WOLFLESS: Accidentally Marked By The Devil's Son-Chapter 32: Ritual

Chapter 32

Clara’s chest heaved, her white eyes shimmering with a mixture of unshed tears and venomous rage.

For two thousand years, she had waited for Lucian to look at her with even a fraction of the intensity he was currently using to shield a gutter rat.

"Your choice, your risk to take," Clara whispered, her voice trembling with a bitter finality.

She turned away from them, her green gown snapping like a whip against the floor. "Follow me." She led them toward a narrow hallway that shouldn’t have fit within the cabin’s exterior dimensions.

At the end stood a door made of solid, unpolished silver. As Clara pressed her palm against it, the metal bled away, revealing a chamber that made Isabella’s breath hitch.

The room was blinding. It was an explosion of light and reflection, every inch of the walls and ceiling covered in seamless mirrors that tilted at impossible angles.

But it was the floor that made Isabella hesitate, it was a shallow pool of water, perfectly still but dark, reflecting the thousands of mirrors above until the room felt like it had no bottom.

"Pull off your shoes and step in," Clara commanded, her voice echoing unnaturally in the sparkling space.

"The water is an anchor. It will hold your physical forms here while I reach for the threads between your souls."

Isabella hesitated, her fingers fumbling with the laces of her boots. As she pulled them off, the cold air bit at her bare skin.

She stepped into the pool, expecting the splash of liquid, but the water felt more like heavy silk, swirling around her ankles with a weight that seemed to pull at her very marrow.

The room was disorienting. Everywhere she looked, she saw a thousand versions of herself—bloody, tattered, and wide-eyed with a fear she was trying desperately to hide.

She didn’t want to be hollowed out. The thought of being a vessel with the lights turned off, as Clara had put it, made her skin crawl

But the alternative felt like a different kind of death. She looked at Lucian as he stepped into the dark water ahead of her, his movements graceful even now.

He was a stranger. A dangerous, ancient predator who, until an hour ago, had looked at her like she was an irritating smudge on his royal history.

The bond between them was a mistake—a cosmic accident—and she hated the way his cold arrogance and lethal instincts leaked into her mind.

She wanted him out of her head. She wanted the be free. But did she want it at the cost of his soul?

He’s a King, she thought, watching the way the thousands of mirrors caught his crimson eyes. What happens to a world where a creature like him becomes a ghost?

And why the hell is he choosing me over his own crown? Lucian stopped in the center of the shimmering room and turned to face her.

In the countless mirrors, it looked as if an entire army of Kings was waiting for her. He reached out a hand, palm up, waiting for her to close the distance.

She waded toward him, the dark water rippling out in perfect circles. "If you do this," Isabella whispered in the crystalline silence.

"if you end up hollowed out, nothing happens to me right?" Lucian’s expression didn’t soften, but the intensity in his gaze shifted, becoming something else.

"Abomination, don’t take this as gratitude, take my hand before I change my mind." Isabella reached out, her smaller, trembling hand sliding into his cold, steady palm.

The moment their skin touched, the mirrors in the room hummed with a low, vibrating frequency that made her teeth ache.

Clara stood at the edge of the pool, her hands raised. The jealousy in her eyes hadn’t faded, but it was being overridden by the sheer power required for the task.

"The water will rise as the soul unweaves," Clara warned, her voice dropping into a guttural chant.

"Do not break eye contact. If you lose sight of one another in the reflections, the ritual will take you both. I am beginning the separation... now."

As Clara’s first incantation hit the air, the dark water at their feet began to glow with a sickly light.

Isabella felt a sudden, agonizing tugging sensation behind her navel—as if a hook had been snagged in her soul and was beginning to pull the very thread of her existence away from his.

The mirrors began to flicker, showing not their current forms, but flashes of their lives. Isabella saw her lonely childhood in the pack.

In the mirror directly beside it, Isabella watched in horror as the witch’s feet left the floor. It wasn’t a graceful levitation; it was a violent hoist.

Clara’s voice faltered. Her guttural chant turned into a choked, wet gasp. Her body was jerked upward as if an invisible, massive hand had clamped around her throat, squeezing the life out of her.

Her white eyes bulged, her hands clawing at the empty air around her neck, trying to peel away a grip that wasn’t there.

She tried to force the words of the spell out, her lips moving frantically, but all that emerged were desperate, strangled clicks.

Whatever was holding her was stronger than her magic. "Clara!" Isabella tried to turn her head, but Lucian’s grip on her hand tightened with the strength of a vice.

"Don’t. Look. Away," he hissed through gritted teeth. His face was a mask of agony, sweat beading on his forehead as his own soul was being dragged through the needle’s eye.

The water began to rise, swirling faster, climbing past their knees, then their thighs. Clara’s face was turning a bruised indigo.

Her body thrashing in the air, she began to lose consciousness, her head lolling to the side as her power flickered and died.

The silver door behind her began to buckle inward, not from a physical force, but as if the room itself was being sucked.

Suddenly, the air in the room froze then, the world shattered. With a sound like a thousand screaming violins, every single mirror in the room exploded simultaneously.

Millions of razor sharp silver shards flew through the air. Isabella screamed as the glass sliced into her shoulders, her arms, and her cheeks.

Beside her, Lucian moved instantly, yanking her against him, his body turning to shield her as glass rained down on him like death.

The invisible grip on Clara vanished, and she fell, landing face-first into the dark water with a heavy splash.

She didn’t resurface.