Chapter 586: Broken Son
The voice was small. Broken. Barely audible above the screams of the dying adults.
But Anya heard it.
She turned, and her laughter died in her throat.
Mika was looking at her.
He was barely recognizable. Half his body was gone—torn away by the adults’ teeth.
His nose was missing. His lips were gone. His scalp had been ripped from his skull.
His chest itself was an open cavity, his ribs visible through the torn flesh, his organs exposed to the air.
His left arm and right leg had been completely consumed, and what remained of his other limbs had been stripped to the bone.
He should have been dead. By any rational measure, he was dead.
But his eyes were open and...he was smiling.
He didn’t have lips anymore, so the smile was more of a suggestion than an expression.
But Anya had spent her whole life learning to read Mika’s face, and she could see it clearly. He was smiling at her. Even now. Even after everything.
"Anya." He said again, his voice barely a whisper. "It’s...alright. You can stop now."
"Mi...Mika..." His name caught in her throat.
The power that had been blazing through her flickered and dimmed.
The adults she had been torturing collapsed to the ground, temporarily forgotten.
"I know...you’re scared." Mika said. "I know you’re angry. I know you want to make them suffer...cough...for what they did."
"But this...this isn’t you. This isn’t the Anya I know."
"The Anya I know is kind. Gentle." He looked at with a tender gaze. "She paints pictures of her family on the walls and makes paper boats and cheers at my silly plays."
"She doesn’t torture people. S-She doesn’t revel in their pain."
"But they hurt you, Mika." Anya sobbed, the tears finally breaking through her manic rage. "They hurt you so much, Mika. They ate you alive. They—they—"
"I know." Mika’s voice was fading, growing weaker with every word. "I know what they did. And I know why you did what you did."
"But you don’t have to become a monster to fight monsters. You’re better than them. You’ve always been better than them."
"Mika!" She sobbed. "Mika, I’m so sorry. I should have protected you! I should have been stronger! I—I...I’m just useless!"
"You’re not useless." His hand, what was left of it reached up and touched her cheek. "You’ve never been useless, Anya. No matter who you are, no matter what you can or can’t do...you’re precious."
"You’re so precious to me."
"Mika..."
"Promise me something."
"Anything."
"Don’t let this change you." His eyes, the only part of his face that still seemed alive, held hers with an intensity that belied his broken body. "Don’t let them turn you into a monster."
Anya pressed her forehead against his. Tears dripped from her cheeks onto his ruined face.
"I promise." She whispered. "I promise, Mika. I won’t let them win. I won’t let them change me."
Mika smiled again, a ghost of a smile, barely visible on his ravaged face.
"Good. That’s...That’s my Anya."
His eyes began to close. His breathing, already faint, grew even fainter.
"No." Anya said. "No, Mika, stay with me! Stay awake! I’m going to get you out of here!"
"I’m going to save you!"
She reached for her blessing, trying to use her newfound power to heal him the way she had healed and destroyed the adults.
But nothing happened. His body resisted her, rejected her because his body wasn’t made of normal flesh and blood.
It was made of mana itself, and no blessing could control that.
"No." Anya shook her head, refusing to accept it. "No, that’s not fair. That’s not fair! I finally got my blessing—I finally have the power to protect you—and it’s useless? It’s completely useless?!"
’Am I just going to let Mika die in front of me?’
The horrifying thought struck her mind for a single moment before it was pushed away.
’No. No, I won’t let this happen! I won’t let him die!’
She turned toward the adults and her eyes hardened.
"You’re going to help me." She said. "Whether you want to or not."
She raised her hands, and the adults’ bodies began to change. Their flesh bubbled and warped and merged together.
"No!" One of them screamed. "What are you doing?! Stop! STOP!"
Anya didn’t stop. She continued to shape the flesh, molding it like clay, creating something new from the raw material of the monsters who had devoured her beloved.
Arms sprouted from the mass. Eyes blinked open across its surface. Mouths, dozens of them gasped and moaned and begged for mercy.
When she was finished, the adults were no longer human. They were no longer even separate beings.
They had become a single creature. A massive, writhing, multi-limbed horror that barely fit within the cavern.
It was the size of a bus, covered in eyes and ears and grasping hands, a nightmare given physical form.
It had no will of its own—only the will that Anya imposed upon it. And what she willed was simple:
Dig.
"KRHHHIII—!
The creature surged toward the blocked tunnel above them, the same tunnel that had been sealed since the day of the collapse.
BANG! SMASH! BANG!
It began to burrow, using its countless limbs to tear away rock and stone, creating a path where none had existed before.
Meanwhile, Anya spread her new wings.
They were not the feathery, angelic wings that her mother possessed.
No, they were wings of flesh and bone like something that had been flayed alive.
They looked exactly like what they were: the wings of a girl who had been broken and reforged into something that was no longer entirely human.
Anya gathered Mika into her arms and launched herself upward, following the path of destruction that the flesh-creature was carving through the stone.
She flew through the narrow tunnel, her wings scraping against the walls, her body battered by falling debris.
She didn’t care. She didn’t feel the pain.
