Offered to the Triplet Alphas

[Xanthea]

'We'll make it..."

Words stabbed out of Ezra's dry throat.

'We'll make it...'

His legs buckled under the unbearable weight of exhaustion and starvation, but he gritted his teeth, refusing to fall.

'We're almost there...'

His every step was a cruel punishment, as he pushed through the pain, punishing himself for his own weakness, but determined to keep going no matter the cost.

'We'll make it. Stay with me, Ellery. A little longer. A little further.'

His voice cracked, as hope and desperation bled into every word.

He had chanted the same words like prayers over a thousand times during their ten-day journey through a hell called hope.

And when they finally reached the gate, it was just the two of them - the last survivors. Everyone else had fallen.

Ezra collapsed against the gate, his breath ragged and uneven. With trembling hands, he gently eased Ellery to the ground, her back resting against the cold wall. Impatience surged through him when minutes passed, but the gate didn't open. 'We made it! We're here!' Ezra's fist slammed against the gate. 'Let us out! Open the gate!'

Ellery just stared at Ezra, her hollow eyes brimming with tears, silently begging him to stop.

'The gate... will open for... the last survivor...' Ellery mumbled, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Panic sank its claws into Ezra's dying hope, tearing it apart, but the gate didn't budge. He turned, frantic, searching for the hidden cameras, the eyes that monitored them.

'J-just take her out! I'll stay here. Help her. Please! I'm begging you...' he cried, his voice breaking as he got to his knees. Tears streaked his grime-covered face. Ellery weakly shook her head.

'Don't kneel... don't beg...' Ellery reached out to him as tears streamed down her hollow cheeks.

Scrubbing his tears away with the back of his hand, Ezra took Ellery's frail hand in his, his fingers shivering as they closed around hers.

'I'm sorry... Ezra... I-I...' Ellery took in laboured breaths.

'Don't talk. Save your energy-'

'I w-w-won't make it-'

'You will...' Ezra shook his head, refusing to accept the truth, his grip tightening around her hand as she caressed the dirt off his cheeks. 'Listen to me for once...' she smiled faintly through her tears, her chin quivering. 'You are our last hope.'

'No-'

'Live a long life, Ezra-' 'No-'

'Live for me...' Ellery struggled to breathe. 'Live for all of us... for e-everyone who couldn't make it. Ok? P-promise me... you'll live. Live a long happy life...'

Her words faltered into a soft, serene smile. Her gaze took him in for one last time as if Ezra was a beautiful dream she was grateful to have and in the lost dream; she perished.

Ellery's eyes froze in the wheel of time as the light dimmed in them. It was as if she had stayed alive just to say those last words to Ezra.

A guttural scream ripped from his chest as he punched the gate with brutal, wild force. His fists met the concrete with relentless fury, each punch shattering his own bones, blood splattering from his fingers and knuckles on the gate. 'MOM! MOM! AHHHH!' He roared in pure, raw frustration, his voice splitting the air with a distressing ferocity.

I shut my ears, but it was no use. His shrieks reverberated in my chest; a force so powerful it felt like a creature trying to break out of my ribcage. It was a pain I had never known, and now that I did, I couldn't endure it. Blood smeared down the walls, leaving dark trails as Ezra crumpled on the ground.

'Just come and I'll forgive you. Just show up and I'll forgive you... don't you fucking abandon me now...' he sobbed, pressing his forehead against the gate.

When he realized that no help was coming, Ezra's world imploded into a void of ringing silence. Forcing himself to stand, he limped to Ellery.

'Ellery?' He called out in a soft voice, as though the name itself would revive her. 'Stay with me, Ellery. We can still make it. We'll make it...'

He gently carried her lifeless body on his back. At that moment, her weight seemed both impossibly heavy and unbearably light.

'Maybe I got the wrong gate,' he said, his voice distant, broken. 'You heard them, didn't you, El? It's probably gate number two...'

I shook my head, biting down my lips.

"Don't do this to yourself, Ezra... please... stop... just stop now..." I choked on my words.

Asher took a deep breath and spoke in a shaking voice.

"Ezra kept carrying her dead body for days... until her body started to decompose and rot on his shoulders."

Tears blurred my vision, and each shaky breath felt like it might be my last. I shut my eyes, desperate to block out the suffocation, but it only seemed to intensify.

The pain wasn't mine to bear. It was his, and it was infinite.

"Three days. Ezra walked and walked until he could walk no more with Ellery's dead body on his back. Eventually, his mind shut down, and he fell," Asher said, staring at Ezra's eyes peering at Ellery's dead body with eyes more dead. An ominous panic bubbled inside me, rising like a storm in my chest. Before I knew, I was on my feet, scrambling forward as though I could cross time and space and walk into the bloody grounds where Ezra laid, lifeless.

"Ezra. Ezra..." I called, reaching out toward the clouds of memories, as though I could somehow touch him.

But before I could, Asher's hand gripped mine, pulling me back.

"He... he..." I hyperventilated. Three words exploded in my mind with every heartbeat - Ezra is dead.

At that moment, I wasn't rational enough to reason anything. My mind couldn't process the past from the present. All I knew was the truth of the moment and it was that I had lost him.

Asher pulled me into his embrace. I clenched his overcoat, my ears ringing from the deafening impact of my own cries.

***

The memories played on, but I didn't look. I didn't hear the events that happened in silence - in the dark, empty memories that followed. I didn't see the way the darkness in those memories shattered like black glass exploding with a sharp, blinding light.

