THE RISE OF AN OMEGA-Chapter 79: The choice of Stone

Kira’s POV

"Where exactly are we going to?" Emilia asked.

"Not sure, but I know when we get to where we would see the moonstone, we would know," I replied.

Asher offered to help, saying that he had heard a lot about this place from the dark entity, but none of us agreed. We still weren’t sure of his main purpose. For all we know, he could have been sent by the dark entity to keep check on our progress or maybe snatch the moonstone from us when we finally found it.

I was imagining another use for the weapon in his hands. He could use it to attack us, rendering us incapacitated for a while, enough time for him to steal the moonstone from us and disappear.

As we continued moving, everywhere became silent, even more than a graveyard. I could hear the tiniest sound due to the way everywhere was quiet.

I didn’t need a soothsayer to tell me that as we traveled together, everyone’s guard was up, and everyone had their doubts about Asher. I too had my doubts; his stories seemed too true to believe. I had had many encounters with this dark entity, and if there was one thing I could tell you about it, is that he never allows his prey or people he caught to escape.

Well, escaping from him isn’t impossible, but for someone like Asher, I didn’t think it would be that easy for him to escape from them.

My gaze drifted to Asher’s arm; he had bruises all over them, and then his legs, he also had bruises too. I could only see those places because those were the only visible places. I wondered how his full body would look.

I moved my head side to side instantly, attempting to shake off the thought of Asher from my head. Thinking about his bruises made me want to have pity on him.

Asher followed behind us; he was careful not to be in the front of any of us because he knew that we didn’t want to see his face. We didn’t want to hear a thing from him.

Besides, Isabella and the rest weren’t hiding their suspicion. They wore it on their faces like it was cloth on their skin. Ryker, on the other hand, kept looking at Asher, his gaze questioning, but he said nothing.

Though Asher had saved me, my mind kept circling back to the question: ’Why now?’ 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

No matter how hard I tried to shove the question out of my mind, it still kept cycling back to me.

Suddenly, Ryker was beside me; he stayed close as we walked alongside. Our fingers brushed, was it twice or thrice? Not really sure how many times, but I am sure it was more than once.

Clearly, he wasn’t okay that Asher was with us, even though he wasn’t making it obvious like the others. He didn’t wear his own suspicion on his face just like the others.

I couldn’t blame him for that, after all, Asher had tried to annihilate every one of his pack members a few months ago.

I felt his soft grip on my palm; we didn’t stop moving, we kept on marching forward.

"I don’t like that he’s here," he said, sounding almost inaudible.

Knowing that everyone on board were wolves and we all have super hearing, so there was no way they wouldn’t end up hearing about everything.

So I established a mind link between Ryker and I.

"You can talk to me through our mind, to avoid people from hearing what we are saying."

"I really don’t like that he’s here."

"I know you don’t, neither do I, but the truth is that he saved my life today."

"I know he did, but how did he know the right time and the right place to show up? Something doesn’t add up."

"You think I don’t know that, Ryker? I am very much aware that something doesn’t add up, but I say we just keep watching him and making sure we don’t let our guard down and be ready to strike when he decides to turn on us."

"Just don’t go close to him," he begged.

I chuckled, wondering if he was worried about Asher betraying us, or he was worried that Asher might make his advances on me.

We got to a particular spot, and the air shifted, tension in the atmosphere. I felt a very faint energy rippling through my skin like whispers of something old, ancient, and powerful, calling out to me. Every one of us stopped abruptly.

"Did anyone just feel what I just felt?" Emilia asked.

Everyone nodded at the same time, including me; we all had felt this power.

"What could this be?" Marcel asked.

"Well, there’s only one way to find out," I said firmly, then continued walking ahead. As we moved closer, the tension in the air thickened, and the power we felt became stronger and more obvious. Then something flashed through my eyes, like an image of a body. It was so swift that I couldn’t see the face of the individual. Surprisingly, the rest also saw the same thing.

Why?

What was going on?

After walking through overgrown paths and cracked corridors, we finally found it, covered in what seemed to be a million years of moss, and there were cracked markings embedded on it. And there it was, stuck into a stone-like structure, a gravestone precisely. It was embedded into the stone like a sacred heart.

The moonstone.

Finally, we found it after so many days of hard work, so many days of intense searching. We finally found it. It pulsed softly, just like the way a heartbeat would. It felt like it was alive... waiting for something or someone.

"I can’t believe we finally found it after all this time," Emilia said, smiling.

"We did it, Kira! We did it," Ryker said, patting me on the shoulder.

"I told you we were going to find it," Isabella said, her tone calm and proud as ever.

"We don’t have time to waste. We have to retrieve it as soon as possible and then find our way back home," Marcel stated, going towards the gravestone, but I stopped him.

"You don’t know what trap might be surrounding it. Don’t act too fast, at least not without carefully analyzing the surrounding," I said.

He took in a deep breath, taking a few steps backward. "You are right, Kira."

I still couldn’t believe it; we were standing in front of the moonstone.

"Let’s just grab it and head back," Clara said, sounding impatient.

"No, we can’t just do that," Isabella replied to her.

"Behind me!" I yelled.

Just as we approached, I heard it, a low growl, guttural and hauntingly familiar. I froze. And then when we turned to look back, we saw it. The creature with the moonstone embedded in his body.

I took a quick glance at the one we had seen on the gravestone and then the one in the creature’s body; they looked exactly alike. If both were side by side, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them.

Shortly after, two more appeared, shaped like him, big and dark, but they didn’t have the moonstone in them.

"Why does it have the moonstone in him?" Emilia whispered in my ears.

"Honestly, Emilia, I am as confused as you are, and I don’t think any of them is fake."

"So what do you intend doing?"

"No matter what, we have to find a way to retrieve the two. That’s the only way we can know if they are the same."

Instinctively, Asher moved forward. Ryker, without hesitation, stood in front of him, blocking his path. "And where do you think you are going to?" he said coldly. Asher’s energy shifted, but he moved away. The creatures didn’t move; they didn’t even attack. Instead, one of them spoke in a language I didn’t understand... not completely. But a word echoed in my mind: "choice."

It seemed like it was offering us a chance to escape. The creature with the moonstone embedded in it took a few steps forward. This time its voice was clear; it offered us a warning: "Leave now and live, or try to take the Moonstone and die."

I didn’t feel threatened by his words at all. In fact, power was beginning to surge inside of me, like it was responding to the threat, to the challenge. But I calmed it down; it was not the time to act rashly.

I made up my mind there and then. Either way, we are retrieving the stone. We had already gotten too far; there’s no way I would allow a threat from a shadow army, even though the energy I felt from it surpassed the energy that I had felt from the one Asher had saved me from.

Though it was stronger, there was also a shift in my own power as well. Not sure how, but I could feel... improvement.

Everyone stood alert, claws out, fangs also out. I moved closer to the gravestone, ignoring the warning of the creature. The Moonstone glowed brighter with every step I took.

The air vibrated, magic in the air thickened, enough to choke on. Asher whispered my name, but I didn’t look back.

As I reached out to touch the stone, a burst of blinding light shot from it, throwing us all backward. We all fell to the ground; the creatures roared, dust and energy filled the air. My ears rang.

As I lay on the ground, heart racing, I realized that the moonstone was protecting itself, and maybe, just maybe, it was testing us too.