The Phoenix Before Doomsday 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 71 - 챕터 78

---The baby kicks and the world explodes.Not with fire or with light. Not with anything I've ever seen before. Something else. Something deeper. Something that comes from inside my belly, from inside her, from the space between my heart and my soul.The power rips through the chamber like a shockwave.Adrian flies backward. His hand—the one that was reaching for my stomach—is burned. Not singed or scorched. It's Burnt black and blistered like it's smoked. He hits the wall so hard the stone cracks behind him.His elite guard flies too. All of them fly at once in various directions. Like they weigh nothing. Like they're nothing. They slam into walls and pillars and each other. Bones break. Skulls crack. Blood sprays everywhere.And then—Silence.---I'm standing in the middle of the chamber.I don't know how I got here. I don't remember moving. But I'm standing. My legs are steady. My body is whole. My hand is pressed against my stomach.The baby is still kicking. Softer now. Calmer.

I run.I don't think of a plan. I just run towards Zara's direction.Through the corridor. Through the main chamber. Through the bunker. My legs are shaking. My heart is pounding. The baby is kicking hard.She's sensing danger and it seems like she's trying to warn me.The scream came from the eastern corridor. The one that leads to the armory. The one that leads to the storage rooms. The one that leads to the place where Zara was heading.I reach the corridor and I see blood.Not much. Just a trail of small drops. Leading deeper into the darkness.I follow it.---I find her in the storage room.She's on the ground. Her bow is broken,her arrows are scattered ok the floor, her face is pale and her hands are covered in blood."Zara!"I run towards her, kneeling beside her. I check her pulse. It's there. But it's weak."What happened?" I ask. "Who did this?"She opens her eyes. They're glassy and unfocused. But they find mine."Traitor," she gasps. "Found them.""Who?"She tries to speak.

Mira is still crying in my arms when Damon finds us.He stands in the doorway of the lower bunker, his face pale, his grey eyes moving from me to Mira and back again. He doesn't ask what's wrong. He already knows. He can read it on my face the same way he reads everything else."She told you," he says."Yeah.""And?""And I don't know what to do."---Mira pulls back from me.Her small face is wet with tears, her eyes are red and swollen, and her hands are shaking so badly she can barely hold them still. She looks at Damon, then at me, then at the floor, like she's waiting for one of us to scream at her, to hit her, to throw her out into the wasteland and let the Corrupted have her.She's ten years old.She's been through more than most adults.And she just made the worst mistake of her life."I'm sorry," she whispers for the hundredth time. "I'm so sorry. I didn't want to. I didn't—""I know," I say."You don't believe me.""I do.""You're lying.""I'm not.""You're going to hate me.

The words echo in my skull like a bell that won't stop ringing, and I stand there frozen, staring at the old man who just shattered everything I thought I knew."What does that mean?" I ask.Elias smiles a cruel smile, the same kind of smile Morley used to wear, and I feel something cold settle in my chest."It means exactly what I said, the child is the lock, the prison, the thing that keeps the Devourer contained, and you're the key, the one who can open it or close it forever.""I don't understand.""Of course you don't, you've been fed lies your whole life, by your grandmother, by your mother, by everyone who claimed to love you.""Then tell me the truth."He leans forward, his pale eyes fixed on mine, and I feel the baby kick like she's trying to warn me, like she's trying to tell me something I can't hear."The veil isn't a cycle," he says, "it's a choice, every few thousand years a Phoenix is born, every few thousand years that Phoenix has to decide, open the lock or seal it fo