Let Them Kneel (kaelani and Julian) novel Chapter 153

153

+25 Bonus

The impact knocked the breath from his lungs. He tumbled, rolled, pain exploding through his limbs as his pack tore free from his jaws and skidded across unfamiliar earth.

Julian lay there for half a second–stunned, ringing, the world spinning.

Then instinct snapped him upright.

He shook his head violently, the haze peeling away just enough for clarity to slam into him like a blade.

The forest entrance loomed behind him.

Dark

Silent.

Empty.

No Jace.

Julian’s heart dropped into his gut.

“JACE!” he roared, a growl ripping from his chest.

Without thinking–without hesitant

Back into the dark.

I bolted straight back toward the treeline.

Branches clawed at his flanks as he barreled through, heart hammering, wolf howling with panic and rage-

-and then he saw them.

One of the sentinels had Jace.

Its jaws were locked around Jace’s hind leg, teeth sunk deep, dragging him backward through the roots like prey already claimed. Jace snarled and thrashed, claws raking desperately at the thing’s face, blood streaking his fur as he fought to stay

upright.

The sentinel released Jace with a furious shriek as claws tore across its face–but it only reared back, talons flexing, jaws opening wide, rows of teeth gleaming as it prepared to finish him.

Julian launched.

The dagger Lazarus had given him was clenched between his wolf’s jaws ancient, heavy, thrumming with something that did not belong to this world.

Midair, Julian shifted.

Bones snapped. Flesh twisted as he caught the dagger in his hand and drove it forward with everything he had.

Straight through the sentinel’s skull.

The sentinel shrieked a sound layered with a thousand stolen voices -as it staggered back, convulsing violently. Its toru flickered, unraveling faces peeling over one another, bodies phasing in and out, every deception it had ever worn surfacing at once in a grotesque cascade.

Camper163

+25 Bonus

Chapter 153

The other sentinels recoiled.

They clutched at their heads, snarling in pain, movements faltering as if the wound echoed through them all.

Julian barely had time to breathe.

One lunged.

He shifted back into his wolf instinctively, muscles snapping into place as he pivoted on all fours. A slash of talons tore through the air where he’d been. Another strike followed–then another–relentless, furious, but slower now,

Weakened.

“MOVE!” Julian snarled through the link.

Jace didn’t hesitate.

Despite the limp, despite the blood matting his fur, Jace surged forward, grabbing his pack in his teeth and bolting toward the light Julian fell in beside him, both of them running flat out as the sentinels gave chase–screeching, enraged, but no longer unstoppable.

The light burst through the trees.

They crashed through the final barrier and tumbled onto the other side, skidding hard across the ground.

The sentinels stopped at the treeline.

Snarling. Screaming.

But they did not follow.

Jace shifted first–hands trembling as he dropped to one knee. His breath came fast and shallow as he grabbed his leg.

Black veins were spreading from the bite.

Not blood.

Rot.

Void–dark, creeping beneath the skin like something alive.

Jace looked up at Julian, eyes wide with panic.

“…It got me,” his voice barely carried.

Then, gulping hard:

“I’m marked.”

Julian rushed forward, grabbing Jace’s discarded pack with his teeth and dragging it back to him.

“The potion,” Julian pushed through the link. “Drink it. Now.”

Jace tore the pack open, hands shaking as he dug through the inner pocket. The vial slipped tree. He twisted the stopper and downed it in one rough swallow, choking as the bitter liquid burned its way down.

Both of them stared at his leg.

Nothing happened.

For a heartbeat

Chapter 153

two

+25 Bonus

They both went rigid.

Then the black veins shuddered.

They began to recede, pulling back from the wound like ink soaking into parchment. The rot thinned, faded, unraveling until the skin beneath returned to its natural tone–unmarked. Whole.

Gone.

Julian sucked in a sharp breath. “Did it work?”

Jace blinked, then let out a disbelieving laugh.

“Yeah,” he said, a crooked smile breaking across his face. “Yeah… it did.”

He flexed his leg, testing it.

“It’s weird,” he added. “But it feels like a curse was lifted. Like a weight I didn’t realize I was carrying.”

Julian let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Remind me never to underestimate witches again.”

Jace only smiled as he stared ahead, breath still uneven, eyes narrowing as if his mind didn’t quite want to accept what it was seeing.

“…Is that the Gate?” he asked quietly.

“The Gate to the Fae realm?”

Julian didn’t answer right away.

He turned toward the light–and shifted.

Bones snapped, fur rippling back into skin as he rose into his human form. The air here felt charged–tight and humming, like the space between lightning and thunder.

The Gate wasn’t a doorway like he had imagined.

It was a rupture.

Reality itself had split open ahead of them, not torn violently–but parted, like the world had been peeled back by something with authority. The air warped inward, bending toward a vertical seam of blinding luminance that hovered just above the ground.

Light poured from it—not white, not gold–but something older. Prismatic. Alive. It shifted constantly, colors folding into one another in ways that made Julian’s eyes ache if he stared too long.

The ground beneath it was scorched smooth, stone fused into glass, veins of faintly glowing sigils etched deep into the earth- runic scars left by something powerful passing through again and again, over centuries.

No arch.

No frame.

Just a standing wound between worlds.

Julian let out a slow breath.

“Yeah,” he responded. “That’s it.”

+25 Bonus

He crossed the few steps to where his pack lay and crouched, pulling a pair of jeans free. As he stepped into them, his voice dropped–uncharacteristically poignant.

“Is it crazy,” he said, not looking back, “that after everything we just went through… facing Kaelani scares me the most?”

Behind him, fabric rustled as Jace dressed.

“No,” Jace answered without a second thought. “Makes sense, actually. Compared to that? Everything else was just… survival.”

Julian huffed faintly, tugging the jeans into place. He reached into his pack again and pulled out his shirt–but didn’t put it on

right away.

He held it for a moment, fingers tightening in the fabric.

“I just want her to know,” he barely breathed the words. “What she means to me. That there isn’t a world–this one or any other –where I wouldn’t walk straight into hell for her.”

A pin–drop silence ensued.

Then Jace spoke–so softly it almost felt like a thought instead of sound.

“She’ll know.”

Julian closed his eyes briefly.

“I hope so.”

His gaze dropped to his side.

And that was the first time he acknowledged it.

Dark veins branched outward beneath his skin, spidering from the shallow gash along his ribs where the sentinel’s talons had struck. The blackness pulsed faintly, slow and deliberate–alive.

Creeping.

It wouldn’t be long before it reached something vital.

Before it reached his heart.

Julian pulled the shirt on without a word, covering the rot, sealing it away like a secret. He slung his pack over his shoulder, adjusted the straps, and finally turned to face Jace.

His expression was calm.

Resolved

“If this is as far as I get,” he said evenly, “then I’m damn glad it was for her.”

He turned back toward the Gate.

And marched forward.

D

ப

Comments