His Bride, Her Revenge

Chapter 141: Eye of Blackvale

The ascent began in silence.

Blackvale trembled beneath them, its foundations fractured by ancient truths and forgotten wars. Cambria, Maddox, and Julian emerged from the Vault’s ruined threshold into a city on the verge of collapse its steel bones groaning under the pressure of an awakening world that no longer obeyed the rules of time or reason.

The sky above was no longer a sky, but a wound wide, bleeding light and shadow in equal measure. The Eye of Blackvale had fully opened, a cyclopean vortex of runes and colorless fire spinning above the tallest skyscraper once known as ValeTech Tower. What was once a symbol of Maddox’s power was now the epicenter of reality’s unraveling.

Cambria tightened her grip on the fractured Heartstone, the remnants still defiantly pulsing. The merge had nearly killed her. Would still kill her. And yet, she moved forward, teeth clenched, body bruised and soul burning with clarity.

She was no longer walking toward vengeance.

She was walking toward the sacrifice.

Julian adjusted the frequency scanner strapped to his chest. "The Architect’s energy signature is nesting at the Eye. It’s fully anchored now. We’re running out of time."

Maddox nodded grimly. "Then we tear it out before it spreads."

Cambria’s gaze swept the city. "Where’s the resistance line?"

"Gone," Julian said. "What’s left of the Veil Guard is either dead, scattered, or fighting in pockets across the lower districts. They’re holding back the constructs, but it won’t last."

"And Eira?" Maddox asked, his jaw still tight with grief, though he hadn’t spoken her name.

Cambria’s voice was steady. "She’s gone. Not just broken liberated. What’s left of her soul helped me seal the Vault. She chose her ending. Now it’s our turn."

The wind shifted. And with it came the voice.

Velvet. Infinite.

Unwelcome.

"You run so eagerly toward oblivion, my beloved door..."

Cambria stopped. Her breath caught.

The Architect’s whisper wasn’t a sound. It was a vibration that slithered into bones and dreams. It moved through the cracked asphalt, down rusted gutters, across fractured billboards. It was everywhere and nowhere. It made Julian flinch. Made Maddox draw his blade without realizing it.

Cambria squared her shoulders. "You’ll get nothing from me."

"You’ve already given everything," the voice answered, chuckling. "Your birth. Your memories. Your first kiss. Your final breath. It’s all mine. I only await your arrival to claim it."

The Eye pulsed overhead, and for a moment, the streets around them bent inward skyscrapers leaning like fingers toward the tower, gravity itself warping.

Julian steadied himself against a wall. "We can’t go through the front. Not with the amount of shadow constructs forming a perimeter. We need a way in through the subterranean levels."

Maddox’s eyes flicked toward a narrow alley. "There’s an old executive freight lift back from when I still had a stake in this city. If it’s not caved in, it’ll take us to the 89th floor. From there, we go vertical."

Julian gave a dry laugh. "Just like old times, huh? Bleeding to death in a tower while the world collapses."

Maddox’s eyes flicked to Cambria, softening. "This time we’re fighting for something that matters."

Cambria held his gaze a moment too long.

Then nodded. "Let’s finish this."

They moved fast.

Through broken alleyways and ruined boardrooms, past the ghosts of board meetings and charity galas that once decided the fate of empires. The freight lift loomed like a skeletal giant, its frame rusted and groaning under the weight of decades and collapse. But it still worked barely.

Julian hotwired the control panel. The lift groaned to life with a screech.

As it ascended, the world fell away.

Each floor they passed became a memory Cambria saw herself in shards of reflection. The trembling girl in a wedding gown. The ghost bride is fleeing a shattered life. The queen with fire in her veins and a vendetta in her chest. She had been all those women. But above, waiting at the Eye, was the final version of herself.

The woman who would choose.

Maddox stood at her side, silent but fierce, his hand occasionally brushing hers as if to make sure she was real.

Julian paced, checking his weapons. "Just so we’re clear," he said, not looking at them. "Once the Heartstone is activated at the Eye, the surge will burn through everything. The only reason Cambria survived the Vault is because she’s half-vessel. Up there? That protection might not hold."

Cambria didn’t flinch. "I know."

"And you’re still going?"

