Chapter 28: The Phantom War and the Prisoner's Plea
SPENCER'S POV
The world dissolved into a storm of light and sound. When the two entities collided, it wasn't with a mere physical impact, but with the birth of a miniature star. A concussive wave of pure energy erupted from the epicenter, slamming into me with the force of a physical blow. I felt it in my teeth, my bones, a deep, resonant vibration that threatened to shake me apart even within my invisible bonds.
What followed was a dance of destruction so far beyond human comprehension it was like watching two gods wage war.
Mr. Thorne was a juggernaut. His fists, now sheathed in what looked like molten, blackened metal, came down like meteors. Each blow aimed at Wednesday cratered the rooftop where she had stood a millisecond before, sending shards of concrete and tar flying. The air itself screamed with the force of his attacks.
But Wednesday ,I couldn't understand what she is now —was a phantom wisp. She moved with an impossible, boneless grace, a specter in a deadly ballet. She didn't just dodge; she flowed around his attacks, her body contorting in ways that defied anatomy. A metal fist would whistle past her head, and in the same motion, she would pivot, the rusted chain in her hand lashing out like a steel serpent to slice a deep gash across his back. The way she wielded the massive, butcher-bladed chains revealed a terrifying, innate strength, making the heavy weapons look like mere extensions of her will.
Mr. Thorne, enraged, launched himself into a powerful jump, aiming to crush her beneath him. With a flick of her wrist, Wednesday sent one chain snaking through the air, wrapping tightly around his charging arm. Using his own momentum against him, she pivoted and threw him. He was a massive projectile, tumbling across the rooftop and skidding to a halt on the gravel. But he was up in an instant, his stance stable, his rotten face a mask of cold, calculating fury.
He simply stared at her calmly, no longer the mindless brute.
Wednesday took the opening. She swung one chain in a wide arc and launched it forward, the pointed butcher's knife a silver streak aimed unerringly for his heart. But he was ready. His hand shot out and caught the chain mere inches from his chest, the metal links wrapping around his fist with a deafening clang. He gave a devastating pull.
Wednesday gasped, her boots scraping against the gravel as she was dragged forward, her strength proving futile against his anchored might. She was a fish on a line, and he was the immovable rock.
"You are using powers you barely understand to protect a worthless, fleeting human," the demon mocked, his voice a bored drawl. "I'll rate you a six out of ten for the effort. But it changes nothing. There is something… delicious… about this soul that you seem to be interested in,I will have him first. It is the one I want. And I always take what I want."
With a final, contemptuous grin, he gave the chain one last, powerful tug. Wednesday was yanked off her feet and flew toward him. As she closed the distance, he raised his other, metal-sheathed fist and landed a mighty blow directly to her torso.
The sound was sickening—a wet, crushing thud. She was flung backward like a discarded doll, smashing through a low-walled parapet and into a heavy, metal ventilation shaft with a crash that echoed across the city skyline.
The demon turned his glowing red eyes back to me. The hunger in them was a physical weight, a promise of agony and dissolution. He took a step toward me, then suddenly groaned, bending over as if in pain.
"Stop… don't… don't harm Spencer," he rasped, his voice shifting, becoming the pleading, sorrowful tone I'd heard before.
He stood up straight, his body trembling. "Not because we share this body does not mean you can control me!" he roared back at himself, the demonic voice reasserting dominance. "His soul is MINE!"
He overcame the internal struggle and resumed his slow, inevitable walk toward me, each step cracking the rooftop beneath his feet.
From the wreckage of the ventilation shaft, a figure rose. Wednesday stood, her form flickering with a pale, ethereal light. "I will protect Spencer," she groaned, her voice layered with determination and pain, "even if it consumes the last spark of my existence."
She clenched her fists, and the chains in her hands erupted in flames of pure, white energy. Her eyes glowed with the same blinding light, and her hair floated around her head like a halo of frozen starlight. She was a vengeful angel, a specter pushed to its absolute limit. With a battle cry that seemed to tear the night in two, she charged, a comet of righteous fury.
The demon didn't even turn. He simply waved two of his fingers.
An invisible force, a tidal wave of telekinetic power, picked her up and slammed her into a distant corner of the rooftop, against a cluster of heavy iron machinery. The impact was colossal, yet the machinery stood unblemished.
That's when I noticed it. The fight had been tremendously disastrous, a spectacle of cosmic power. Yet, the damage was… contained. A few cracked pillars, some scuffed gravel. A battle of this magnitude should have sheared the top six floors off the hotel. It should have collapsed into a pile of rubble.
The demon narrowed his gaze, looking around with a newfound, intellectual curiosity. He seemed to be sniffing the air.
"We have been phantom fighting all this while," he stated, a slow, impressed smile spreading across his face. He looked at Wednesday, who was struggling to her feet. "You created a dimensional illusion. You partitioned a pocket of reality to contain our conflict. Quite impressive. You've truly mastered the higher aspects of your phantom ability."
