Chapter 66
Chapter 66 – The First Sacrifice
"Before there was prophecy, there was pain. Before the crown, a curse."
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The Temple of Echoes had no doors.
Only whispers.
Selene stood before it as the wind howled through the broken columns, carrying voices that weren't truly wind. They remembered. The stone remembered. Every death. Every vow. Every lie.
The moonlight barely touched the temple's center, as if the sky itself feared what slept there.
And Selene—
She stepped forward anyway.
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Centuries ago, the First Omega was sacrificed here.
Not out of love. Not even out of hate.
But fear.
The kings of old couldn't control the bond. Couldn't understand the pull between omega and vampire—so they twisted it into ritual, into chains and silence.
Selene could feel it under her skin.
Not just magic.
Memory. Blood. Screams.
She pressed her hand to the altar in the center, carved from obsidian and bone. Symbols flared to life—ones she shouldn't be able to read.
But she could.
Because it was her bloodline that began here.
And would end here.
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Flash of claws.
Valerian burst through the temple veil, face bloodied, teeth bared. He froze when he saw her.
"You came alone."
"I wasn't alone," she whispered. "The temple's been calling me since I was born."
He stepped closer, carefully, reverently.
"I thought I lost you."
"You will," she said softly, "if I don't finish what the first omega couldn't."
He grabbed her wrist. "You think I'll let you offer yourself?"
"I'm not offering myself." She looked up at him, eyes glowing faint silver. "I'm offering it—the curse, the prophecy, all of it. To be burned. To be broken."
"And if it burns you too?" Valerian asked.
Selene smiled faintly. "Then burn with me."
---
The altar responded.
Symbols lifted from stone, spinning midair, circling Selene like orbiting stars. The temple groaned—runes cracking, ancient glyphs bleeding golden fire.
"Step back," she said.
"I won't," Valerian whispered.
Then the symbols turned black.
And the First Omega spoke.
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Voice like wind across bone.
"You come to undo what you are?"
"No," Selene said. "To remember—and unbind."
"You are the last. The bond lives in you. It cannot die without dying with you."
Valerian stepped forward. "Then we die."
The air split.
Not metaphorically.
Physically. A rift opened between time and magic, bleeding with light and ash. The shape of the First Omega appeared, veiled in chains, her face hidden—but her sorrow unmistakable.
"You dare to rewrite what was fated?"
Selene raised her blade. "No. I fulfill it differently."
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She stabbed the altar.
The entire temple cracked, howled—stone unmaking itself, voices screaming. The symbols shattered. The rift opened wide and then—
Everything turned quiet.
Still.
Alive.
Selene stood there, breathing heavily, blade now dull. The curse had unbound.
Not by death.
But choice.
She looked at Valerian, his arms open, waiting.
And she ran into them.
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The Temple collapsed behind them, stone by stone, like the end of an old era.
Above them, for the first time in centuries—
The moon sang.
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End of Chapter 66 – Next: Chapter 67, "The Bite That Binds"