The Madman's Guide to Miracles

"Wait, NO! WHAT ARE YOU— MY SOUL!!!!—!" Aldren’s voice shrieked, fracturing into static before collapsing

"STOP! STOP, PLEASE! I BEG YOU!" Aldren’s voice cracked as his spirit twisted violently within the black Ether. "Four hundred years... I’ve lived for four hundred years! I have given everything to this! My name, my body, my blood, everything!"

"Please! I’ll give it all to you! My knowledge, my techniques, every secret I’ve ever learned! Just let me go!"

"Take the bodies! Take the bloodlines! Take whatever you want!"

His voice broke into a ragged sob.

"Just don’t erase me!"

"I don’t want to die!"

"Please... I don’t want to disappear!"

"Four hundred years..." Aseren murmured, almost thoughtfully. His voice was so quiet Aldren nearly missed it.

Then came a faint, breathless laugh.

"Isn’t that enough?"

Aseren’s fingers slowly curled around the fading spirit.

"You’ve had four hundred years to live, to kill, to crawl from one body to another."

His eyes lifted, empty and black.

"Maybe it’s time you let someone else have a turn."

A pause.

"Goodbye, old man."

The double-beat in Aseren’s chest gave one massive, terrifying THUMP as the spirit was completely erased. A thin line of black blood squirted straight out of his nose, splattering onto the slate.

Tap-tap... TAP.

Aseren rapped his knuckles hard against his collarbone. Once. Twice. Forcing his blood pressure back down before his brain boiled.

Slowly, his neck snapped around. The void-black haze returned to his eyes in a blinding flash, wiping out whatever sanity he had left.

Aurelia’s heart slammed against her broken ribs like a trapped bird. No. Please, no. She shrank against the stone altar, her nails digging into the cracked slate until her cuticles bled. Aldren is gone... but he isn’t back. That thing isn’t human.

Terror, pure and primal, flooded her veins. She had watched him erase a four-hundred-year-old saint’s soul like wiping smudge off glass. Now, those empty, void-black eyes were locked directly onto her throat.

Is this how it ends...? Damnit. Killed by someone whose body was taken over, someone who was supposed to be my comrade... and forced to watch my closest guard die right in front of me.

How pathetic.

After everything I’ve survived, this is how I die... Truly pathetic.

Aseren glided forward in a sickening gap of logic one second he was ten feet away, the next his shadow completely swallowed her.

The air around him turned into liquid lead. Aurelia couldn’t breathe; her lungs locked under the sheer, effortless bloodlust radiating off his skin. A terrifying wave of vertigo hit her, her stomach turning as her own pulse tried and failed to match the jagged double-beat pounding inside his chest.

Aseren reached out. His hand was freezing, slick with black Ether and fresh blood as his fingers wrapped around her neck. He lifted her effortlessly, pinning her against the altar wall. Her boots dangled, scraping uselessly against the stone.

This is how House Astoria ends, Aurelia thought, tears of sheer terror breaking through the grime on her cheeks. Not even avenging my house. Just choked to death by a lunatic who can’t even tell me from a fucking shadow.

Raised as a polished daughter of House Astoria, Aurelia had never uttered or even thought a curse word in her entire life. Proper nobility simply didn’t speak or think like street-scum. But as she hung there in his grip, choking on her own blood, the refined mask shattered—leaving behind a thought far more raw, ugly, and human than anything she had ever allowed herself.

Then, the sudden spike of rage ebbed away. Her thoughts grew quiet and melancholy as her strength continued to fade. Somehow, they drifted back to those few days they had spent together.

She couldn’t blame him. It was just too difficult. We were dealing with things far beyond our level.

None of this had been his fault, nor mine. It was just one bad thing after another, each one pushing them a little closer to this moment.

Aseren was barely her age, perhaps even younger. He shouldn’t have had to carry any of this.

And yet, here he was.

She wondered what would become of him after this.

Maybe he would become an empty shell, like so many others they’d seen.

Or maybe, given enough time, he’d become a real monster like the rest of them.

I hope it isn’t the latter.

Aseren leaned in close. His breath smelled like wet copper and ozone.

"Still... shuddering..." he rasped, his voice pitch-bending into an eerie, double-layered hum. His grip squeezed a fraction tighter. Windpipe groaning. Bone clicking.

Move! Do something! her mind screamed.

Aurelia looked straight into his void-black eyes, choked on her own blood, and bared her red-stained teeth. Driven by pure survival, she jammed her nails directly into the open, torn wound on his shoulder.

