Chap 155: Stronger Than Ever

Tee’s eyes snapped up to meet his, still reeling from the madness echoing in her ears.

Drevarus chuckled, low and bitter. “Not the Lilith you encountered today. She only bears the name. My daughter was also called Lilith—a victim of the Xenogene, just like you.”

Tee’s eyes widened. Crap! He knew she was a Xeno-victim. That was one of the worst-kept secrets now. If even the Harbingers knew, they were bound to use it against her. Blackmail was practically guaranteed.

“…Same age. Same fire. She challenged everything life threw at her.”

The words struck something tender inside Tee. For a moment, it almost felt like praise.

“When the Balance Seal took her,” he said, voice lowering, “all I wanted was to bring her back. I wasn’t ready for the grief.”

The tension in Tee’s body melted away. Her ears twitched as she listened, alert and drawn in.

“All I wanted was to bring her back,” he said quietly. “That’s when I first saw the Alpha Seal—when it was still whole, still radiant. I believed it held the answer.”

He paused, and his voice darkened.

“But I was wrong.”

A cold shiver ran through Tee.

“What it revealed unto me… showed that ye Sentinels fight a lost cause. Ye guard humanity only that it may continue to suffer. And they that created the Alpha Seal—they are coming.”

Tee’s breath hitched. She remembered Lilith murmuring about the "creators" before. Pieces were beginning to align.

“You are not heroes,” he said, stepping closer. “You are tools—used to fulfill someone else’s will.”

The words cut deeper than she expected. Tools. That’s exactly what she called the MG offs… and now someone was turning that same label on her. But how did he know?

His gaze sharpened.

“I know what you are. And I know the role you are meant to play in saving this world from ruin.”

“I know you did not choose to be a Xeno-victim. Or to become a hybrid. Or a Sentinel. You must be exhausted… being dragged from one purpose to another.”

Tears welled in Tee’s eyes. She nodded slowly, eyes lowered, unable to meet his.

He sighed, a quiet exhale that seemed almost gentle.

“Then make your choice—finally. Help me save this world from pain and suffering.”

A pause.

“You are its savior.”

Tee blinked.

Severin was gone.

In his place stood Lilith once more, her hand slipping from Tee’s shoulder as she took a step back.

“The seed has been planted,” she said in a voice cold and ghostlike, almost inhuman. Her right eye veiled beneath the ink black curtain of her dark hair, while the other stared unblinking—piercing, unnatural, and locked onto her as if seeing into her soul.

“You are the vessel. But you're not yet ready to fulfill your duty. For now… you remain on that side.”

Lilith tilted her head slightly, the shadows clinging to her face.

“You don’t belong there. But soon, you will join us. And we will end all pain and suffering... including yours. Death ends all pain.”

The final words chilled Tee to the bone.

A promise, or a threat?

Lilith turned without another word, walking away—vanishing into the shadows as if swallowed by the darkness itself.

Tee stood frozen, mind racing. Of course the Harbingers wanted to destroy the world. It  made sense why they were interested in her. The so-called destroyer. Maybe they’d just discovered it… or maybe they were just playing games, manipulating her like everyone else. Extortionists in fancy robes.

Suddenly, a new presence emerged.

The sorcerer with silver-white hair stepped forward, replacing Lilith.

Tee struggled against the solid matter holding her in place, but her limbs were heavy. Weak. 

Sade decided to test his luck while the telepathic link with her still held.

Behind them, Legion’s thunderous laugh echoed through the air, then faded into nothing. He was gone, leaving Sade alone with the one person he couldn’t seem to let go of—his obsession.

Legion had known Sade would try something. With Riven gone, Sade would need something—or someone—to keep the boredom at bay. Unlike Legion, he didn’t have a million souls screaming inside him to keep him entertained.

Now it was just Tee and Sade.

But Sade didn’t move closer.

Tee  remembered all too well the last time they’d clashed. He had placed the crown-like fragment on his head, power flaring—and she had responded with a glowing hand to his face, just before he’d struck her in the gut. Hard. The memory still made her wince.

At the moment, she was defenseless. No telecom. No teleportation. Still trapped within the metallic restraint that stopped her from summoning her gloves. O wait… she had no gloves. 

Her strength had drained along with her will to resist.

Sade stood at a distance, watching her. She refused to meet his gaze. Staring at the floor, she felt pathetic.

Like some cliché damsel in distress—

 And she hated it.

“From the very beginning… you had a way of drawing me in.”