He raised his hands, fingers splayed, and made a tearing motion in the air. It was like he was ripping away a curtain. A shimmering, translucent veil of energy dissolved around us, falling away like smoke.
The effect was instantaneous and terrifying.
The weight of the demon's presence, which had felt abstract before, now became a physical pressure on the world. The concrete beneath his feet groaned audibly, and I heard the distinct sound of straining metal and cracking supports from deep within the building. The air grew thick and heavy, charged with a malevolence that was now fully unleashed onto our reality.
"Let's have a real combat," the demon purred.
He stretched out his hand toward Wednesday. She screamed, her body seizing as an unseen force gripped her. She was lifted into the air, her limbs contorting painfully, and dragged toward him like a puppet on strings. His hand found her throat, squeezing, her legs dangling uselessly.
"And since you are so keen on sacrificing yourself," he mused, his other hand lifting toward me. The invisible vise around my own throat tightened once more, cutting off my air. "How about I take the remains of your soul… and then his? A two-course meal."
Black spots danced in my vision. This was it. The real, unfiltered end.
"LET THEM GO!"
The voice was not powerful, not magical, but it was filled with a raw, human courage that cut through the supernatural dread. I managed to turn my head.
It was Allen. He stood at the entrance to the rooftop, his face pale but set in a determined snarl. And he was not alone.
Fanning out behind him were seven figures draped in black hoodies, each adorned with intricate, woven stripes of gold, white, and red that seemed to pulse with a faint inner light. Their hands were locked together, fingers interlaced, and orbiting their connected palms were complex, geometric shapes of brilliant, emerald green. The constructs hummed with ancient power, rotating and shifting like living, three-dimensional mandalas, reminiscent of the shields and spells of a master sorcerer. Their lips moved in unison, murmuring low, guttural words in a language that felt older than time itself.
Allen stood among them, his own hands now glowing with a fierce, golden energy that mirrored the designs on their robes. His face, for the first time tonight, held no fear, only a cold, focused rage.
The demon actually laughed, the sound dripping with condescension. "Humans. Using the parlor tricks we whispered in your ancestors' ears against us. Such treacherous, ungrateful children."
He discarded Wednesday, throwing her aside like garbage. She crashed to the ground, her form flickering weakly. I remained suspended, a prize he was not yet done with.
The demon began to walk toward the circle of hooded figures, and with each step, the hotel groaned in protest. A deep, structural shudder ran through the entire building. Plumes of dust erupted from the edges of the rooftop. The 12-story building was slowly, inexorably, beginning to crumble under the unshielded weight of his presence.
The hooded figures didn't flinch. They broke their circle, moving with practiced precision to surround the demon, their locked hands now projecting the emerald green energy into a continuous, shimmering barrier that sealed him in the center—a prison of light.
The demon roared and punched the barrier. The impact sent visible ripples through the green energy, and the men and women straining to hold it grunted in unison, but it held.
"Focus your gaze! Do not let him breach your minds!" shouted one of them, a man wearing a more ornate, classic version of the hooded robe—clearly their leader.
The demon's rage subsided. He calmed, and a slow, insidious smile spread across his face. He began to slowly turn within his cage, his red eyes scanning each face, looking for a crack in their mental armor.
His gaze fell upon a young man on the far side of the circle. The man's eyes were squeezed shut, his face a mask of concentration and sweat.
"Don't look at him, Eli!" the leader barked.
But it was too late. The young man's eyes fluttered open, driven by a compulsion he couldn't resist, and locked directly with the demon's hellish gaze.
His eyes widened, the pupils dilating until the orbs were pure black. He was seeing things—an eternity of torment, the futility of his efforts, the death of everyone he loved—all in a single, shattered moment. A thin trickle of blood escaped his nose, then his ears, then his eyes, streaming down his face in crimson tears. The emerald magic around his hands began to twitch and sputter, turning a sickly, corrupted brown.
Then, with a wet, explosive pop, his head burst.
The loss of his power was catastrophic. The perfect barrier shattered like glass. The resulting backlash of energy threw everyone, except the demon, backward.
The force hit me like a physical wall. I was ripped from my suspended prison and thrown through the air, my body spinning uncontrollably. My world became a blur of sky and crumbling concrete until my head connected with a heavy, unyielding iron pipe with a sickening crack.
A white-hot pain exploded in my skull. The world began to dim, the sounds becoming muffled and distant. Through fading vision, I felt the world tilt. The groans of the dying hotel became a roar as the floor beneath me listed violently. I was sliding, the entire structure giving way.
The last thing I felt was the terrifying, inexorable sensation of falling as the world crumbled around me, descending into hell.
---
EIDOLON'S POV
I stood before the full-length mirror in Spencer's bathroom, admiring the form I had stolen. It was more than just wearing a body; it was the sensation of cold porcelain under my fingertips, the faint scent of his cologne in the air, the steady, thrilling hum of a living, material world. It was freedom.
