All Chapters of OUTCAST: FIRST BLOOD: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

CHAPTER 62The white light did not flow toward them— it collapsed over them like a star imploding.It hit the cavern floor with a resonance that ripped the air from Emily’s lungs, flattening the remnants instantly, forcing Lilith to brace herself against a pillar that cracked under her weight. Even the First Shadow recoiled—not in fear, but in acknowledgment—pulling back just enough for the brilliance to surge past it in a tidal wave.Emily had no time to scream.The moment the light touched her skin, her entire body arched violently. She felt the world disappear beneath her—felt stone, sound, pain, breath vanishing all at once until only one sensation remained:Adrian.Her hands were still on his face, fingers tangled against his jaw, palms wet with his sweat and blood. She clung to him instinctively as the white radiance swallowed them whole, pulling at her bones, digging into her chest like something searching for a way in.Adrian gasped sharply, his back slamming against the stone

Emily did not breathe for several seconds. Not because the air had vanished— but because it suddenly felt like everything inside her had been replaced with ice.“Light… Bearer?” she repeated, voice thin, almost childish, as if the title didn’t fit inside her mouth. “I—I don’t even know what that means.”Lilith’s lashes lowered slowly. “It means you are no longer just the Key to the Light. You are the successor of the Light itself. You are the one it chose to take its place.”Emily shook her head immediately, violently. “No. No, I’m not—I’m not anything like that. I’m just—I’m just—”“A girl?” Lilith’s voice softened. “Emily, the light in your bloodline has always chosen ordinary individuals to wield extraordinary power. But what happened here—what you and Adrian survived—it has never chosen two beings simultaneously. Never.”Emily pressed a hand to her chest, trying to slow the tremor in her ribs. The aftershock of the Light Source still hummed beneath her skin, like heat rising under

CHAPTER 66The detonation of white light didn’t just fill the cavern— it erased it. For a split second, there was no stone.No bodies.Just light, folding reality in on itself.Emily felt her consciousness peel away from her skin, her bones, her breath—like she was being lifted out of her own body and suspended in a place that wasn’t a place at all. It was weightless, endless, terrifying. She wasn’t falling or rising; she was simply unmoored, drifting in a blinding void where her identity thinned into something small and trembling.And then— there was Adrian.Not at her side. Not in front of her. Not physically.He appeared in her mind like a flame— red-gold, fierce, trembling with strain— and she clung to that flame instinctively, desperately, because it was the only thing that still felt real.“Emily—”His voice echoed inside her like a heartbeat shaking loose from a dying body.“I’m here—don’t let go—don’t let go—”She reached out in the void, fingers grasping nothing, yet somehow t

The light didn’t wait for her. It pulsed once—slow and deliberate—like a lung inhaling the entire cavern, and Emily felt the pull wrap around her spine before she could fully steady her breath. Still, she forced her steps forward, one shaky movement after another, refusing to let fear take the lead even as her pulse hammered loud enough to drown out the cavern’s distant rumble.Each step she took felt heavier, as though the light dense in the air thickened around her bones, but she didn’t stop; she couldn’t stop—not with Adrian’s heartbeat flickering in the back of her mind like a dying lantern begging for someone to shield its flame.Behind her, Lilith stood silently, eyes narrowed—not in warning, but in a solemn acknowledgment that what Emily was doing was something no one else could help her with. And the First Shadow watched without a trace of hostility, its massive form half-silhouetted against the glow, posture lowered in a strange, unnerving reverence as if witnessing a coronat

The light roared like a collapsing universe the moment Emily wrapped her arms harder around Adrian’s trembling body. The Source surged around them, its glow rising in towering waves that shook the dimension with the force of a dying star refusing to let go of the last two sparks that defied its will.Emily tightened her hold until her wrists hurt, burying her face against Adrian’s shoulder, refusing to let the light pry even a single inch between them. His breath shuddered against her collarbone, painfully uneven, a sound that made her chest feel like it was splintering.He was cold—colder than she had ever felt him. The kind of cold that didn’t belong to flesh but to souls left suspended in places they weren’t meant to survive.“Emily…” His voice cracked, rough and fading, like he was speaking through layers of frost. “You… shouldn’t be here…”She lifted her head, cupping his frozen face with both shaking hands, her forehead pressed to his. “Stop saying that,” she whispered fiercely.