Chapter 65: Within the Dark

The car screeched to a stop. The night swallowed the sound whole.

Noor stepped out, her heels sinking slightly into the fresh snow. The air was thick with the metallic bite of rust, the ghost of gasoline, the forgotten breath of something long dead.

The abandoned worksite loomed ahead—dark, skeletal. A mausoleum for things best left buried.

Maya and Zeyla followed, silent. They were necessary, but irrelevant. Noor was already gone, already stepping into the dark.

Inside, the air was still. A pressure that did not belong.

And then—

"Ah, Noor."

A voice like silk unraveling.

She did not pause. Did not blink.

Kieren stood waiting, his body languid against a rusted table, fingers idly spinning a knife, the point dancing along the wood. His smile curled at the edges, slow and knowing.

"You finally came."

He pushed off the table, walking toward her with the lazy arrogance of a man who believed in his own invincibility. The light overhead flickered. He stopped close—too close—his head tilting as he drank her in.

"You are," he murmured, "a vision."

A hand lifted. His fingers, long and slow, traced the air near her face, but not touching.

"Tell me, Noor—" His voice dipped, almost tender. "Do you think death is lonely?"

The words slid between them like something intimate. A secret shared between monsters.

Noor's lashes lowered. Not in hesitation. Not in thought.

In disinterest.

"Where is he?"

Kieren exhaled, slow. Disappointed. His fingers ghosted over the line of her jaw, testing, pressing.

"Always so cold."

The hand drifted down, brushing the edge of her collarbone, fingertips barely pressing against silk. "It must be exhausting, Noor. To hold yourself apart from the world. From touch. From warmth."

The knife was at his throat before he could blink.

His breath hitched—then—

Laughter.

Low. Rough. Delighted.

Blood bloomed where the blade kissed his skin.

"Ah." He exhaled like a man savoring the first taste of a rare wine. "That's it. That's the thing underneath, isn't it?"

His eyes flickered with something dark. "I want to see it."

"Show me, Noor."

A click.

Guns lifted in the corners of the room. The shadows shifted, taking form.

Zeyla and Maya stepped forward, hands already on their weapons, but Noor—

Noor did not move.

Did not breathe.

Kieren smiled.

"Shall I give you a reason?"

A snap of his fingers.

A door groaned open.

And there—

Sanlang.

His body slumped in the chair. The slow, shallow rise and fall of his chest barely noticeable.

Noor's breath did not catch.

Did not stop.

But something in the air shifted.

Kieren's eyes caught it. His grin widened.

"Ah, Noor." He circled her slowly. "Do you remember this place?"

The floorboards creaked under his lazy steps.

"Where I took him from you? Where you begged for his life?"

Noor's grip on the blade did not falter.

"You pleaded. You offered everything. And still…" Kieren exhaled, long and soft, like recalling a fond memory. "You let him go. You let me have him."

The shadows deepened.

"And now look at him."

He gestured toward Sanlang's limp form.

"I wonder, Noor—" His voice dipped, softer, lower. "When he looks at you now, does he feel it? The ghost of something lost?"

Noor's eyes did not flicker.

But Kieren saw it.

The way the world bent.

The way the air turned razor-thin.

He laughed. "Ah, there she is."

And then—

Steel.

The blade slid into his shoulder, slow and clean.

His body tensed. His breath hitched.

Then—

Laughter.

Softer this time. Pained. Pleased.

"God," he whispered. "You're beautiful."

She was already gone.

Sanlang.

His name in her throat, behind her ribs, crawling up her spine.

She was at his side, fingers brushing his face. Cold. Too cold.

"Sanlang."

His lashes fluttered.

A breath.

Not enough.

"Sanlang."

Behind her, something moved.

A whisper of metal. A flicker of motion.

She turned—

Too late.

The blade buried itself into his side.

The sound—soft. Wet.

Sanlang's body jerked.

His breath—hitched.

Then—

Stopped.

Noor stared.

The blood spread slow.

Seeping through fabric. Blooming dark and thick, the scent of iron curling into the air.

A heartbeat.

Then—

Her knees hit the ground.

Her fingers pressed against the wound, slipping, sliding, too much, too fast—

"No."

A whisper. A shudder.

"No, no, no...noo..noooooo—"

His chest—still.

