Chapter 228: No...!

Erebus unsheathed his blade and began executing intricate maneuvers, relentlessly striking at Draven. Not a hint of his magic was held back as he attacked Draven.

Draven, torn with anxiety and not in the mood to engage in any battle with Erebus, started contemplating breaking out of the spell that held him. As the battle reached the edge of the spell he had casted in the sky, Draven suddenly looked downward. He froze. Two individuals were still standing on the scarred earth outside of the spell.

Unexpectedly, the pair turned out to be... Lilac and his wife!!

Rhea stood outside the spell. When they had attempted to leave earlier along with the dragon soldiers, Erebus’s massive black magic spell suddenly materialized on the ground. Rhea couldn’t move fast enough, and one of her legs got ensnared in the spell, trapped too deeply to be released. Her hands were clutching her chest, and her back was hunched over, lacking the strength to stand upright anymore. She couldn’t even breathe properly nor could she see properly because of the aura of death swirling around her like clouds.

With her head dipped down, her features remained hidden from Draven’s point of view. Yet, he could imagine the pain she must be enduring at this point. How could he not have noticed how strange his wife was acting?!

Beside her, Lilac stayed supporting her, whispering worriedly in Rhea’s ear. Rhea shook her head in response to what she was whispering to her.

Finally, Lilac looked away from her and acted as if she no longer heard Rhea’s words. She looked up at Draven, who faced Erebus’s unrelenting attacks. Lilac’s purple eyes were brimming with tears as she pleaded with him through a desperate scream.

Draven couldn’t hear Lilac over Erebus’s heavy blows, but he could read her lips from the distance.

Lilac was saying: "Please come and save her, she’s dying!"

Draven’s heart tightened, ready to move, when Erebus prepared for another round of attacks and stopped him from moving forward. Erebus also glanced down, surprised at what he saw. The human girl was here as well?!

A sinister sneer formed on his lips, "You want to save your human wife?" He laughed in amusement, "Dream on, El-Dezeus!"

Suddenly, the black magic spell began to press downward towards where Rhea and Lilac were standing. The spell edges resembled knives, cutting into the ground and turning the area just outside of it into a trench.

Lilac cried out in alarm, swiftly pulling Rhea and ascending to prevent them from falling into the abyss formed on the ground.

Draven’s eyes widened as he watched the two struggle to avoid falling into the abyss. His cold aura surged, and an icy light ignited in his blue eyes. Veins protruded on his forehead as he let out a resounding shout that shook the earth. His frosty blade moved so swiftly that even Erebus couldn’t track it this time.

Erebus only felt a chill on his chest. Blood immediately spilled from the wound as the force of Draven’s frosty blade propelled him back. The frost persisted, freezing his blood and his heart.

However, Draven didn’t spare any glance at Erebus. He pivoted and sliced through Erebus’s spell to find a way to get to his wife.

Rhea finally freed her leg from the spell, but she was still carried by Lilac, who was finding it difficult to fly with Rhea’s weight. Just as the fairy was about to ascend again, Draven reached out to pull her arm...

But at that crucial moment, Erebus’s gaze fixated on the scene. Ignoring his chest wound, he raised his hand, and the ground began to shift and close up!

Draven watched helplessly as the pair couldn’t escape the swiftly shrinking crevice. A rumbling sound echoed as the abyss sealed shut. Lilac’s panicked face disappeared along with Rhea’s already frail form. In the last moment, it seemed his wife looked up at him and uttered something. He couldn’t hear her but he read her lips.

She had said; "I love you..." but before he could react or think, everything unfolded too rapidly and her face disappeared.

The events blurred together and everything went blank in Draven’s life.

The force of the earth slamming together was immense, forming a bulge at the seam. Draven, too, was pushed back by the same force of the spell. He had to witness Rhea and Lilac being buried alive into the ground.

"No..." He whispered as he got back up to his feet. "No...!" His voice sounded like something had torn from the depths of his heart.

Silence descended on the battlefield. For a brief moment, Draven forgot about his powers, he forgot he was a formidable ice dragon. He bent over, knelt on the ground, and embraced the mound of earth. He began to dig out the ground.

Soil stained his white clothes sipping into his fingers as he continued to dig while crying, "Rheanna! Please don’t do this to me!" His cries were filled with desperation as he searched the ground for his wife. He looked nothing like the mighty Dragon, there was a hopeful desperation in his eyes, anguish, and hope.

