Surviving A Novel I Don't Remember: A Tutor's Guide To Staying Alive Chapter 329: The mistake he made

Alias leaned down, his forehead resting against Theo’s, his hot tears spilling over his lashes and tracking long, wet lines through his face. He could feel the black veins of energy twisting beneath Theo’s skin, tightening like iron wires around his soul, drinking his life force at a devastating speed.

​Through the mist, Maya’s light gave a weak, pathetic flicker, her small fra convulsing in a shallow, suffocating hitch.

Kael was growing colder by the second, his small hand still locked in a frozen grip around Theo’s belt.

​Alias’s heart bled. A thick, suffocating wave of despair rose in his own throat, tasting of ash.

He promised he would protect them. He promised to co back. He promised...

Alias desperately tried to flood the pocket with his light, to command the grey walls to stop constricting, but the mont his energy touched the boundary, the black veins on Theo’s chest flared violently, threatening to shred his spirit into nothingness.

"No," he breathed, tearing up even more.

​He was entirely helpless. The god who had called the water from the deep sand could do absolutely nothing to keep this flesh breathing.

​As the realization settled into his chest, the sheer weight of his grief turned into a silent, devastating sob that shook his entire fra.

This life was done for them.

The house they had built, the fences they had hamred into the dirt, the quiet mornings under the palm fronds—it was all being unstitched right before his eyes.

He could not save their physical bodies. He could not keep them in this garden.

​But as he looked at the fragile, pulsing nodes of their souls, a fierce, protective instinct took over the ruin of his heart.

If he could not save their flesh, he would damn well save their souls from the abyss. He would not leave them to Norx.

​With a tiny, desperate spark of his light, Alias forced Theo’s consciousness to baseline for a single, brief second.

​The large man’s eyelids fluttered open. The brilliant blue fire in his eyes was dim, clouded by the heavy grey frost of the void, but the mont his focus landed on Alias’s tear-streaked face, the tension left his jaw.

He didn’t look at the collapsing walls, and he didn’t look at the fallen god bleeding gold on the floorboards behind them. He just looked at his lover. He couldn’t lift his heavy arm, but his wet, pale lips parted slightly.

"Love..." the word ca out breathless but Alias could tell what he wanted to say. He could understand him so clearly that it hurts.

"I love you too, Theo," he sniffed. "I loved you so much."

Then, leaned down, his silver hair falling forward like a protective shroud, veiling them both from the horror of reality. He pressed his lips against Theo’s in one last, agonizingly slow kiss.

This kiss was a silent, massive transmission of everything his heart had learned since walking into the mud. It was an apology, a promise, and a declaration of absolute love that vibrated directly into the mortal’s fading soul.

​I am sorry, the light communicated, breaking through the dark. But I will keep you safe even if it haunts .

​Theo’s eyes softened, a final, peaceful breath leaving his lungs as his gaze closed, completely surrendering his life to the being he had sworn to protect with his axe.

​Alias pulled away, his face wet with the hot, fast-falling tears. He did not hesitate anymore. He raised his shaking hands over the three frozen forms, his heart hardening into a wall of absolute resolve.

His light reached beneath their ribs and gently pulled, exercising his structural right of extraction.

​Three brilliant, pristine nodes of light rose from their chests, leaving the physical husks behind.

The souls floated into Alias’s open palms, small, warm, and trembling like newly hatched birds. He held them tightly against his chest, his shoulders shaking with a silent, devastating grief.

He had saved them from the pain of the void. They were free of the teeth.

​"No... No!" Norx roared from the floor, his voice a ragged, bestial sound as he saw the lights leave his reach.

The realization that Alias had completely bypassed his trap drove him into a frenzy of pure, chaotic rage. He scrambled forward through the ash, his grey fingers clawing at the air.

"You will not take them from ! We shall all rot in the abyss."

​Before Alias could pull his hands back, Norx lunged with a desperate, monstrous speed.

His curdled, abyssal energy flared one last ti as his fist swiped across Alias’s palms. He didn’t try to take them all—he knew he couldn’t hold them—but his fingers clamped around one specific node of light. He wanted to get the one mortal that had caused this catastrophe but he caught the wrong one.

He caught ​Maya’s soul.

​But no matter. One was better than none.

With a single, vicious twist of his hand, Norx channeled the full weight of his fallen malice into his grip.

​Crack.

​The small, bright light in his fingers violently shattered, the fragnts turning into a cold, grey smoke that dissolved into the empty air before it could even drift to the ceiling.

Her soul was gone. Snuffed out completely from the tapestry of existence, leaving nothing behind but an echoing silence.

​"Maya!" Alias scread, a raw, visceral sound that didn’t belong to a god. The grief tore through his chest like a physical blade, his legs giving out as he fell back onto the mats, his remaining two hands clamping fiercely over the souls of Theo and Kael.

​"One is gone, Alias!" Norx bared his teeth, his face sared with curdled gold and black soot as he laughed through his anger. "Go ahead! Try to save the rest! See what happens when I touch them!"

​Alias looked down at the two remaining lights in his palms—the father and the son.

They were pulsing frantically, terrified by the violence in the room. He had wanted to keep the souls safe for a while and ticulously craft vessels that could bring them both back to the world as father and son but Norx was after the souls now.

And he could not let Norx get them if not... they would cease to exist.

He couldn’t even risk taking them to the standard paths of the dead; Norx would certainly watch the gateways like a hungry wolf.

So, he hugged them one last ti, filling them with his warmth and then he used the absolute limit of his divine authority. Alias tore open a direct, illegal channel into the very core of the world’s reincarnation cycle—a deep, hidden well where the fallen god’s eyes could not penetrate.

​"Go," Alias wept, his voice small and broken as he opened his fingers. "I pray that you find each other. Be father and son again. And... wait for ."

​He blew gently on his palms. The two nodes of light drifted downward, slipping through the floorboards and into the deep, dark current of the earth, vanishing into the cycle of rebirth where they would be given new flesh, new nas, and a clean slate.