The pain didn’t stop him, but the shock of the physical contact flickered through his shattered mind.

Aseren blinked once. The void-black wells in his eyes twitched.

"Too... loud..." he choked out.

He didn’t tap his collarbone. This time, instead, with a wet, sickening sound, Aseren jammed his own bare right hand straight into his open, torn chest wound.

"Behave."

His fingers plunged past his shattered ribs, wrapping directly around the raw, pulsing meat of the Elder Beast’s core inside his chest cavity. Aurelia gasped as a spray of hot, dark blood splashed across her face.

"I said..." His voice dropped to a tired whisper. "Behave."

Aseren squeezed his own internal core with brutal, unhinged spite.

CRACK.

A muffled, wet thud echoed from deep inside his chest. The secondary pulse was violently choked out, crushed into submission by his bare palm.

The suffocating pressure in the room instantly vanished. The double-beat collapsed into a single, faint, human pulse.

Aseren’s hand slipped off her throat. Aurelia hit the slate floor in a heap, coughing violently, dragging ragged, burning air back into her lungs as she clutched her bruised neck.

Aseren stood over her, his hand still buried wrist-deep in his own open chest, dripping crimson onto his bare feet. The void-black haze was entirely gone from his eyes, replaced by pure, hollow exhaustion.

He slowly pulled his hand out of his ribs with a wet squelch, wiped the blood on his pants, and looked down at her like he had just woken up.

Sweat rolled down Aseren’s face, mixing with the blood smeared across his cheeks. His breathing was shallow and uneven, each breath seeming to take more effort than the last.

Aurelia stared at him, her confusion quickly giving way to panic.

"Aseren...?"

"You’re making a lot of noise," he muttered, his voice flat despite the tremor running through it. "Get up. We need to move."

Aseren swayed on his feet, sweat running down his face.

"Hey, wait. Are you alright?"

He took one step. His knee buckled.

"Aseren!"

She stumbled forward and caught his shoulder, but his weight dragged her down with him. He collapsed right onto her with a heavy thud, pinning her back against the slate wall.

"Shit... Aseren, wake up. Please."

Gritting her teeth against the blinding flare of agony in her broken ribs, Aurelia shoved against his chest, wriggling out from under him just enough to ease his limp torso off her lap. She hauled his shoulders up, propping his heavy head back against her collarbone while letting the rest of his weight rest flat on the cold floor.

Her hands trembled as she pressed them against his chest, unsure where it was safe to touch him.

"You’re bleeding everywhere... what the hell am I supposed to do?"

Aurelia took a moment to calm her still-racing heart, forcing herself to breathe through the lingering panic. She was relieved, of course. She was alive. A few moments ago, she’d been certain she was going to die, yet here she was, staring down at the boy resting against her shoulder, the very monster who had nearly strangled her.

But then her eyes settled on Aseren’s face.

He looked exhausted. The pain was still there, faintly etched across his features even now that he was unconscious. She had seen it before he collapsed—the way his body trembled, the sweat running down his face, and how desperately he’d fought to regain control of himself.

A faint warmth crept into Aurelia’s cheeks.

He... really gained control of himself. Was it because of me...?

She quickly looked away, embarrassed by the thought.

Why am I blushing right now? He’s covered in blood and lying unconscious!

She pressed a hand against her warm cheek, trying to calm herself down.

Still, she let herself feed right into the delusion anyway while pressing a torn strip of cloth into his open, bleeding chest wound.

Growing up, she had read her share of silly fairy tales—the kind where a cursed knight lost to madness only stopped his blade for the maiden he cherished above all else.

Aurelia looked down at Aseren’s pale, blood-smeared face, his head resting heavily against her shoulder as he breathed raggedly. A faint blush flared across her cheeks, warming her skin despite the cold vault.

He stopped for me, she convinced herself, her hands shaking as she tried to stem the flow of dark blood. The moment I touched him... he stopped. He literally crushed his own heart just to keep from killing me.

Common sense tried to mock her. She knew he wasn’t a soft prince, and that he’d jammed his hand into his chest out of pure spite rather than devotion. But her mind ignored the ugly reality. It was just too poetic. He was a monster, and she was the heroine keeping him human.

"Idiot..." she murmured into his dark hair, pulling the cloth tight over his ribs.

She leaned into the fantasy as she bound his chest to keep him from bleeding out. Beneath all that bloodlust and horror, she convinced herself she was the one who had brought that delirious ghost of a man back to his senses.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!