All she felt was the desperate, burning need to get Mika to safety.
"Hold on." She whispered, though she wasn’t sure if Mika could still hear her. "Hold on, Mika. We’re almost there. Mommy’s going to save you! She’s going to fix everything!"
"Just hold on a little longer."
The tunnel grew steeper. The air grew warmer.
The darkness, which had been absolute for so long, began to lighten.
Gray became pale. Pale became bright.
And then, with a final, explosive crash, the amalgamation burst through the surface.
BOOM!
Light.
Blinding, beautiful, glorious light.
Anya shielded her eyes, her wings folding instinctively as she landed on solid ground.
She was in a cavern—not the main one, but a different one, a place where excavation equipment and ropes and pulleys lined the walls.
Rescue workers stared at her in shock, their faces pale, their mouths open.
"That monster—!"
"What is that thing?!"
"Get back! Everyone get back!"
But Anya didn’t care about the rescue workers. She cared about only one thing.
"MOMMY!!"
Her voice cracked on the word, half-sob and half-scream, echoing through the excavation site with desperate, agonized intensity.
And then she saw her.
Fauna.
Her mother was covered in dirt and dust. Her hands were raw and bleeding, the fingernails torn away from weeks of digging through solid stone.
Her face was gaunt, her eyes sunken, her entire body trembling with exhaustion.
She had been down here the entire time—two months, sixty-one days, every waking moment spent trying to reach her daughter.
And now, finally, impossibly, she had.
"Anya?" Fauna’s voice was barely a whisper. "Anya, is that...is that really you?"
"Mommy!"
Anya ran to her mother, her wings dissolving into motes of rainbow light as she threw herself into Fauna’s arms.
"WAAAAAH!"
She was crying—sobbing, wailing, all the tears she had held back for two months pouring out at once.
Fauna held her just as tightly, her own tears streaming down her face, her body shaking with the force of her relief.
"My baby....My precious baby....Y-You’re alright...You’re really alright."
But Anya pulled back, her eyes wild with desperation.
"Mommy, Mika—you have to save Mika! Please, he’s dying! He’s—"
Fauna looked down at the broken body in her daughter’s arms, and the world stopped.
She had seen horrors before.
She had fought in wars that spanned dimensions, had seen comrades fall and enemies crumble, had watched civilizations burn and worlds die.
But nothing...nothing had prepared her for this.
Mika. Her precious baby boy, the child she had sworn to protect, the little soul who had brought so much light into their family.
He lay in Anya’s arms like a discarded doll, his body torn and broken in ways that defied description.
And his face...his beautiful, stubborn, knowing face was barely recognizable.
He looked worse than a corpse. Corpses were whole. Corpses had dignity.
This was something that should not exist, something that nature itself would recoil from.
"Mika..." The name came out as a broken thing, barely audible, trembling on her lips like a prayer.
"Mika, my baby...My baby boy."
Her legs gave out. She fell to her knees beside him, her hands hovering over his ruined body, afraid to touch him, afraid that the slightest contact would cause him more pain.
Tears streamed down her face, cutting tracks through the dirt and dust that coated her cheeks.
"What happened?" Her voice cracked, splintered, shattered into a thousand pieces. "What happened to my baby?! Anya, what—how—"
"Mommy, I—" Anya started.
But Fauna wasn’t waiting for an answer.
"PULL US UP!"
The scream tore from her throat with a force that echoed through the excavation chamber, through the tunnels above, through the very air itself.
"PULL US UP RIGHT NOW!"
From the opening above, a sound like thunder split the air.
The Maiden of War’s spear, thrown with the full force of her divine strength came hurtling down.
Whoosh!
A rope was attached to its shaft, and it embedded itself in the stone directly in front of Fauna with a crack that sent shards of rock flying in all directions.
Fauna grabbed the rope with one hand, holding Mika and Anya close with the other.
"NOW!"
The Maiden of War pulled.
And in a matter of seconds they emerged into the light.
—
The moment the family saw Mika, the world ended.
Yelena was the first to react. Her hand flew to her mouth, covering it as if she could physically hold back the horror that threatened to escape.
She was the disciplined one, the sister who always knew what to say and do in any situation.
But now, words failed her. All she could manage was a broken, disbelieving whisper.
"No. No, this can’t...this isn’t..."
She couldn’t finish. There were no words for what she was seeing.
—
The Maiden of War, the warrior who laughed in the face of death stared at Mika’s ruined form with an expression of utter, soul-shattering shock.
Her spear slipped from her fingers and clattered to the ground.
Her legs gave out beneath her, and she dropped to her knees on the grass, her eyes fixed on the boy she had always called her favorite sparring partner.
"No." She breathed. "No, no, no."
—
Nadia turned away. She had to.
The moment she saw Mika, she felt the earth surge beneath her. Cracks split the ground at her feet. Stones shattered.
The very foundations of the realm trembled in response to her grief.
If she let herself feel this, the earthquake she would cause would be catastrophic.
It would destroy cities. It would kill millions.
So she turned away. She closed her eyes. She breathed.
And she held the world together through sheer force of will while her heart shattered into a thousand pieces.
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