Rivers of the Night

Chapter 872: A Galethunder’s Roar

Macie’s body writhed and squirmed, trying to rapidly piece itself back together, only to experience the worst sort of pain in retaliation.

Theron’s strikes only became more cold, more lethal, each one so precise and violent in its surge that there was no recovering from it at all.

And every strike he did land, the universe seemed to respond, a halo of light growing brighter and brighter around him almost like the event horizon of a sinking black hole.

Then his short sword suddenly thrust forward, tearing into Macie’s mouth lengthwise and out the back of her spine.

Even now, she reacted fiercely, her body writhing as her jaw unhinged. Strings of blood and flesh barely left them connected as though she had become some sort of howling banshee.

She lunged at Theron as though in an attempt to swallow his sword and him all in one go.

But Theron’s wrist only twisted once, severing her spine and shredding out the back with a pulse of Tribulation Lightning.

Macie’s body immediately went limp, and yet she didn’t die. The hatred in her eyes seemed to continuously burn at her, so furious that it held her life force strong.

Looking at her now, as much as Theron hated everything she was, he couldn’t help but feel bad.

She was just a person consumed by the same things he had once been. What made it the greater shame was that he really had killed her precious disciple.

Macie had never found evidence of it, but she had known. And Theron knew that she was correct. Sadie was dead because of him. Without her death, he couldn’t stand in this world now.

She had every right to want his head on a pike. But she wanted to destroy the world to do it.

This sort of endless, ego-driven rush to the end…

Theron couldn’t do it anymore.

His hand twitched as he thought about killing Macie right here. But, in the end… he pulled back.

Macie didn’t react with confusion. Instead, she lunged right at him, trying to bite a piece of his neck.

Theron didn’t fight back, though.

Her large jaws bit into his collarbone and his neck.

Memories flashed before his eyes, not as he walked toward death, but instead in confirmation that what he was doing was right. He remembered how he had tortured the two men responsible for the death of his family.

He had been so unbelievably cruel, putting them through the vilest of things until all they could do was beg for death.

But that hadn’t made him feel better.

Maybe acutely, it did. But afterward, he only became darker, more withdrawn, heavier with conscience and guilt, and yet lacking in a way to make himself feel truly better.

Compared to the pain he suffered back then, this was nothing.

“THERON!” Lyra tried to run forward, but it was Messo who stopped her, holding onto her hand tightly.

Messo’s eyes didn’t carry the same horror, though. Instead, they were glowing brighter and brighter.

“Believe in him.” Messo said softly.

…

Macie bit into Theron’s bone and flesh. All she wanted more than anything else was to feel her teeth clatter against his teeth, to rip right through Theron’s very being, and then do it again, and then again, until she had nothing left to give.

But that was when she felt the searing heat of his blood. It burned so bright, so righteous, it scalded the roof of her mouth, corroded her teeth, burnt through her tongue.

“You feel that?” Theron asked. “That’s my own rage.”

Macie screeched, but she didn’t pull back. No matter how much pain she was in, she was going to take at least a piece of Theron with her. She owed that to herself, she owed it to Sadie.

“I understand your anger. To me, Sadie was someone I wanted to kill even more than you want to kill me now. She was my jailer. She created me, only to watch me suffer.

“Am I human, am I not? I still don’t know the answer to that question.

“You lost a daughter, but I lost a mother, a father, a sister, the love of my life, a childhood. I grew up through bloodshed, through backstabbing, through dancing through every day on a knife’s edge.

“I am far younger than you are, and lost far more than you.

“But I still have my head and you have lost yours.”

Macie’s screeching only grew more intense. It seemed that in all the words Theron spoke, the only ones she registered were the ones admitting to the death of Sadie finally.

She lost the last shred of humanity she had, trying to bite all the way through Theron, but by this point, her teeth had been eroded to nothingness. Her gums quickly followed, and she tried to bite through him with the pieces that remained of her skull.

But it wasn’t enough.

Theron’s blood ran too hot, it thrummed with too much fury.

As his hair danced with those indigo lights, his manifestation roaring louder and louder with every passing moment, his bloodline only seemed to burn brighter, eating through Macie’s body.

Theron finally understood why he couldn’t pin down his bloodline personally, why his father’s necklace changed its tune so easily, why he managed to incorporate Darkness so easily into what should have been a Bloodline of Ice.

He had never truly had one set bloodline to begin with.

Every step he took, every decision he made, every mountain he reached the peak of, would carve out the path it took.

The Galethunder name would resound, and its bloodline would be feared, but not in the same way the Sacharro or Tatsuya were.

Theron’s blood burned brighter and brighter until Macie lit with sparks of white lightning and indigo flames.

A bloodline that would be a beacon of light, a beacon that would show the martial world that there was another way to do things, that not everything had to be sold through bloodshed and hardship…

But one that wasn’t scared to use such methods when necessary.

A bloodline as flexible as the winds, but as sturdy as the Gales.

A bloodline as invisible as thunder, yet no less imposing.

When the Galethunders roared, the world would listen.

Matriarch Macie’s body completely burned away, a golden ash falling through the world.