Hades' Cursed Luna-Chapter 317: Purified

Eve

The name rang out like a thunderclap.

They stiffened. One choked on his breath.

"Vassir?" someone repeated, disbelieving. "The vampire prince?"

"That's impossible," Gallinti said. "He was slain. Devoured during Malrik's reaping. Even his horn was taken. That was over ten centuries ago."

"And yet," Montegue said, pacing now, slow and measured, "here he is—living off the bones of a man stronger than any of us. Biding his time. Feeding off grief, trauma, and bloodlines long forgotten."

Silas stared at him. "You're telling us that our Alpha, our sovereign, is host to the spirit of a dead vampire tyrant?"

"Yes," Montegue said.

"And that we're supposed to believe you can just—what? Pluck him out like a splinter?"

Montegue's voice dropped into steel. "No. We carve him out. And possibly only one person can do that."

He turned to me, they all did.

I took a deep breath. "We will go with the Fenrir's Chain rite. I will bind myself to it, to them."

The silence following my declaration wasn't quiet.

It was seismic.

The kind that made you feel like the world itself had sucked in a breath and forgot how to let it out again.

The kind that hit like thunder after the lightning had already struck.

"What did you just say?" Councilor Veyra leaned forward, her voice sharp with disbelief. "Bind yourself to it? Are you mad?"

"You can't seriously—" another growled.

"She'll die!" someone barked. "The Fenrir Chain isn't a bond—it's a curse. It will anchor you to the corruption. If Vassir wins, you go with him."

Gallinti surged to his feet, voice echoing off the domed stone walls. "This is treasonous insanity! Binding yourself to an infected host? You'll doom this entire realm! The serum for the Lunar Cataclysm dies with you."

But I didn't flinch.

Because I knew what was coming.

The door to the chamber opened with a hiss.

All eyes turned as Kael stepped in—pale, bandaged, walking stiffly but with the focused stillness of someone who'd survived death… and wasn't done fighting.

He said nothing as he crossed the room.

In his hands: a containment vial.

Reinforced. Sealed in crystal-glass filaments. Inside it—two fluids, suspended in gravity-defying stasis. One glowed white with a faint iridescent shimmer with slight pink tint, slightly translucent like moonstone milk. The other: dark red, so deep it was almost black, swirling with threads of something unholy.

They circled each other like predators in a cage. Orbiting. Testing. Never merging. Never separating.

He placed it gently at the center of the council table with a soft clink.

"This," Kael said, voice low, hoarse, but carrying. "Is why she has to."

Montegue leaned in, eyes narrowing. "What am I looking at?"

"Eve's blood," Kael said, nodding to the white fluid. "Specifically, the matured Fenrir marker—extracted under light-shifted conditions."

He tapped the glass.

"And that," he said, pointing to the red, "is a sample of Hades' blood. Taken during the early stages of Vassir's possession."

Silas looked ready to spit. "So what? Blood alchemy? This is not an alchemist's chamber—"

"Watch," Kael cut him off.

The white liquid shimmered. A pulse. Almost like breath.

And then—

The red blood jerked.

It recoiled.

Tendrils of corruption lashed toward the white fluid like a beast trying to attack—and were burned away on contact. Again and again, it struck. Again and again, it failed.

The chamber fell utterly silent.

"The Flux can't infect the Fenrir's marker," Kael said, voice trembling not with weakness—but with awe. "It neutralizes it. Not just suppresses. Purges."

Gasps echoed.

But I took over from Kael. "According to reports from the lab, approximately three months ago, after the the Fenrir's marker was isolated, there was an incident."

I reached for the remote and pressed the the button and the monitor in the room turned on. The scene was of Hades and the head researcher, Dr Cohen in a conversation about the newly isolated Fenrir's marker.

Kael took over from me. "As you can see, in the background, there is containment chamber containing a black fluid."

Montegue figured it out. "Hades has his blood drawn, every three months after the flux's peak period of seven days. That is his blood, isn't it?"

"Yes, I replied," Recalling what Dr Cohen had relayed to me after the ball of pulsing flesh that the Flux had left behind had been brought in. "It is black as you can see." Q

"That is why his veins are black when it happens." Gallinti murmured.

"Yes, and then something happened those three months ago."

Silas whose remained glued on the screen was the first to register the first crack of the containment vessel that held the black blood. "It's cracking."

We all watched as the black blood bubbled like heated water, trying to escape its entrapment.

Even the blood acted like the Flux himself—like Vassir.

In its hunger.

Its hate.

Its will.

The black fluid thrashed against the vessel, tendrils writhing like blind serpents, slamming into the reinforced crystal as if it knew time was limited. The lights in the room flickered. Static laced the footage. Even behind the screen, you could feel it.

It didn't want to be contained.

It wanted out.

Wanted flesh.

And then

The glass shattered, not broke but splintered into tiny shards that seemed to disappear in the chaos. It didn't spill, no...aq

Even if I watched the footage a thousand times, my heart still skipped each time because it didn't spill, it rose like an entity all on its own, a force and it came up like a wave.

The Flux rose like a wave of sentient tar—black, pulsing, and wet with hate. It coiled upward, defying gravity and logic, lurching toward the lab team like it could smell their blood through the screen.

Dr. Cohen stumbled back, his hands flying to the nearest panic lever—but even the alarms didn't drown out the sound the blood made. A screech—not mechanical, not vocal. Psychic. Like the mind itself was being scraped raw.

The researchers scrambled.

One slipped on the floor.

Another backed into a cabinet, knocking vials aside.

And then—

A second crack.

Sharper. Higher-pitched.

Not from the Flux.

From the other side of the room.

From the containment pod holding the newly refined Fenrir marker.

The pink-white fluid—translucent, almost glowing—burst from its casing in a hiss of steam and light. But it didn't fall. Didn't splatter.

It rose.

Graceful.

Ethereal.

And for one breathless instant—

The two fluids regarded each other.

Black rot and luminous pearl.

Hate and purity.

They floated there. Suspended midair.

Then—

They collided.

Not with force.

Not with fury.

With intent.

Like dancers meeting on a stage. Not violent, but intimate.

The black tendrils twisted around the white, but not in combat—in mimicry. The Fenrir marker spiraled in return, a slow helix winding upward, pulling the darkness with it. The lights in the lab flickered as the room's temperature dropped and rose at once—some paradox of entropy and heat.

There was no explosion.

No burn.

Just—

A fusion.

No, not fusion. It was more like a binding.

The two fluids wove together in impossible geometry, in motion that no eye could fully follow, their movements phasing in and out of visible time. At one point, the white marker passed through the black. At another, the black seemed to bleed light.

The entire room stood still as I switched it off and addressed them.

"That was three months ago." I gestured to the now contained pair. "As you can see there has been a change."

Montegue gave voice to the observation. "The black blood is now red. Like it was supposed to be."

"Like it would have been if not the flux, Vassir's vein, his corruption."

"Which means..." Silas stunned voice brooked the tension.

"The Fenrir's marker over the course of three months purified his blood."