FROST
Chapter 110: Two Souls, One Body

Chapter 110: Two Souls, One Body

Caspian forced himself to breathe through clenched teeth, each inhale a dagger to his ribs. Pain radiated through his chest—sharp, unforgiving, and all too real.

He thought he had already injured all kind of pain, and yet, Yami’s attack still feels different. It feels like he’s attacking directly to the soul and not just physically.

It grounded him, anchoring him in the brutal now. His grip on his sword remained ironclad, the steel slick with sweat and blood. It was the only thing he could trust in this place. His shield. His resolve.

Across, Yami stood unscathed.

The demon didn’t even bother brushing off the dust that clung to his dark robes. Crimson eyes glowed like coals in the mist, dancing with unholy delight as he watched Caspian struggle to stay upright. There was no urgency in Yami’s posture, no strain in his limbs. Only an unsettling stillness, like a storm waiting to consume the last light on the horizon.

"You look tired, Your Highness," Yami drawled, his voice a smooth venom, sweetened only by mockery. His boots barely made a sound as he stalked the ruined battleground, each step measured, leisurely, like a man strolling through a garden rather than a warzone. "But then," he added with a slow smile, "I suppose it takes effort to carry all that guilt on your back."

The grin widened, revealing the faintest hint of elongated canines, sharp and polished like the cruel words that followed.

"You know," he said, almost conversationally, as if speaking of weather and not memories soaked in blood and shadows, "I’m still rather confused about that moment back in the cavern. You remember it, don’t you? Eleana, sprawled in agony, drenched in pain and fear, her screams echoing off the walls while she brought that boy into the world."

Caspian said nothing. His hands tightened around his sword, the knuckles white, the hilt warm from his grip.

"And there you were," Yami continued, his eyes glittering like rubies in the dim light. "So close. Magic thrumming under your skin. I was barely more than smoke, a sliver of darkness clinging to a dying curse. A whisper with teeth."

He tilted his head slightly, the shadows around him rippling with mirth.

"You could have ended it all then. Struck me down right there. But you didn’t move, did you?"

Caspian’s shoulders tensed.

Yami’s gaze sharpened. "Could it be... you were just cautious?" he asked softly. "Or was it something else, Your Highness?"

His fangs bared as the softness vanished.

"Was it because—deep down—you wanted the child to disappear?"

Caspian’s breath caught.

The blade in his hand dipped a fraction. Not far. But enough.

Yami’s smile turned devilish, triumphant. He had struck the wound, and it bled.

"Oh, I knew it," he breathed, voice thick with delight. "I knew it. The way you look at him. The way you flinched those days Eleana was carrying the child. That hesitation in your sword—it’s not mercy. It’s guilt. You never really accepted that child who was born out of your wife’s betrayal."

Caspian’s eyes darted to the boy. Deep down, he knew... Eleana had wanted him, otherwise, she could have just chosen not to bear him at all. After all, she is a goddess. She has all means not to conceive a child—most especially, a child of a demon and yet she did.

Caspian knew right there. Eleana, the Queen, had consented everything to happen and he was just too in love to accept that very fact.

The child stood motionless off to the side, his thumb still nestled between his lips, eyes wide and hollow like glass left out in the rain. He hadn’t grown an inch since Yami took form—frozen, halted, like the clock of his life had been paused. Or stolen.

And now, the guilt in Caspian’s chest expanded like a sickness, pressing into every breath.

"You never wanted him, did you?" Yami whispered, voice now soft and intimate, like

a confession in a cathedral. "You always see him as the byproduct of a moment you couldn’t control. A child born not from love, but from violence or so all of you calls it."

Caspian looked away, but it was too late—Yami could smell the truth in his silence.

"And you know what’s funny?" Yami’s voice rose slightly, like the tide coming in. "My original plan was so simple. So clean. I just needed a body. A host. I planted my seed in Eleana for one purpose alone—to regrow what was stolen from me. To use her womb as soil."

Caspian’s jaw clenched. His fingers flexed, but his blade remained lowered.

"I never cared about her. Not at first," Yami said. "I was going to devour the child the moment he was ripe—consume his years, shape my new flesh from his bones. But then..."

Yami stepped closer, the grin fading into something darker. Something honest.

"Love happened."

Caspian’s head snapped back toward him.

"I loved her," Yami said, his voice hollow now, touched with a pain that seemed too raw for something so monstrous. "Not in the way you humans do. Not in poems and flowers and vows. But in the way demons can—deeply, terribly. I loved her because she saw me. Even in the dark, even while dying, she knew me. She chose to carry him."

Yami’s smile was gone.

"And I knew," he said softly, "if I could make her mine, and make him mine, then your Kingdom would follow. A child born of demon blood, raised as a prince. The people would never know."

The shadows surged behind him, swelling with power.

"And you, Caspian—Dearest King—you would never be able to stop me. Not because of power. But because of him. Because the boy is not just mine..."

His eyes glowed.

"...It’s the Kingdom’s, too. He is a Lunar Prince—and the people will have no choice but to accept him."

