Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 315

Eve

The blast slammed into his chest—sunfire and runes colliding with corrupted flesh.

Vassir shrieked, the sound splitting the air, rupturing the lights overhead. His body jerked back, limbs convulsing as radiant energy tore through him like a divine lance.

And then—

His wings snapped inward.

A flash of instinct—pure, primal, ancient.

They folded, twisted, wrapped around his trembling body like a coffin of sinew and shadow. Black veins bulged and writhed across the surface as the flesh hardened, fusing together into a pulsing mass.

A cocoon.

It sealed shut with a sick, slurping sound, the outer layers rippling with every tortured pulse inside.

Montegue lowered his weapon slightly, eyes narrowing at the grotesque sphere now hanging midair, suspended by thick tendrils of shadow gripping the fractured ceiling beams.

"Containment defense," he muttered. "Smart bastard."

"Gamma Unit—formation!" he barked, voice cutting through the chaos like a blade.

Immediately, twelve guards stepped forward in perfect synchronicity, fanning out into a precision arc around the cocoon. Each bore heavy-caliber plasma rifles with light-infused cores, rune-filaments tracing up their arms.

"Hold your ground," Montegue ordered. "If that thing cracks open—we incinerate what's left."

The rest of the team poured in behind, some sliding over blood-soaked tiles, others moving toward the ruined side wings of the lab.

A pair of Delta medics rushed to my side, their expressions tight behind their visors.

"We've got him," one said, already lifting Kael's limp form into a stabilizer sling. "Pulse is weak. But present."

I couldn't let go.

I couldn't.

But they were gentle. Efficient. They peeled him from my arms like a dying prayer and secured him with practiced care.

"We'll get him to the infirmary. Stay here. You're in shock."

"I'm fine," I lied, the word brittle as glass.

Kael disappeared behind a wall of bodies.

And I was left kneeling in the aftermath.

The cocoon above us throbbed once—slow and ominous.

Montegue didn't look away.

"Secure the perimeter," he growled to his second. "Reinforce the light exposure. I want UV floods installed across every access point."

"And the… entity?" the soldier asked.

Montegue's gaze hardened.

"We have to contain it. It still our Alpha's body."

And from deep within the ball of black-veined flesh—

A pulse echoed.

As though Vassir heard.

The pulse echoed again.

Thump.

Like a heartbeat underwater—distant, warped. Not quite alive.

Not quite dead.

I didn't move.

Couldn't.

My knees were slick with blood—his blood, my blood, someone's. I couldn't tell anymore. My hands trembled, resting on the cracked floor, still stained with the final vial. My gaze wouldn't lift from the spot where Kael had been, as if the outline of his body had been burned into the tiles.

Noise blurred into static. Shouts, bootsteps, orders barked through comms. Weapons charging. Light rigs assembling overhead. The Gamma unit had moved into a containment ring, shoulder to shoulder, their silhouettes a dark wall between me and the thing cocooned in the rafters.

And I…

I just knelt there.

Empty.

> "Eve."

Rhea's voice echoed in my skull, soft but insistent.

"Eve, you have to move. You're not safe here."

My body didn't listen.

Even breathing felt like a betrayal.

> "Eve, please. I know it hurts. I know it broke you. But Kael needs you. He's alive. He's fighting."

Fighting.

I had fought too.

And in the end, I chose the monster over the man I loved.

Over the man who had once begged me to run from him.

I didn't know what I was anymore.

Footsteps crunched glass behind me.

Heavy. Unhurried.

Then a shadow fell over me.

"Eve," Montegue's voice came low—gravel wrapped in steel. "You need to get out of here."

I didn't answer.

I wasn't sure I could.

He waited. For all his sharpness, there was a pause there. A breath. Like he didn't want to touch me. Like he knew this kind of silence too well.

But then—

Without another word, his arms came around me.

Strong.

Deliberate.

He lifted me like I weighed nothing. Like I was just a child—small, limp, broken from the inside out.

My head fell against his chest as he straightened.

I didn't protest.

Couldn't.

The warmth of his armor pressed into my skin through my ruined clothes. I caught a faint scent of smoke and steel and war. His heartbeat was steady, measured. Like he could afford to be calm.

I hated that calm.

Because I didn't have it anymore.

Not after what I did.

The room receded behind us, swallowed by floodlights and gunmetal and the warped groaning of the cocoon as it shifted again.

"Let's go," Montegue murmured, and the command was for me, for himself, for everyone.

Containment rigs hissed as they activated.

UV veins pulsed across the ceiling.

Reinforcements sealed the exits.

And I—

I said nothing.

I just let him carry me through the blood, away from the remnants of the man I had tried so hard to save…

And failed.