The voice slipped into her mind—calm, low, and familiar. 

It was Sade.

“But now?” A pause lingered in the silence between them. “There’s something in the way you’ve grown—so achingly beautiful, it’s almost impossible to look away…”

He didn’t say the rest aloud, but it echoed in his thoughts—and even harder not to fall deeper.

Tee wondered if that was the moment to ask him why she knew him before arriving at primus.

Sade stood still, eyes shadowed beneath chin-length strands of silver hair, staring at her with a hunger she couldn’t see. A quiet longing burned just beneath the surface.

“Tee…”

Her name drifted through her mind, soft but deliberate.

Just like before, his lips hadn’t moved. The voice was inside her head.

Telepathy.

She recalled what the Elders had said—Sade was either truly mute or simply refused to speak aloud. But she had heard him before, though the little he said. 

Her heart pounded with unease.

That wasn’t just about power anymore. Something deeper was unraveling between them, and it scared her more than she wanted to admit.

Sade could speak—when he wanted to. It seemed she was important enough to worth his voice. 

His dark sorcery had stripped him of natural speech over centuries of use. Technically, he could conjure words through arcane force, but it came at a cost. Verbal speech drained his energy. And besides, he found the telepathic link far more… intimate.

So he continued, his voice threading through Tee’s mind like a whisper behind her thoughts.

“Your true date of birth is uncertain. But the certified one… aligns with the Silent-Night Holocaust. You don’t know your real mother. Or father. You’ve been a Xeno-victim in hiding ever since.”

He began pacing slowly, side to side, his movements deliberate—like a poet weaving stanzas into the air, each word flowing effortlessly, laced with a hint of boastfulness in his knowing.

“Your guardian, Tetra—a scientist who spent her life searching for a cure to the Xenogene—was the only family you had. She's dead.”

He paused, voice growing heavier in her mind.

“Your best friend…”

He growled the name silently.

“Jack… was covert. A liar.”

Then, with finality—“Is also dead.”

Tee’s breath caught.

That wasn’t a taunt. It wasn’t even a threat. It was the truth. One that settled in her chest like a lead weight.

Why did it feel like a Harbinger was peeling back the pages of her life with surgical precision? What was he really after? And how long was he planning it?

He stopped and turned to face her fully, eyes unreadable beneath his silver fringe.

“I am all you have left.”

Tee couldn’t quite grasp what he meant—

But there was no time to think. His voice continued to echo in her mind.

“You’re a hybrid,” he said, stepping closer. “I knew there was something different about you... the moment I found you after the holocaust.”

He spoke with pride, though his expression remained unreadable—face still, lips unmoving, voice threading only through her thoughts. His gaze locked on her like a hunter who’d never lost the trail.

“I shielded you,” he continued, “placed you in an energy orb and carried you to the edge of the danger zone... so someone else could find you.”

Tee’s breath hitched.

She remembered the stories—how she was discovered as a child, cradled inside a glowing purple sphere.

That means—!

A sharp gasp escaped her lips as the truth slammed into her. It was him.

Sade noticed the shift in her expression. She was starting to connect the dots. He used that moment of distraction to draw closer.

In the blink of an eye, everything around her darkened—

He was suddenly right there, towering over her. One hand rose to her chin, lifting it gently but firmly until her eyes met his.

His were endless pools of black, with a single shimmering white dot in each, glowing faintly behind the curtain of silver-grey strands falling over his face.

Tee trembled.

What had she gotten herself into?

“From the dark, I watched you,” Sade said, voice threading through her mind like smoke. “Your favorite swing at the park... all your mischievous antics that earned you the name Terror-Tee.”

His tone hardened, edged with something sharp—jealousy.

“You craved affection from that… boy. But he’s gone now. As he should be.”

Tee’s blood ran cold.

Everything he said was true. There was no denying it. Sade was really there those times in the past, watching her. 

It… sounded like years of watching.

And then it hit her.

The memory.

He had said he first saw her during the Silent-Night holocaust. The purple force field—she remembered that clearly.

He hadn’t just seen her.

He had rescued her.

He had been there, from the beginning.

A shiver gripped her spine.

Sade stood close again, closer than before. So near, she could feel the quiet hum of his energy. And though his body was sustained by centuries of dark sorcery—his heart long withered by his pact with the Dark Lord—he imagined, if it still beat, it would be hammering now.

He had lived for hundreds of years. Not aging. Not dying. A cursed immortal.