He couldn’t lose her!

She was his whole life!

Before her he was a broken empty shell, he’d seen too much of life over centuries it had become meaningless to him. Alina’s betrayal had shook him, broken him, until his feisty sharp mouthed Rhea had appeared bearing not just his core but the other half of him.

She wasn’t just his wife...the woman he loved, the only reason he had to breathe, she was his soulmate.

He couldn’t lose her!

"Please...!"

An ache, like a billion thorns choking his heart surged through his chest. His Rhea... couldn’t be gone!

And right at that moment, Erebus suddenly emerged from behind. His eyes were dark and evil, lacking any life. He was on the verge of freezing but he would take Draven along with him to hell. He raised his blade and swiftly thrust towards Draven’s back.

Suddenly, the ground beneath where Draven knelt began to sink. Draven fell into the ground, and Erebus’s thrust narrowly missed him, swishing by his ear. But Draven’s anger intensified fueled by the unmistakable thought that he would find his wife.

With a mighty cry, he slammed his palm on the ground and Ice started to emanate from the earth. A burst of freezing air erupted outward, pushing Erebus away.

The ground where Rhea and Lilac had been buried, also burst open with Draven’s angry slam. Immediately the ground opened up, a whimpering, sobbing Lilac was relieved, she was clutching tightly to Rhea’s lifeless body.

Immediately Draven spotted Rhea, limp an unmoving in Lilac’s arms, his breath stopped and his whole world seemed to stop with it. He stared blankly at his wife, who looked nothing like how he had been seeing her in the past few months. There wasn’t a trace of life in her aura, she had no aura, she was lying there with broken bones and an ashy appearance. Her eyes were wide open with her cheeks sunken.

Lilac lifted her head upon hearing Draven’s approach. She looked at him and forced her sobs to stop, "Rhea used the last of her life to protect me..." Lilac couldn’t contain her emotions any longer and wailed, "She’s not waking up, please wake her up, she’s not moving..." Lilac cried out in desperation, "Do something Draven!!"

Draven couldn’t move any closer to her, his expression remained dead and blank but it looked like the life had been sucked out of him. Perhaps it had all been too sudden, the day had started with endless determination for him, he would kill Erebus, and live a happy life with his Rhea, he had envisioned their future stretched out in front of his eyes, but here he was standing before what seemed like his wife’s lifeless corpse...his heart that had seemed still in his chest seemed to shatter, crumbling into a billion pieces.

The pain and realization hadn’t fully sunk in when his eyes fell on her stomach, a visible bump that had seemed invisible to him before was now right before his eyes, the shock gripped him with an iron force, his wife...was pregnant, her stomach...

Draven willed himself to move forward, he despondently fell on his knees in front of her lifeless body. Up close, the sight of her worn and lifeless appearance sent a pang of misery into his heart, his hands shook, trembling with the force of multiple emotions running through him.

When he could finally move his trembling hands he pulled her head to his lap, with a still shaky hand, he touched her face. She was cold and...dead...

"Rheanna..." His voice was a strangled whisper chocking out of his throat with a heart clenching pain.

How could she do this to him? How could she? He’d been stupidly filling his heart with hope, dreams of their future not knowing she’d already dashed those hopes and dreams even before they’d materialized.

A wave of self blame and self reproach engulfed him.

He should have seen it...he should have felt her pain...he should have!

His vision blurred, his eyes stinging with a sharp pain, he could barely breathe.

How could he have been so stupid not to notice how strange she had been acting lately?!

Tears began to roll down his eyes as he suddenly remembered that day when Rhea mentioned having a dream where he was living a blissful life after defeating Erebus. He had asked,

"And where is my wife while I was soaring across the world and living in bliss?"

"Me?"

"Of course, who else? Where are you?"

She had pointed to his heart and said,"By that time, I will be in there."

I will be in there.

So that was what she meant...

So she had planned along to leave him alone...

How could he not have felt it?

So she had gone against him and removed the only thing that gave her life...

She left him alone.

For a moment, Draven felt like he had been plunged into an abyss filled with suffocating loneliness. Even the very air stung his skin, penetrated his bones, chewed through his heart. Right now, the pain he felt was unbearable, and it made him wish he had died in her place. The pain twisted in his chest, turned his heart, burned his throat and stung his eyes.