The words rang like a death knell in the ruined air, resounding with the weight of prophecy and treachery alike.

Caspian’s jaw locked, his molars grinding together until the sound was almost audible. He didn’t move—not yet—but something in the air shifted. A subtle tension rippled outward from where he stood, unseen but unmistakable. Yami’s eyes widened slightly as he felt it—a pulse, faint at first, but unmistakable. A familiar scent, heady and dangerous.

Mana.

Not just any mana, but his. Caspian’s. Royal and ancient. Buried for too long beneath restraint and duty, now stirred by something far more primal: fury.

Yami inhaled it like perfume, his grin sharpening into something ravenous.

"Oh... yes," he whispered, barely able to contain the thrill that raced down his spine. "That’s it. That’s exactly what I wanted."

He stepped closer, savoring every flicker of unstable energy that curled from Caspian’s frame like smoke from a smoldering pyre.

"I’ve always known this weakness," Yami hissed, eyes gleaming. "All it took was truth. Just a few words to rip the veil off your pretty crown and show the monster underneath."

Mana began to swirl around Caspian in visible currents now—luminous arcs of silver and midnight blue, the very colors of the moon sigil that marked his bloodline. The ground beneath his boots cracked, splinters of stones rising as if fleeing his presence. His cascading hair fluttered behind him in the magic-charged wind like a banner on the eve of war.

"Do it," Yami coaxed, voice giddy with anticipation. "Lose control. Call the sky down. Burn the barriers of the underworld if you must. Let them see what happens when a Lunar King breaks."

Still, Caspian said nothing. But his silence screamed louder than war drums. His gaze—once heavy with guilt and sorrow—had changed. It now carried something far older. Older than Yami. Older than the demons that crawled through rifts in time. It was the gaze of a king forged not by birthright, but by loss.

"I hated war," Caspian finally spoke, his voice low, like the hush before a coming storm.

He slowly lifted his sword, the metal gleaming with a silvery sheen that caught the fractured light of the cavern.

He pointed the blade directly at Yami, whose confident grin faltered—not entirely, but just enough. Enough to show that the words had struck something. A nerve. A truth he didn’t want touched.

"It’s filthy," Caspian continued, each word laced with bitterness. "Heartbreaking. And utterly useless." His hair fluttered in the wind conjured by the swelling of his mana, falling across his face like a curtain of shadow. For a moment, Yami couldn’t see his eyes.

"But I fought anyway," he said, taking a deliberate step forward. "For my Kingdom. For my duty as the Moon’s chosen, one of the Northern Skies’ princes. I fought to protect the innocent, to uphold peace, to shield my children from ever knowing the horrors I’ve seen."

Then, slowly, the purple strands parted from his face. His eyes came into view—burning. Glowing in shades of lavender and midnight blue, twin moons ignited with fury and purpose.

"And I fought for her," Caspian breathed, the pain in his voice unmistakable. "The woman I loved. The woman you tainted."

Yami’s expression began to tense, just slightly, his brows twitching with the smallest tell of discomfort. But Caspian wasn’t done. His words had become sharpened steel, and he would drive them through the demon’s chest.

"Love?" Caspian scoffed, the laugh dry and venomous. "Don’t you dare insult her memory with that word. What you gave her wasn’t love—it was fear. It was torment. She didn’t love you, Yami. She feared you. She pitied you. And she endured you only because she had no choice and I am devastated thinking I had been doubting her loyalty this whole time."

He raised his voice now, anger bleeding into his tone. "She was already carrying my child when you forced yourself on her. A child just beginning to grow, barely a whisper of life. But it was there. I knew. And I knew you knew too."

Yami’s mask cracked.

There it was.

Gone was the devil-may-care grin, the smug tilt of his head. For the first time, his eyes widened—not from excitement, not from delight, but from something dangerously close to... doubt.

"Now that I think of it, I realized you have been spying on us," Caspian said, his voice like the chime of a sword being drawn. "You must have watched through the walls, hid in the corners of her chambers like the filth you are. Always lurking, always waiting for the moment to strike. You didn’t need to guess. You knew she was pregnant. And still you violated her."

Yami took a step back, whether out of instinct or dread, even he wasn’t sure. Caspian’s aura was no longer just rising—it was singing. The mana pulsed like war drums from beneath the earth, laced with mourning and rage.

"As a mother," Caspian said, voice quieter now but no less cutting, "she had already lost one child. She couldn’t bear to lose another. That’s why she endured you. That’s why she allowed your curse to grow inside her. Not out of affection. But because she hoped—hoped she could somehow save the one she had."

Silence fell.

Even the shadows around them seemed to still, as if afraid to move in the wake of such truth.

Yami’s lips twitched, his gaze darting briefly to the boy—the one who had ceased growing, the one who stood frozen like a symbol of every broken dream and twisted memory.

And in that moment, Caspian moved.

Only a step.

But the ground cracked beneath his boot, the realm shivering around him as if it recognized something ancient—something holy and terrible all at once.

"I won’t give you war," Caspian said, his voice now like a tolling bell. "But I will give you an end."

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