She met his eyes. "I didn’t come this far to watch the world end from a rooftop."

Julian looked at Maddox. "You good with this?"

Maddox’s jaw clenched. "I trust her. I just don’t trust fate."

The lift screeched to a stop at the 89th floor.

Smoke filled the hallway beyond, but it was clear of constructs for now.

They stepped out.

And immediately froze.

The hallway was lined with mirrors.

Each one distorted.

Cambria stared at the first one.

It showed her standing over Maddox’s corpse, the Heartstone pulsing in her hands, blood on her dress.

She turned to the next. noveldrama

It showed her ruling over a kingdom of ash, crown glowing, face hollow.

Another showed her back in the orphanage, small again, powerless, forgotten.

The mirrors weren’t just illusions.

They were possibilities.

Timelines.

"What is this?" Maddox whispered.

"The Architect’s maze," Cambria said. "It’s trying to make me doubt myself. Fracture my choices. Confuse the merge."

Julian shattered one of the mirrors with a bullet. "Then stop looking. Keep moving."

Cambria nodded, forcing herself to look forward.

Past lies. Past fear.

Toward truth.

They crossed the corridor, deeper into the spire’s heart.

At the top, the room was a cathedral of light and entropy.

The Eye of Blackvale was not a window.

It was a gate.

A vast sphere of pulsing runes and spiraling tendrils hovered above the tower’s summit, crackling with energy that defied time and physics. In its center, a shape began to form. Humanoid. Shifting. Wrong.

The Architect.

Cambria stumbled as the Heartstone vibrated in her chest, drawn toward the Eye.

The moment she stepped forward, the Architect’s voice boomed not a whisper now, but thunder.

"Welcome home, little vessel."

The shape descended slowly, each step dragging behind it a trail of corrupted memories visions of Cambria’s mother screaming, of Evelyn’s laughter turning into sobs, of Maddox falling through glass. The air grew heavier, reality sagging.

Maddox drew his blade, stepping in front of Cambria. "You’ll have to go through me first."

The Architect laughed. "Oh, I plan to."

It raised its hand.

Julian fired.

The bullet passed through its chest, hitting nothing.

The Architect turned, and Julian screamed as a shadow wrapped around him, lifting him into the air.

Cambria raised her hand, unleashing a surge of Heartstone light. The shadows recoiled. Julian dropped, coughing.

She turned to Maddox. "Get him out of here."

"I’m not leaving you "

"Please," she whispered. "If this fails, someone has to warn the world."

Maddox’s eyes burned. "If this fails, there won’t be a world."

She touched his face gently, fingers trembling. "Then let’s not let it fail."

And then she stepped into the center of the Eye.

The world stopped.

Inside the Eye, there was no up or down. No time. Nobody.

Only consciousness.

The Architect stood before her, fully formed now a shape made of every person she had ever lost.

Her mother. Evelyn. Elara. Even Maddox.

He smiled her smile. Spoke in her voice.

"I am everything you hate. Everything you’ve denied. I am the truth."

"No," Cambria said. "You’re what was forced on me. What I survived. What I reject."

She held up the Heartstone.

It flared.

And the Architect screamed.

They clashed not with fists, but with memory.

He threw guilt. She threw love.

He threw fear. She threw forgiveness.

He became her father’s voice. She became her mother’s fire.

He whispered doubt.

She roared in hope.

The Eye began to collapse inward as their wills collided. Time shattered. Realities blinked in and out. The city below twisted people forgetting, remembering, becoming.

Julian and Maddox watched from the spire, unable to move.

Then

The Heartstone cracked.

Cambria screamed.

Golden light exploded.

The Eye imploded.

And everything went white.

When Maddox opened his eyes, the tower was gone.

The sky was blue.

Not the kind of blue you trust.

But blue nonetheless.

Julian stirred beside him. "Did we win?"

Maddox looked at the crater where the Eye had been.

A single figure stands in the center.

Cambria.

Alive.

Glowing.

Changed.

She turned to him, and in her eyes, he saw every timeline. Every memory. Every love. Every version of who they had been.

She smiled.

"I found the ending," she said softly.

He walked to her. "Is it a happy one?"

She leaned into him.

"It’s ours."