CHAPTER 362: YOU HAVE CHANGED-II

Noah froze. The fury that had burned in him fizzled into something sharp and cold that cut deeper than any wound he had sustained.

"Don’t say something that stupid," he hissed, his voice shaking, not from rage, rather from fear. His bloodied hands trembled against Atlas’s skin as though they could erase the shallow wound. "You think throwing your life away proves anything? You think that’s what I want?"

Atlas’s eyes, glacial and unyielding, bore into his. "Then what do you want, Circe? To keep lying to me until I die believing you never cared? Is that the life you want me to waste?"

The name, Circe, landed like a blow, and Noah flinched, his lips pressing into a hard line. He wanted to push Atlas away, wanted to turn his gaze back to the battle where Cassius and Alice clashed in monstrous fury, but his body wouldn’t move.

Instead, his hands only pressed firmer to Atlas’s neck as if afraid the man would disappear if he let go. His voice, when it broke free, was rough.

"You stubborn idiot," he muttered, "Will it kill you to ever listen to me just for once?"

"I have learned," Atlas smiled while looking to his face, finding how the Circe he knows has disappeared without a trace but he still could see... he could see slightly how those eyes would look at him as if he was the most fragile person in the entire world, the same gaze Circe would use to look at him.

"Those two taught me that i should hold on... hold on tight to you and make sure you will never run away."

But Circe didn’t seem happy to hear this. Instead her expression turned sorrowful as if this was more of a funeral words to her than something that would have touched her heart.

"Let’s not run away," then said Atlas. "You’re wounded, let’s find somewhere to get your wounds treated first. Are you sure your body can heal like how you were before?"

"No," Circe replied curtly, "This body is full of illness and a wound as ghastly as this won’t easily heal on its own."

"What? There’s a vampire doctor here-"

"-That’s not necessary," answered Circe as suddenly Atlas felt his entire view swerved into the darkness.

By the time he realized how Noah had chopped the back of his hand to his neck, his darkness had engulfed his entire view and his consciousness fade away into nothingness.

But perhaps it was out of sheer will and determination, despite how he was about to faint, Atlas managed to crawl toward Noah, holding tight to his bloodied wrist where fresh blood continuously dripped from his fingertips.

"Don’t..."

Coldly, Noah shook his hands away, leaning to study his face for the last time in a long stare, "I didn’t come back so I can continue my life, Atlas. I’m here to tie up the loose ends. So tragedy won’t repeat itself again and so people won’t die because of the mess that I have left. I don’t need someone who would stop me from fulfilling my role."

"So dying... is your answer?"

Noah was quiet, staring eye to eye to Atlas before he smiled.

"Dying is just one of the method I would use to fulfill my role and preventing that makes you nothing more than a burden."

Atlas frowned, tears dripped from the corner of his left eye as he angrily stared at Noah’s face. Though many words threatened to fall from his lips it didn’t manage to register as darkness eventually lulled him to sleep.

Noah didn’t immediately got up. His hands moved to touch Atlas’s face but noticing how now his hands had turned rough and that of a man, he retracted his fingers, instead pushing himself from the ground to stand, marching out of the barrier with a bleak expression that didn’t once look back to Atlas.

Meanwhile, Arabella looked at the hands that were trying its best to touch her body.

The hands were many, even countless as it tried to grab her only to recoil when they felt Cassius’s green flame burning their skin.

Calmly, Arabella studied the countless hands stretching toward her. All of the hands stood out to her with a slight difference than how she had seen the last time. Those slender fingers now faintly had calloused at the tips.

Her heart clenched. Ariel’s hands. Calloused not from labor, but from writing. From chasing the dream she had once whispered to Arabella in secret: to read, to write, to know the world beyond their prison walls.

The sorcerer’s castle was perilous, yet it had not crushed Ariel. Instead, it had granted her a forbidden freedom, allowing her to grasp the very things she had once yearned for.

"It seems," Arabella said softly, her voice steady though her chest ached, "that this castle has treated you well."

Silence answered her, just as she expected. But she did not falter. Her gaze lingered on those hands as if they were lifelines. Her lips pressed into a thin line before she confessed, voice trembling with determination:

"Sister, I came here to tear you from this place, to bring you home. To build a life far from danger, far from grief. I swore to lock my heart, to feel nothing, but I failed. I failed, because in the end... my heart chose."

Her eyes fluttered shut. A whisper left her lips, and water welled between her palms, trickling down to smother the flames circling her. Smoke curled upward, the heat giving way to cool mist.

When her eyes opened again, resolve burned within them. "I have changed. I have found someone I cannot leave behind. But even so... I have not forgotten my promise to you."

The hands crept nearer, their shadows lengthening across the stone floor. From beyond the barrier of smoke, mocking laughter rang out. Others rejoiced at the extinguished flames, believing Arabella had faltered, that she had left herself vulnerable. But to her, those countless reaching hands were all Ariel’s—her sister’s plea for salvation.

Arabella stepped forward, extending her own hand into the shifting dark. Her voice was clear, fierce, unwavering.

"Sister—let us end this. Let us stop the ones who chained us to unhappiness."

Just as the clawing hands lunged to seize her, water surged in a perfect circle, rising with a hiss to encase Arabella in a shimmering barrier. The liquid wove itself into a shield, translucent yet unyielding, catching the lashing fingers before they could rake across her skin.

Some of the hands, emboldened, plunged through the watery veil. only to falter. Their shadowy fingers sizzled the moment they touched the shield, melting away like wax under a flame. Agonized shrieks rippled through the chamber, echoing unnaturally, as if a dozen voices cried out from the same mouth.

From within the barrier, Arabella’s green eyes narrowed, catching the distorted reflection in the water’s surface. Through its shifting depths, the truth revealed itself, there were no hands, no flesh, only fabrications clawing at her mind.

Her lips curved into a razor-thin smile.

"Got you."