He was sobbing, a miserable sound filled with immense anguish, and loss.

The pain from 21 years ago, when he was betrayed and separated from his Dragon, was nothing compared to this. The pain that came with his corruption was nothing compared to this...

He wanted to die, he wanted to die a painful death that would make him regret every second of his being.

Draven slowly stood up after lowering his wife’s lifeless body delicately and turned to Erebus with eyes glowing icy-blue with no white. Though he merely gazed at Erebus, that look felt like a punch striking deep into Erebus’s heart. Erebus couldn’t help but feel a hint of terror, an emotion he had never known or experienced in all his life. He was actually... trembling... in fear!!

The icy bright light around Draven’s form dimmed, transforming into dark color. It resembled frosty flames from the frigid depths. In contrast, his hair turned frosty white from root to tip and his expression turned murderous. He looked nothing like the loving Draven. He looked more like a demonic frost monster.

Icy scales began to manifest on his face, resembling a malevolent spirit from the frozen underworld, glaring down upon Erebus.

Erebus’s blade still pierced Draven’s back, yet he seemed oblivious to the pain. He turned and snapped the blade in half, leaving one part embedded in his back, but slowly the other half also pushed out by the emerging layers of icy scales on his body.

Draven turned and reached out to grasp Erebus, who attempted to evade. Even though Draven’s movements were sluggish, his icy powers ensnared Erebus. There was no escape for him.

Draven coiled his hand around Erebus’s neck.

Icy powers raced down his arm, reaching Erebus’s neck. The frosty blaze spread onto Erebus’s body until he was entirely freezing.

Erebus tried to struggle out of Draven’s hold , "This can’t be... I can’t die without ruling the world..." His voice drowned in the ice that was consuming his body. Slowly, he began to break into pieces, then he completely burst. Not even a speck of frosty pieces remained.

Yet, even as Erebus burst into nothingness, the icy powers in Draven’s hand persisted. Frosty flames appeared around his body and began to blaze. His icy scales were set ablaze with frost like fire, yet Draven remained motionless, as if he, too, sought to be consumed by the freezing powers that blazed around him.

He couldn’t turn to look at her anymore, but in his mind he could still see the image of her dead and lifeless carrying his child in her as she sacrificed her life for the world.

Draven’s pain seemed to surge through his veins, apart from the heart wrenching anguish he could feel a cold emptiness within, a gaping darkness where his heart had once been.

Rheanna was everything...his heart, his life, his existence, if she was gone...then he would cross the seven seas, the gates of hell and oblivion to find her.

If Rheanna no longer existed in this world, then there was no point in his own existence either.

The blazing flames of frost around him burned even more, seeping into his skin in a destructive wave.

He was ready to embrace death if that was what it took to be with her again.

Lilac was so frightened by the sight that she didn’t dare to continue crying. But seeing that he was going to kill himself, she cried out, "Don’t do it! Don’t die! She’s your soulmate, if you wait, she will be reborn in another century and she will find her way back to you!"

The words reached Draven, and in that moment, his eyes swung open. Slowly, the flames around him seemed to die down, he shifted his gaze and looked at Lilac, "She’ll be reborn?" The voice that spoke seemed to no longer belong to him, it was that of a mighty being whose heart had died completely, however it was tinged with a layer of hope.

Lilac quickly nodded her head. "Yes, If you die, she won’t ever be reborn, but if you are alive, your soul bond will bring her back to you. As long as you remember her, my savior will come back to you!"

Draven finally looked down. On the ground was the woman who looked nothing like his wife, she was slowly turning into dust and fading away with the fierce breeze around the battlefield.

The frosty blaze around his body slowly started to disappear until there was nothing left of it, unable to stop the inevitable, seeing what remained of his wife dissipating into the wind, he reached out his hand catching a dust of her remains that flew in the air.

The painful tears that flowed down his face burned his skin, but not more than the ache that spread all through him, an ache birthed from the helpless grief of losing the woman he adored more than life itself.

’By that time, I will be in there.:

’I love you.’

"I love you too..." He whispered softly as he grasped her dust against his chest and closed his eyes. He was no longer as menacing, but his frosty silver hair remained.

"I will wait for you, my love."

It was an endless promise, as long as the wind never seized, as long as the sun never vanished, as long as the earth remained he would wait... until he found her again.

His Rheanna.

This was not goodbye!!!

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by Aunomay Read