out. You lost a lot of blood.”

I clenched her hand with the strength I still had, more desperate than steady. Seeing her here, alive and close, felt like an anchor in the middle of a storm. “Oh, Onyx,” I whispered, my chest hitching. “I am so glad to see you…”

Her eyes flicked away for a moment, guilt shadowing them. “You phased through someone’s home,” she explained. “They called the cops, but I managed to get to you first, before they did. The Vanguard was too occupied dealing with the chaos outside.”

I swallowed, the words heavy in my mouth before I spoke them. “How’s Silver?”

Onyx froze, her features tightening as though I had pressed on a wound too fresh to touch. Her voice cracked when she finally forced the words out. “She’s dead, Nick…”

The room tilted, my own pain forgotten as I gripped her hand tighter, refusing to let her slip away under the weight of that truth. With a grunt, I pushed myself up despite the fire in my side, needing to be closer to her, needing to shoulder part of that grief. “You will be fine,” I said, not because I believed it entirely, but because she needed to hear it. “We will be fine.”

Onyx’s composure shattered, her words spilling out raw and wounded. “I can’t do it. I missed her so much. It hurts, Nick. Without her, who am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to do?”

I leaned in, resting my forehead against hers, pressing our closeness like a vow. “You still got me,” I told her. “You’re not alone, Onyx. Not while I’m here.”

Onyx’s voice trembled, and yet there was an edge to it that made my gut twist. “You can’t be here, Nick…”

I forced myself upright, the pain in my side making me grit my teeth, and reached for the glass of water sitting on the table. My hand shook, but I offered it to her anyway. “Here.”

She accepted it without looking me in the eye, raising it to her lips in quick, uneven gulps. The silence felt suffocating. I turned toward the window, its panes taped with overlapping sheets of yellowed newspaper. Some instinct, a desperate need to breathe, made me reach for the corner to peel it back, just enough to see outside.

The moment my fingers brushed the paper, Onyx jolted forward. The glass slipped from her hands, water spilling across the floor, and she clutched at my wrist with frantic strength. “Don’t! You can’t! He will know where we are!”

My chest tightened. “Who?”

Onyx’s eyes darted around the room, wide and unfocused, her breaths shallow. “The voice.” She began pacing, clutching her head like it might burst open if she didn’t hold it together. “I can’t… I don’t want to kill you, Nick… No, you can’t make me… Nick, you shouldn’t be here… you should go…”

Her desperation cracked something inside me. “Don’t listen to the voice,” I said, trying to anchor her, my words trembling with urgency. “It’s not real.”

She stopped mid-step, shoulders rigid, her head slowly tilting in my direction. “Nick… I…”

I approached carefully, hand outstretched, but the moment I closed the distance she staggered backward in terror. “No, don’t come close to me!”

I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs. “Is it Crow?” I asked, the words spilling before I could stop them. Fear weighed heavy in my chest, heavier than the wounds that still burned across my body.

Onyx’s expression went hollow, the faint light of recognition in her eyes swallowed by something darker, something sinister. Her lips moved, but the voice that escaped them was barely hers. “He says I can get Silver back if I do what he tells me to do.”

“He’s lying!” I shouted, desperation cracking my voice.

“You don’t know that.”

The air thickened. A caw rang out, sharp and grating, followed by another and another until the sound seemed to echo from every corner of the room. My breath caught as countless red eyes opened within the shadows, glowing like coals, unblinking. A murder of crows sat perched on furniture, shelves, and rafters, their gaze drilling through me.

Then Onyx lunged, faster than I could react, driving me to the ground. Her hands locked around my throat, her weight crushing down as her face hovered above mine. The warmth in her eyes was gone. What stared back at me was a hollow, cruel hunger, as her fingers tightened and my vision began to blur.

“T-This isn’t you,” I gasped, clawing for breath against her grip. “S-stop…”

I tried to call on my intangibility, to slip through her hands and the weight pinning me down, but the power wouldn’t come. Threads of something unseen dug into my head from empathic tendrils to telepathic claws raking at my will and tearing into my ability to phase. I writhed uselessly beneath her, choking on the pressure.

Desperate, I reached for her face. My fingers brushed her cheek. She froze, and I saw tears gathering in her eyes. They fell, dripping onto my lips, salty and hot. My voice cracked, ragged with suffocation. “E-Ever-y t-thing ish going t-to be f-fi-n-ne…”

Her grip faltered. She released me with a shudder and staggered backward, the crows vanishing in a rush of silence. I coughed violently, scrambling to my feet, still half-dizzy.

Onyx’s hands moved with frantic purpose. She reached under a stack of books on the small table and pulled out a pistol. Before I could react, she leveled it at her temple.

My heart lurched. I raised my hands, inching forward slowly. “Don’t be reckless, Onyx!”

The fear in her eyes was raw and real, but beneath it was something fractured, conflict tearing her apart from the inside. Her hand trembled, then steadied, and she pulled the trigger.

I lunged, the tip of my finger brushing her arm at the last second. Her body flickered intangible, and the bullet phased through her skull harmlessly, clattering into the wall behind us. The gun slipped from her fingers and I snatched it, ejecting the magazine and flicking the chambered round away before tossing the weapon aside.

My hands shook as I clamped down on her shoulders, pulling her close. “Don’t you ever… do that to me again…” My voice was breaking. “Please, this is too much.”

Her eyes softened, her lips trembling. “Crow is alive,” she whispered, and before I could answer, she collapsed into me, her cheek pressing against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her like she might vanish at any second.

When she pulled back, she lingered in my arms, staring straight into me. I felt it then—her power sliding over me, not hostile but gentle, soothing. Her presence calmed the ache in my body, quieted the storm in my head. Our lips inched toward each other, hesitant but inevitable, until we kissed. It was soft, desperate, and fleeting.

She pulled away first, shame flickering across her face. “You won’t probably forgive me for this, but I will say it anyway. I am sorry.”

My chest tightened. “What’s the problem?”

Her voice wavered. “My sister told me to take care of you, so I will do just that.”

I shook my head, the words spilling out before I could think. “Hey, don’t be like that…”

She smiled sadly, brushing her fingers across my cheek. “You gave me the best memories of my life. Thank you, Nick.”

Before I could stop her, she turned the knife of her will inward. I felt it through the empathic bond, and her decision was sharp and final. Her body jerked as she forced herself away from me. The connection flared, and then I felt her essence unraveling, a vanishing presence slipping through my fingers.

Her eyes widened, not with pain but with bewilderment. The bond between us snapped, leaving behind an emptiness that felt wrong and alien. The warmth that had been Onyx from her grief, her anger, and her love, all of it dissolved in an instant.

She blinked at me, trembling, her gaze stripped of recognition. Her voice came out fragile and uncertain, like a child lost in a storm.

“Who… are you?”

In that moment, I realized Onyx was gone. What stared back at me was someone new… an amnesiac hollow, born from her death.