Yet, he had been little more than an adolescent when he was inducted into the Harbingers. His humanity hadn't been completely burned out. Some fragments of it remained—And that fragment craved.

Craved something he hadn’t felt in centuries.

Something he saw in her.

Sade was trembling.

Slowly, almost reverently, he lifted his pale hand. His fingers hovered in the air for a moment, uncertain—then moved forward to brush aside the loose strands of white hair from her forehead, revealing more of her pale, frightened eyes.

Tee flinched at the coldness of his touch. Her breath hitched. She shut her eyes, paralyzed, shivering as his fingers drifted down—slow, deliberate—tracing to the corner of her lips.

That couldn’t be happening.

Then came the voice, soft and low, winding through her mind like poison wrapped in silk.

“Know very well that I adore you. There is no love purer than mine.”

The words struck her like a curse. The horrible realization settled over her like a weight.

He meant it.

Tee squeezed her eyes tighter, willing it to stop. Willing it to be a hallucination. A nightmare. A trick of her exhausted mind.

Then—silence.

The pressure around her vanished. The metallic matter that had trapped her simply faded. Gone.

She blinked.

Before her was a cracked, dimly lit wall. Cold concrete and the rank scent of garbage. She gasped, spinning around.

She was outside—behind a building, near a dumpster. Her heart pounded like a drum in her chest.

Disoriented, she stumbled forward, stepping from the shadows.

The world moved on as if nothing had happened. People walking, talking, oblivious.

Then she saw them—MG troopers on their hover bikes, swarming through the streets like mechanical wasps.

Tee gagged. Disgusting things.

She had been sent to the occupied section—the part of the modern world still alive with people, with motion, with the illusion of normalcy.

“You’re safe now,” came Sade's voice, low and lingering, pulling her gaze toward the shadows behind her.

The cold that followed it sent another shiver down her spine. She turned away, stepping forward into the light, needing to feel something real.

And then she gasped.

The sight across the road struck something deep within her—

A strange, painful familiarity.

The shape of the building.

The curve of the multi-level highway just visible in the distant sky.

The specific layout of trees lining the edge of the sidewalk.

She knew that place.

She was standing across from what had once been her home—the clinic.

But it was no longer the same.

The structure was halfway through reconstruction, being rebranded into something new. Cold. Corporate.

Her chest tightened.

That was the place she’d last seen Tetra—her guardian, her anchor.

And though she tried, she could never forget the massive, inhuman footprints stamped into the earth that day.

Whatever had come… whatever had killed Tetra…

She still had no answers. Just the silence of a memory that refused to fade.

Gentle sunlight streamed through the tall, majestic windows that lined one side of the medical room. A soft breeze drifted in, rustling the pale curtains and brushing the white sheets that covered the recovery beds.

On those beds lay four Sentinels.

All at once, Zod, Saeda and Miko’s eyes snapped open.

They gasped for air, bodies jolting upright as if pulled from drowning.

Memories came rushing back—flashes of red, screams, fire. Each of them instinctively clutched at the place they remembered the most pain, as though the wounds still burned beneath their skin. Tears welled, not just from pain, but from the sheer relief.

They had made it out.

They looked around, wide-eyed, stunned to still be alive.

Miko’s gaze landed on Zod in the bed beside hers. Her breath caught, and joy surged through her—pure and unfiltered. Without hesitation, she sprang from the bed and rushed to him, throwing her arms around him and pressing her lips to his in a fierce, passionate kiss.

Zod didn’t hesitate. He kissed her back without fear.

Saeda saw it. Her expression remained unreadable, still and silent. She had to still be asleep. 

Zod grinned as they pulled apart. “We need to plan a real date,” he said. “My next outing plan—Vergant village.”

Miko’s arms tightened around his shoulders. “That sounds perfect,” she beamed.

Saeda turned away from the scene, eyes scanning the room. Her brow furrowed. “When did you guys…” She shook her head. “Nevermind that. There’s only four of us,” she said quietly. “Where’s Tee? And… why isn’t Kie up yet?”

Zod shrugged. “Tee probably woke up and slipped away. She’s done that before.”

Saeda nodded, brushing off the thought. Tee was unpredictable but capable.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, ready to stand—

Then froze.

A strange sensation tugged at her, like invisible threads pulling her awareness toward something.

Her eyes narrowed. She followed the pull—and gasped softly. It was Zod and Miko.

Her aura-sensing… it was back.

And it was stronger than ever.