Chapter 26 - 26: Rejected Blood

🜃 Axis of Mikhael— The Price of Failure

The pain was unbearable.Not physical—he had accepted that kind long ago—but something deeper.Ancestral.As if his own blood now sought to purge him.As if the lineage he had served so faithfully now cursed him.

Mikhael gasped in the darkness of his underground chamber.He was wrapped in bandages, but they were useless:veins of black rejection spread across his chest like rotting roots, alive and pulsing with every heartbeat.The bond with Arisha hadn't broken out of betrayal—It had shattered because of love.Because of choice.And ancient magic never forgives those who choose the heart over duty.

The shelter trembled. A deep rumble.It wasn't an explosion.It was a presence.Someone had found him.

A figure emerged from the shadows, silent as a final judgment.Clad in a dark cloak, their face hidden behind a white mask.When they spoke, their voice was a blade:

—"You became weak, Mikhael. All for a human."

Mikhael forced himself upright, staggering.His fevered, bloodshot eyes recognized the figure before his mind did.

—"You've come to kill me?"

The mask lowered—just enough.The face was a ghost from the past.One that should have been dead.

—"No. I've come to remind you what you did."

Memory Fragment: The Nevri Massacre

The night burned red.Mikhael walked through scorched corpses and screams that hadn't yet died.His boots dripped blood.His shadow stretched long in the firelight.

A child sobbed among the rubble.Alone. Wounded.

Mikhael saw him.Then looked up at the tower where the ritual burned.

And turned his back.

—"You didn't stop it," the figure said. "You could've saved him. You could've saved them all."

—"It wasn't my war!" Mikhael shouted, punching the wall.

But they both knew he lied.It was his war.He had simply chosen not to fight.He had still been a boy.And he was afraid to lose.

Present

He blinked. For a moment, the chamber walls bled.The bandages unraveled—They weren't bandages.They were black serpents, devouring him, whispering every name he hadn't saved.

—"You can't escape your legacy," said a voice that sounded like Arisha's."I am what you destroyed."

He reached for her—But her image dissolved into ash.

Only silence remained.And one final echo:

"When blood rejects… even gods fall."

Mikhael collapsed to his knees.For the first time, he didn't fear for himself.He feared for her.

—"If Arisha discovers the truth…"

—"Then the Nevri line won't be reborn," the figure said, already walking away."It'll burn."

Memory Fragment: The Promise

—"Promise you'll always tell me the truth?"Arisha, young and bright-eyed, asked beneath a starless sky.They were sitting on a rooftop.She looked at him with hope in her gaze.

He, unmasked, was just a tired boy with bloodstained hands.

—"I promise," he said—not knowing it was a lie."As long as you live."

She smiled.Innocent. Immortal.

Now

Those words were ash between his teeth.

Mikhael remained kneeling, breathing as if air itself hurt.

She didn't remember Baco.She didn't know what she had lost.And in that forgetting… he saw opportunity.

—"If she can't love what she lost…" he whispered, voice cracking,"maybe she can still love what remains."

But deep down, he knew:That kind of love would be a prison,if built on lies.

Still, he stood.Not for redemption.For necessity.

If she searched for him—Then he would become the truth she remembered.Even if he had to destroy what little of himself remained to make it so.

"Love is the cruelest weapon… when it isn't earned—but stolen."

"And I…am about to become a thief."