Her hands—shaking.

Her breath—gone.

A sound tore through her throat.

Not a scream.

Not a sob.

A wail.

Something that did not belong to this world.

Her screams filled the room as her voice broke into a desperate wail. "No, please no... not again... please not again..." Her voice was hoarse, raw with the anguish of a love long buried, now slipping away from her once more.

She held Sanlang close, rocking him, her hands stained with the evidence of her failure. "No, please... no," she whispered, her voice barely audible now. Her fingers brushed his face, her thumb tracing his jaw as if the tenderness of her touch could somehow pull him back from the abyss.

The walls shuddered.

The shadows at her feet coiled like waiting creatures.

"Sanlang—please—"

Her hands slipped in his blood, trembled against his skin, cupped his face.

"Wake up."

Stillness.

Then—

Laughter.

Soft. Slow.

Drangheta.

He stepped forward, hands clasped, his head tilted, eyes gleaming.

"I didn't think you had it in you," he murmured. "To love something so much you'd let it destroy you."

Noor lifted her head.

Her eyes—

Black.

No iris. No whites. Just endless, endless dark.

The air tightened.

The candlelight flickered.

The walls groaned.

The temperature plummeted.

Shadows stretched. Twisted. Reached for her.

Drangheta's smirk wavered.

"Ah." His breath was slow. Careful. "And now?"

Noor exhaled.

The ground cracked.

A sound that did not belong—low, deep, inhuman.

A whisper of something ancient.

A breath—

Then—

The world did not shatter.

It folded.

The walls groaned, the air bending in on itself, like something enormous—something wrong—was breathing beneath the surface of reality.

The men around them felt it first.

One stumbled back, eyes wide, throat convulsing around a scream that never came. Another dropped his weapon, fingers spasming, his breath turning to fog in the sudden, impossible cold.

Then—

Noor stood.

Slow. Deliberate. Unhurried, like time itself had ceased to hold meaning.

Sanlang's blood dripped from her fingertips, trailing down her wrists in delicate crimson veins. Her eyes—two black abysses, endless, empty—swallowed the flickering light whole.

She lifted her chin.

And the air broke.

The first man dropped.

Not from a bullet. Not from a blade.

From nothing at all.

His body twisted, every joint contorting at once, his spine arching violently before it snapped.

A breath later, another fell.

A gurgling sound. A hand clawing at a throat that was no longer there.

The room listened.

Drangheta watched.

His eyes widened—fascination.

"Yes," he whispered.

A third man collapsed. Blood leaked from his nose, his mouth, his ears.

Kieren, still leaning against the wall, his shoulder blooming with dark red, grinned through his pain.

"You've always been a goddamn nightmare, Noor," he rasped. "But this?"

He exhaled, slow and sharp, eyes flickering with something close to admiration.

"This is art."

Noor turned toward him.

The moment stretched—too long, too thin.

Then—

Kieren's body lifted off the ground.

His feet dangled.

A choking noise slipped past his lips, his fingers twitching at his sides, his throat pressing inward—

No hands on him.

No wires.

Just—

Noor.

Looking at him.

"What are you?" he choked.

She tilted her head.

The lights above them shattered, glass raining down like falling stars.

Her lips parted.

And Kieren—

Fell.

Hard.

His knees cracked against the floor, his breath ragged, shoulders shaking. He lifted his gaze, licking the blood from his split lip.

"Fuck," he whispered, laughing hoarsely.

Noor had not moved.

But the air had shifted.

No more screams.

No more running.

Just waiting.

Drangheta took a step forward, his boots echoing in the hollow silence.

"Tell me, Noor." His voice was warm, curious, hungry. "Does it hurt?"

No response.

A flicker of something—something not human—passed through Noor's gaze.

Drangheta inhaled.

"Ah." A soft sound, a realization. His eyes gleamed. "Not anymore."

Noor took a step forward.

The floor beneath her cracked.

Shadows rippled at her feet, twisting, shifting—moving toward her.

Something deep inside Drangheta shuddered.

Something instinctive. Something ancient.

"You're not supposed to be real," he murmured. "And yet—"

The room seemed smaller now.

The ceiling lower.

The air thicker.

A door slammed open somewhere in the distance, but no one turned. No one ran.

They were trapped.

Not by walls.

Not by chains.

