Novel & Cerita Why Did Graves Betray 141

"Do it!" I hurl it into the Bloom's heart. The explosion is silent, brilliant. The lattice shatters, echoes disintegrating. Lira shrieks, her scales peeling. "You'll doom us all!" The ground collapses. The Bloom's roots drag us down. --- **The Garden of Graves** We land in a cemetery of timelines. Tombstones stretch endlessly, each marked with a name I know: **EDEN. VEYRA. KAEL. HUNTER.** At the center stands a mausoleum, its doors carved with the spiral-and-thorns.

One of the guards held a pair of flags and was directing the people back toward the pavement. “Who?” “Your former beta.” Griff’s head snapped to the end of the walkway, his face breaking into a smile. “Which one is he?” I swallowed hard. There was so much more to my story that I hadn’t told him. Griff knew I’d infiltrated Shifter City as a spy for Hades but had decided to betray him, but he didn’t know that Hades had sent more shifters than just me. My lips tightened into a thin line. I had no idea what Boris was doing here, of all places, or why he was accosting the other passengers, but I was certain he would recognize Griff.

Valentina’s lips parted. But no words came. A rustle came from behind the graves. Everyone turned. A figure stepped out from the darkness. Zara froze. It was Alessandro. Adrian’s supposedly dead father. Again. He looked exhausted, soaked from the rain, but very much alive. “Enough.” Adrian’s face hardened. “You.” Alessandro looked at him. “I’ve been trying to stop this from reaching you.” “You’ve been lying to me for fourteen years.” “Yes.” “You let me believe you were dead.”

"What are you doing here, Swain? To laugh at me? Listen, the spatial power is mine! I'm the rightful base leader! You loser, you're going to die!" He had completely lost his mind. He was no longer the arrogant man he once was. His teeth were all gone, and his voice was hoarse. Without saying a word, I showed him the notification of his parents' death sentence for colluding with an enemy base. When Chris saw it, he broke down in tears and screamed, "Swain, you scumbag! I'll never forgive you! Even if I become a ghost, I'll haunt you!" Before I left, I told him, "You can't beat me when you're still alive. Why should I fear you when you're dead?"

"I'll make it up to her for the rest of my life. I'll make it right for what I've done." He kept talking, but his words were lost on me. I could no longer hear anything. The wind howled in my ears, a piercing shriek that seemed ready to burst my eardrums. I was frozen to the core, my body shaking uncontrollably, barely able to stand. If not for the sturdy tree I clung to, I would have tumbled to the ground. I could never have guessed that Alfred was behind the kidnapping that almost ruined me. The man I had thanked from the bottom of my heart all those years was the one who had betrayed me!

He spread his arms, his voice deep: “From blood and darkness, I create a new order. The Crimson Pact is no longer just the Blood Emperor and the legacy of the one who sacrificed for this world!” At his feet, hundreds of half-blood beings, once human, now infected with blood, knelt. The chants rose in unison: “For blood! For Evelyn Cross!” Meanwhile, in the wasteland outside Valenfort, Callen Graves, the former Bishop of the Order, who was thought to be dead, was still alive. Half of his body was burned, he held a scorched bible and a test tube containing a drop of pale red blood. He looked towards the red light in the center of the city, laughing hoarsely:

The emotional weight of the betrayal was a silent explosion between us, a sudden, freezing chasm in a world we had just spent our blood to warm. "You," he whispered, the word carrying the rough, broken texture of a man who had survived the end of the world only to find out his savior was the one who built the cage. "The whole time, Sara. The Spire, the Fourteen, the 'Age of Assignment'... it wasn't my father’s monopoly or your father’s greed. It was your first draft."

She again took me in a hug. " W-When he was speak-king , the hurt , the b-betrayal shone in his eyes. He hasn't forgotten anything, Bri. He spat each word with so much d-disgust like he was pained at the s-sight of me." I tightened my arms around her , trying to relieve a bit of the pain that was consuming me from inside and I don't know when I fell asleep like that in her arms , crying my heart out. ………….

] I fought back my tears, but my vision still blurred. The messages cursed Catherine's blindness, vowing she'd regret her choice. But I knew better. She wasn't blind at all. Her clarity fueled her betrayal. In my past life, when the Gradys came to the orphanage, I stood among the hopeful children, each yearning to be chosen. The director pushed Erik forward, and I watched with envy as my parents caressed his hair with affection and Catherine shyly took his hand. Prompted by the messages, I gathered my courage, revealed my locket, and exposed the director's scheme to pass Erik off as me.

"Don't you recognize the place from the news? Asher, stop lying to yourself. It wasn't just me. Oliver's been trying to get through to you, too. But you chose to bury yourself in that little love story of yours. You killed Teresa." I exposed Asher without mercy. Right as he unlocked his phone, hundreds of WhatsApp messages poured in. Dozens of texts and missed calls lit up his phone. Every single one screamed the same thing—he couldn't care less if Teresa lived or died. Asher dropped to his knees beside Teresa, sobbing like his world had just ended. It took me back to my past life—to the day he found out Melanie had died. That same broken look was on his face now. And yet, when I was stabbed