I didn't hear the danger alarms that blared and howled and screeched in my mother's private office. I didn't see my mother frantically looking around at the data on several computer screens at the same time.

I didn't see her try everything she could to suppress whatever had gotten out of her hands.

I didn't see her panic as she drove from her home to the FA facility, as though she was running away from something or... someone.

Back then, I didn't see anything that Asher didn't want me to see, but those memories remain in my subconscious mind.

His embrace was a comfort in all the turmoil inside me, but I no longer knew if they were to hide me from the painful memories or to hide some integral memories from me.

***

By the time my mother reached the FA facility, it was all in ruins. The walls were shattered; the ground scorched black like charcoal, and everything had scattered like a house of cards.

She stood petrified as she witnessed the overpowering moment when Ezra walked out of the walls walking amidst the raining embers. Flames of disasters consumed everything and everyone that came in Ezra's way.

She ran towards Alpha Deimos and Raven, who were standing on the ruined grounds at some safe distance from him.

'... Go, prove that you can create history just like my healers. Prove your worth. Go, bring Ezra home.' Deimos urged Raven to enter the flames that burnt everyone to dust within seconds.

The fire was constantly spreading, faster than the wildfire.

The military troops diving in the fire to stop Ezra were reduced to ashes in a blink.

Death and doom swirled around Ezra like looming shadows, dancing with the flames that boiled the air.

'The subject's DNA is mutating at an alarming rate!'

'The DNA is breaking apart-'

'No wait! It's rearranging, it's rebuilding.'

A group of surviving healers read out the data loudly from their monitoring tablets.

For the first time, I saw carnal fear in my mother's eyes.

'The subject body is showing a power surge. The source remains unidentified.'

'The whole ground within the walls is showing a rapid increase in negative energy-'

'All energy is assembling into the subject-'

The researchers yelled above the catastrophe.

'The subject's body is too weak to contain the power-'

'The physical form will fall apart!'

'We cannot let that happen! Ezra has finally become someone worthy of being my son! Starsoul, save him,' Deimos ordered my mother, but she wasn't listening.

Her eyes were fixed on Ezra. She was sweating and trembling as though some voice in her head haunted her, threatening her far more than Alpha Deimos.

"Ezra's immortality genes had activated, bringing him back to life, and this was when your mother realised that she had created someone something that shouldn't exist in this time and space. This is when she began fearing her own creations." Asher said calmly.

I gulped hard, my throat tight as I tried hard to absorb the expanse of the memory, every detail stretching out before me.

Mother looked at Raven, who thoughtlessly sprinted towards Ezra.

"No!" I gasped in horror, reaching out my hand towards Raven.

Even in that state of trance, the ocean of flames around Ezra split for Raven as he hugged Ezra and stopped his body from exploding apart because of the power outburst.

'He'll end up eradicating our entire pack if we don't stop him now! There will be a greater genocide that will be unstoppable!' A female healer panted.

'Neutralize the subject! Prepare the Healing Theatre! We need to save him at all costs!' My mother ordered her team in a tone as steady as she could manage. 'Right now!'

'The entire facility is destroyed! Everyone is dead! Only four of us are left!' said a man wearing a burnt lab coat.

'Use the Healing Theatre in the underground bunkers,' Deimos commanded. 'Starsoul will lead the rest of the healers. I'll suppress Ezra's powers and bring him to you... looks like he recognizes his brother.'

"If it hadn't been for Raven... we would've lost Ezra that day. Raven saved him just in time," Asher said.

My mother and the leftover healers suppressed Ezra using brute mana. The surgery went for hours in the bunker where they stabilized his physical form.

And when my mother came out of the healing theatre, she went straight to the place where every detail of her experiments and studies was stored - especially the data on Forced Activation - and poured concentrated acid over everything. The knowledge accumulated over all these years melted within seconds.

'What the hell!' Deimos grabbed her arm, stopping her, but it was already too late. She had destroyed all the data. 'What the fuck are you doing, Starsoul!?' he growled.

'Something I should have done long ago, Deimos!' Mother jerked off his hand and snarled at him. 'I've created a monster that shouldn't exist in this world and I do not want more like him! I'll end him! He needs to die! But nothing works on him! No power! No weapon! Nothing! He is immune to everything! He'll end everything! He is a perfect immortal! No! No! He is worse!'

Deimos seized her arms and forcefully made her look into his eyes.

'What the fuck are you blabbering? Don't do something stupid, Starsoul-'

My mother pushed him away from herself, slapping him.

'You fucking ruined everything, Deimos! Your throne-madness ruined everything!'

Deimos smirked, towering over her.

'I ruined everything? You ruined all this precious data! All this is on you!' Deimos grumbled. 'This is all your fault! I am proud of everything I have done!'

Mother chuckled, breathing heavily.

'Right... You're right! This was all my fault,' mother said, her voice trembling with a mix of fury and despair. 'And now... it's on me to fix it all. I have every right to destroy everything and everyone I've created! Even if it means ending myself in the process, I will. And you-' she pointed at him, her eyes blazing, '-you'll help me do it because it's time. It's time I put an end to your madness!'

Deimos frowned, squinting his eyes.

'I, Cadence Starsoul, use every last ounce of my immortality to call upon a generational curse on you, Deimos Xipher. You shall perish! And your direct lineage will no longer produce any strong heirs to feed the throne.' My mother's words hung heavily in the air as the clouds of memories slowly faded around us.