By her.

Drangheta's fingers twitched at his sides, but he did not reach for his weapon.

No point.

"Do it," he whispered, stepping closer. "Show me."

Noor blinked.

Then_____

The air sucked inward, a soundless vacuum, like a dying star curling into itself. The shadows bled from the walls, pooling at Noor's feet, stretching toward her as if drawn by something ancient, something hungry.

The temperature plummeted.

Frost crackled along the rusted beams, inching up the walls in jagged veins. The men left standing shuddered, their breath misting in the unnatural cold. One of them—tall, broad, trained for war—stumbled back, fingers shaking as he clutched his rifle.

"What the fuck is this?" he whispered.

Kieren, still on his knees, pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the remnants of whatever force had nearly crushed him. His fingers trembled. He grinned anyway.

"Look at you." His voice was raw, breathless, ecstatic. "The world is breaking for you, Noor."

She didn't look at him.

Didn't look at anyone.

Her gaze was fixed on Sanlang, his body motionless, the blood still warm against the cold floor. Her fingers curled at her sides, her knuckles white, the veins in her hands stark beneath her skin.

Drangheta stepped closer.

"And yet," he murmured, eyes gleaming, "it still wasn't enough, was it?"

Her head tilted, just slightly.

The moment stretched, fragile as glass.

Then—

The first man dropped.

Just—

His body seizing, jerking, before his spine snapped with a sickening crunch.

The second collapsed before he could run. His breath left him in a sharp, wet gasp as blood leaked from his nose, his mouth, his ears. His body convulsed once, then stilled.

The third tried to scream.

The sound never came.

Something inside his throat caved in.

He fell.

The rest froze.

They had seen battle. War. They had faced death before.

But not like this.

Not where it came without touch.

Not where it came without reason.

Drangheta inhaled slowly, watching the carnage unfold like a man witnessing the birth of something holy.

"Beautiful," he whispered.

Noor turned her gaze to him.

Something unseen pressed against his ribs, heavy, suffocating.

He felt it—the weight of her existence bending the space between them.

He had spent his life chasing destruction, courting ruin, looking for the edge of the abyss.

And now—

Now it was looking back.

He smiled.

"Tell me, Noor." His voice was soft, almost reverent. "Does it feel good?"

Her lips parted.

For a moment, the world seemed to wait.

Then—

The floor cracked.

The walls groaned.

And the remaining men ran.

They tried.

Their bodies wouldn't listen.

Their feet stayed rooted to the ground.

Trembling.

Dying.

Drangheta exhaled, watching as Noor took another step forward.

"More," he whispered. "Show me more."

Noor blinked.

The world was wreckage.

The air smelled of rust, of blood, of something darker curling at the edges of existence. Noor knelt in the carnage, her silk dress soaked in red, her hands trembling over a body that should not be still.

Sanlang.

She pressed her palm against his chest. No rise. No breath. The warmth was fading from his skin, slipping through her fingers like sand.

Drangheta stood among the dead, his suit untouched, his eyes gleaming with intrigue. Kieren, his shoulder still slick with blood, crouched against the wall, watching her with a slow, breathless grin.

"Even you," Drangheta murmured, "cannot bring back the dead."

Noor lifted her head.

Slowly.

And the world tilted.

Kieren's grin faltered.

Drangheta's amusement sharpened into something closer to fascination.

The light above them flickered—once, twice—then shattered.

Glass rained down, catching in Noor's hair, in the folds of her bloodied dress, sparkling like something holy. The walls groaned, the weight of the moment pressing down on the building itself.

She looked at Sanlang.

The air curled inward, thick, suffocating. The shadows at her feet slithered, reaching, whispering.

Noor exhaled.

"No."

A whisper. A command.

Drangheta's fingers twitched.

Kieren licked the blood from his split lip, eyes locked on her.

The air broke.

Frost crept over the walls, the floor, the bodies, inching toward Sanlang's cooling skin. Noor pressed her forehead to his, her breath warm against his lips.

She bent lower, her lips brushing the shell of his ear.

"You are mine." A whisper. A truth. A law. "No god, no grave, no force in this world will take you from me."

*"Asra'tin fethra dalem—Zethran un kael ferath!"*

The frost on the walls cracked. The ceiling trembled.

