The Broken Halo

Chapter 985 - 984: The Same Nightmares [Spacecraft Bonus - ]

[A/N: This bonus Chapter is thanks to Kollum once again!!!!! Thank you so so so much honestly.]

——

Morning trains were carrying the first workers through Lorne, the capital of the Holy Kingdom of Aurelia. Shops opened along the main avenues, and temple bells sounded above the traffic. The night of Rowan’s sixteenth birthday had passed without disturbing most of the city.

The royal palace stood above the government district, its white buildings arranged around a central hall with a golden dome. Covered walkways joined the residential wings to gardens and courtyards. Defensive inscriptions ran beneath the balconies, hidden among the decorative patterns.

Behind one of those balconies, Celeste twisted in her bed.

Her sheets had tangled around her legs. A pillow lay on the carpet, and her fingers pulled at the cloth beneath her as though she were trying to crawl away.

”No!”

She woke screaming.

Celeste pushed herself upright, gasping. One shaking hand went to her head while the other dragged the sheet from her knees.

For several seconds, she couldn’t recognise the room.

Then she found her dressing table. The chair with yesterday’s clothes across it. The pale curtains and the narrow gap through which morning light reached her bed.

Her room.

She drew her knees against her chest and held them tightly.

The burning was gone. So were the hands that had been dragging her down.

Celeste exhaled, then reached for the water beside her bed. The bottle knocked against the table before she managed to pick it up. She drank too quickly, coughed, and took another smaller mouthful.

A knock came from the door.

”Your Highness?”

”I’m all right,” Celeste called, forcing her voice steady. ”Just a dream. I’ll ring if I need anything.”

She waited until the footsteps outside moved away.

”The same nightmares,” she whispered.

She had been having them ever since returning from the Northern Carpathian Front. Going to bed exhausted made no difference. Neither did sleeping with a lamp lit or waiting until she could barely keep her eyes open.

Sooner or later, she found herself beneath that black sun.

The valley of the shadow of death stretched before her, filled with the corpses and souls she had encountered while trying to resurrect Rowan. She heard their feet before she saw them. Then they came over the hills, screaming, with black flames spreading behind them.

In the dreams, she always remembered what to do.

She joined her hands and prayed.

The white light appeared.

Then it broke.

A burning hand pushed through the shield. Another caught her wrist. She tried to pull free, but the corpses crowded around her until she couldn’t see anything beyond their faces.

Sometimes she managed to make the grass grow. It withered beneath her knees before she reached the next verse.

Sometimes the flames entered her mouth while she was praying.

She could feel herself being consumed, unable to escape or even finish asking for help. The pain continued until she woke.

Celeste placed the bottle down and examined her hands.

They were clean and not injured or bloody.

She knew she had saved Rowan. She had seen him drink from the bronze cup, watched him breathe again, and spoken to him every day since.

Yet whenever she slept, she failed.

She rubbed her palms together, trying to shake off the memory of her fingers burning down to bone.

The second nightmare was worse.

That one showed Earth.

She moved through cities where broken trains hung above streets packed with bodies. Crows fought over the dead. Worms crawled through torn uniforms and the open mouths of people who had fallen where they stood.

Blood had soaked so deeply into the ground that every footprint was filled with it.

There were fires everywhere. Whole districts burned beneath the remains of their barriers. Farther away, mountains had broken open, their exposed insides glowing through the smoke.

The dream carried her from one place to another, and she kept searching for somewhere untouched and somewhere that was still whole.

She never found it.

Cracks divided the land and these cracks were wide enough to swallow cities. Rivers emptied into them. On one occasion, she had watched the sea pour into a wound in the world without ever filling it.

Then the sun split.

There was no blade she could see. A dark line appeared across its surface, and the two halves drew apart.

Celeste had heard herself begging it to stop.

The light went out anyway.

Above the ruined world, a man sat upon a throne of darkness.

She could never see his face. A dark radiance surrounded him, outlining the throne and the shapes gathered beneath it.

Demons poured down from the sky.

Others climbed out of the cracks below. Things with too many joints crawled through the air, and vast shapes lowered themselves over cities, trailing limbs through the remains of their streets.

Where they passed, whatever life remained began to disappear.

Trees shrivelled. The last patches of green turned grey. Survivors collapsed as those creatures moved over them, their bodies drying until their clothes hung loose.

Even the crows fell.

The man watched from his throne while everything beneath him died.

Celeste looked toward the strip of sunlight on her bed.

A gardener was moving outside. She could hear the wheels of his barrow along the path beneath her balcony.

She listened until her breathing settled.

The first nightmare came from something she had experienced. She understood why it frightened her.

But the second?

She had never seen the sun torn apart. Never stood among the remains of an entire world.

Was that what Blackmoon would eventually do?

She believed it was.

Mara had described a Greater Demon overpowering the God of War. Celeste herself had nearly died fighting the power left inside a very tiny wound and she was currently having terrible nightmares because of it everyday. If Blackmoon continued growing, how long would it take before nobody on Earth could stop him?

Years?

Decades?

She had no way to tell. The man on the throne had never shown his face, and no voice had told her when the destruction would come.

That uncertainty made it difficult to think about anything else.

”Rowan.”

She pictured him on the bench, staring at the offers of Blessings only he could see.

He also had Peerless Martial Insight and the highest-ranked physique in the book she had read. Two kinds of energy circulating through a human body.

She had believed he mattered when the Lord told her to bring him back. After last night, she was certain he was meant to become humanity’s next hero.

But he had only just awakened. Talent wouldn’t protect a city while he was learning to control his first spell or how to become a master with the sword.

He needed time to grow, and she had no idea how much they had.

Celeste loosened her grip on the sheet and looked toward the window.

”With that talent, you could enter The Haven Academy.”

It was the finest academy on Earth. The Halo of Earth and his companions had founded it during the wars, long before the accusations that ruined his name.

Whatever people thought of the former Hero, the academy’s reputation had endured. Its instructors trained students who went on to command armies and protect entire regions.

Rowan would find far more there than one sword instructor’s collection of techniques.

He would probably be pleased to learn who had helped establish it, too.

The thought gave her something useful to focus on.

She would obtain the latest entrance requirements and speak to Sir Luke. Rowan needed martial arts suited to his present body, along with skill books that would help him develop without repeating what happened in the training yard.

She could gather those.

The royal collections would have suitable manuals. If they didn’t, she knew people who could find them.

Also, admissions opened in two months.

”Two months,” Celeste murmured. ”We can prepare him enough.”

It wasn’t enough to make him powerful, but it gave them time to work toward the entrance examinations. He would need instruction beyond fighting, too. Remembering how little he had known about his status window made that clear.

She would discuss the academy with him today.

He had awakened in time for the next intake. He had found a master, discovered his talent, and survived long enough to begin using it.

Celeste felt no surprise at how those opportunities had come together.

The Lord had sent her to Miresti. She believed He had a purpose for the boy she found there, and she intended to help him reach it.

Her thoughts turned toward the other residential wings of the palace.

”I just hope my family doesn’t stop me.”

When it came to her family, Celeste couldn’t help but frown.

Celeste set the bottle of water back on the table within reach and swung her legs out of bed.

Her knees felt weak when she stood. She waited until she was steady, then walked toward the bathroom.

Whatever objections her family raised, she would do everything she could to support Rowan.