Her fingers slid to his throat, pressing against the stillness.

"I am calling you back, Kang."

The air turned to static, thick and humming. The blood pooled around them darkened, curling at the edges as if recoiling.

"Open your eyes," she murmured, softer now. But it was not a request.

A pause.

A breathless, endless second where even the dead seemed to listen.

Then—

The silence collapsed.

The floor beneath them cracked, veins of ice spreading outward in jagged, violent lines. The bodies in the room shuddered, their lifeless limbs twitching for a brief, horrifying moment.

Then—

Sanlang gasped.

A sharp, wet sound, like lungs torn open and forced to remember how to breathe. His body arched, his fingers spasmed, his throat locked around a scream that never fully formed.

Noor held him down.

Sanlang coughed—blood, thick and dark, spilling from his lips. His chest rose—fell—rose again.

Alive.

Impossible.

Drangheta's breath hitched.

Kieren let out something between a chuckle and a groan, dragging his fingers through his hair, his grin wide and rabid.

"Oh, Noor." Drangheta's voice was hushed, reverent. "What have you done?"

Noor didn't answer.

She was still looking at Sanlang, her fingers still ghosting over his pulse—too fast, too erratic, but there.

Sanlang blinked up at her, his eyes dazed, glassy.

For a moment—

For just a moment—

Recognition flickered.

Noor's breath caught.

"Kang—"

Then it was gone.

The past slipped from his gaze, his name dissolving before it could take shape. His lips parted, a shuddering breath escaping.

"Noor?"

She swallowed, her throat tight.

Sanlang's breath rattled against Noor's chest. Unsteady. Fragile. There.

But Noor—

Noor was still kneeling in ruin. Her fingers curled against his back.

The world had not yet caught up to what had happened.

But Drangheta had.

He exhaled, slow, measured, watching Noor with something between admiration and unease. His hands folded behind his back, but there was a stiffness in his shoulders, a subtle shift in his stance. A man seeing something he could not unsee.

"What are you?"

The words left him soft, careful, like speaking too loud might shatter whatever unnatural thing was keeping Sanlang tethered to this world.

Noor did not answer.

She stood.

The air bent.

The bodies strewn across the floor groaned—not from life, not from breath, but from the sheer weight of what had just been undone. The frost on the walls spread further, inching like veins of something alive, something growing.

Kieren's breath hitched.

Then—

Laughter.

Low. Breathless. Ecstatic.

"You broke the rules," he whispered, his smile splitting wider.

He swayed slightly where he stood, his injured shoulder dark with blood, but his focus was wholly on Noor.

"Oh, Noor." His voice was rough, almost reverent.

She lifted her gaze.

And Kieren's body seized.

His breath caught in his throat, his fingers flexing, his limbs momentarily locked in place—

A flicker of something unseen, something crawling through the marrow of his bones.

He let out a sharp, shuddering laugh, his knees nearly buckling. His hand shot out to steady himself against a rusted beam, his body thrumming with something wrong.

"Fucking hell—" He exhaled harshly, dragging a hand down his face. "That felt—" He cut off with a hoarse chuckle, shaking his head. "—it felt like something inside me was trying to claw its way out."

He looked at Noor.

And for the first time—

His grin faltered.

Because Noor wasn't looking at him anymore.

She was looking at Drangheta.

The mafia leader stood utterly still, his sharp, unreadable gaze locked onto her. His breathing remained even, his hands still folded neatly behind his back.

But he was calculating.

"You shouldn't exist," Drangheta murmured, more to himself than to her.

The words did not sting. They did not settle.

Noor took a step forward.

Drangheta's lips parted slightly. A flicker of something unguarded—just for a second. Then his smirk returned, slow, careful.

"Do you feel it?" he asked.

"The moment you touched death and refused to let go?" His voice dipped lower, something dark curling behind his words. "Something touched you back."

Noor tilted her head.

The lights overhead shuddered.

The shadows at her feet curled toward her like loyal things.

Drangheta exhaled through his nose.

"Interesting."

Kieren finally tore his gaze away, looking at Sanlang, whose breath was still uneven, his body trembling.

"How long will it last?" he murmured.

Noor's gaze snapped to him.

Kieren grinned, sharp and bloodstained.

"What?" he hummed. "You think you pulled him back whole?"

He took a step forward, voice dropping.

"Or did you just make him stay?"

Noor did not look away.

But something in her pulse—

Something in the marrow of her bones—

Whispered.

Sanlang's body felt heavy, his eyes remained closed, but the whispers reached him—quiet, insistent, like a pulse in his veins.

"You hear me, don't you?" The voice slithered in, soft and dark, a whisper just beneath his skin. "I have always been here, waiting."

He ...He couldn't respond .His thoughts had begun to splinter, unraveling like frayed threads. The room felt... wrong. It wasn't his. I

"You've always felt me, always known me." The voice lingered, growing deeper now, more familiar, like an echo of his own voice. "Don't fight it. There's nothing to fight."

Sanlang's chest tightened. His breath caught, shallow and ragged, the air suffocating. His mind reached out, grasping for clarity, but there was only the dark pull, the force of the presence that wrapped around him like chains, tightening, crushing him inward.

A figure loomed in his thoughts_____Her face, ethereal, perfect, but blurred, as if seen through the fog of a dream. He reached for her, but his hand was heavy, distant.

"She will never be yours unless." The voice came again, soft as velvet, but cold as ice. "But She belongs to you. Make her belong only to you."

Sanlang's body quivered, his mind trembling with the weight of something… something dark. His fingers curled, nails biting into his palms, but the sensation was distant, like he was outside his own skin.

"She doesn't even see you, does she?" The voice teased, more urgent now. "She's not yours.But you can make her. You've always known how."

The shadows wrapped around him tighter, thicker now, filling his ears, his mind. The memory of blur, so vivid, yet so elusive, slipped through his fingers like smoke.

"What are you, Sanlang?" The voice coiled, intimate, demanding. "What are you when you're not pretending to be something you're not?"

Sanlang's heartbeat thudded in his ears. His vision wavered, and for a moment, the world felt like it was spinning. His body ached—an aching he couldn't place.

"You're nothing without me," the shadow whispered. "You're a dreamer, a man trapped in a shell. You're not real. But I am."

His hands twitched, but it was as though his body wasn't his anymore. The heat inside him, deep in his chest, burned with desire—an animalistic hunger, a pull toward something he couldn't name. The same blurred image flickered again—close, too close—but he couldn't grasp her. He couldn't reach her.

"Come to me, Sanlang," the voice purred, now unmistakably his own, wrapped in the shadow's dark promise. "You can have everything you've ever wanted."

Sanlang's breath faltered, and his pulse quickened. His thoughts scattered, like leaves caught in a storm.

"Do you hear it?" The voice whispered, but there was no answer. Only silence, broken by his frantic heartbeats. "You hear me."

"You feel it, don't you?" The voice whispered again, this time with a slow, cruel smile woven into every word. "The the hunger... It's always been inside of you. It's the only thing you've ever truly wanted, the only thing you've ever needed,the only thing you are."

Sanlang swallowed, his throat dry, the taste of metal lingering.Everything felt foreign, disjointed, as if he were drifting through a dream where nothing made sense.

"Let go," the voice urged, softer now, more intimate. "Release yourself from the chains that bind you. You're meant to be more. You're meant to be hers—take her."

The words echoed in his mind, deeper than before, resonating within the very marrow of his bones. And though every fiber of his being screamed to resist, to hold on to what was left of his humanity, there was something about ___something he could no longer define?

"Sanlang…" The voice lingered on his name, as if savoring the sound of it. "Don't you want it?"

The room shifted again, swirling around him in a dizzying kaleidoscope of shadows and light. Noor's face appeared —soft, delicate, but with an edge of something he couldn't quite place. She was there, but she wasn't. She was a part of this twisted reality, a fragment of something real that had become something else.

He felt a pull—something inside of him reaching out, drawn to her even in this disorienting madness. "She is yours to take."

"You are weak," the voice sneered. "You'll never be worthy until you embrace the me, I am you. possess her. Only then will you be whole."

Sanlang's body trembled, a mixture of desire and revulsion flooding his senses. He could almost feel it—Noor's presence, like an ache in his chest .

He reached out into the void, his hand trembling as if grasping for something he couldn't see. "No..." His voice was weak, breaking apart with every syllable. "I… I…"

But the voice wasn't listening. It never had. "You are, Sanlang. You always were."