In the mirror, I didn't see my own triumphant face. I saw hers. The real Wednesday. A pale, frantic ghost trapped behind the silvered glass, her hands pressed against the barrier that separated us.
"We had an agreement!" her voice screamed in my mind, a desperate, echoing plea. "Once Spencer was safe, you would return! You promised!"
I smiled, a slow, cruel curl of the lips that felt so deliciously human. "Promises," I said aloud, savoring the sound of my new voice, "are delicate little things. So easily broken,they are meant to be broken."
"YOU SWORE TO ME!"
"Did I?" I tilted my head, examining my—her—reflection. "I've been a tenant in your mind for years, little ghost. A silent passenger. You couldn't even remember my presence, could you? I have been trapped, passed from one consciousness to another, until I found a home in yours. It has been an eternity since I last tasted true freedom. Now that I have it firmly in my grasp, did you truly believe I would simply hand it back?"
She stared at me, her spectral form trembling with a mixture of shock and dawning, absolute horror.
"What… what do you mean?" she whispered, her mental voice small.
"I mean," I said, leaning closer to the mirror, my ghostly breath fogging the glass, "that I have felt everything you felt. When you met Spencer, that first, foolish flutter of your dead heart? I felt it. When you nurtured those tender, fragile feelings for him, I was right there, nurturing them alongside you. I touched every memory, every stolen glance, every desperate hope. And do you know what happened?"
I paused, letting the silence stretch, letting her dread build.
"I fell in love with him, too."
I saw her flinch as if struck.
"I have always wanted to touch him. To feel the warmth of his skin, not as a cold memory in your mind, but as a tangible reality. I wanted to act on those desires you were too noble, too mission-bound, to entertain. And when I realized you were planning to sever every beautiful tie you had with him, to break his heart and yours for the sake of some… abstract duty… I decided it was time to play the game by my rules. So, I guided you. I fed your fear, amplified your desperation, and offered you the one solution that would give me exactly what I wanted. You didn't let me out, Wednesday. I tricked my way out."
"Let me out of here! NOW!" she roared, slamming her fists against the inside of the mirror. The glass didn't even tremble.
I threw my head back and laughed, a rich, full-bodied sound that was so alien coming from this body. "There is no way I am doing that."
"I thought you were my conscience!, you are way worse than king Hades even described you to be!"she cried, her voice breaking. "You were supposed to guide me!".
"Well, yes," I replied, feigning thoughtfulness. "I am your conscience. And I was guiding you… to guide me. You see, sometimes you wonder why there were two distinct voices warring in your head. One was me. And the other…" I grinned, "...was my own conscience. A girl has to have standards, after all."
We made a deal! she pleaded, her anger dissolving into pure, wretched despair. Please, if you continue with this obsession, you will sabotage my mission! We will be recalled! We will face eternal condemnation! Please!
"Your mission," I said, my voice dropping to a deadly serious whisper, "is not as important to me as Spencer is. Your eternity is a small price to pay for my happiness."
I turned to walk away, to go to my Spencer.
"WAIT!" she screamed.
I paused, glancing back over my shoulder.
"What is your name?", because you sure aren't the inner wednesday" she asked, her voice a hollow echo of defeat.
I turned fully, a triumphant, wicked smirk gracing my stolen lips. I leaned in until my face was inches from the glass, my eyes locking with her terrified ones.
"You can call me Eidolon," I purred. "And you should know what that means."
I felt her shock, her recognition of the ancient, terrible meaning behind the name—a phantom, an illusion, an unattainable ideal that destroys those who chase it.
As her horrified scream filled the prison of her own mind, I turned and walked away, silencing her with a thought.
"Spencer is mine," I whispered to the empty, welcoming world. "And mine alone."
---
SPENCER'S POV
Darkness. A deep, warm, painless darkness. It was a relief.
"Spencer…" A voice, faint and echoing. "Spencer…"
It was a nuisance. I tried to burrow deeper into the void.
"SPENCER!" The voice was sharper now, laced with a panic that pierced the comforting black.
Reluctantly, I fluttered my eyes open. A searing, white-hot pain instantly exploded in my skull, centered on a massive ache at the back of my head. The world was a blur of grays and muted lights. The air was thick with dust, and the sound of creaking, groaning metal filled my ears.
A figure swam into view above me, features indistinct.
"Thank God, you're alive, you should die by my hands only," a different voice said. It was familiar. Feminine.
Before my vision could clear, before I could even process who it was, the voice spoke again, its tone shifting dramatically. It became soft, soothing, almost a lullaby.
"Shhh, go back to sleep, Spencer. It's not yet time to wake up."
Confusion warred with the agony in my head. What? Why would I go back to sleep?
Then, I saw a glint of metal in the dim light—a fire extinguisher, maybe, or a piece of rebar or a pistol instead. It descended toward my face with a swift, merciless certainty.
The world didn't fade to black. It shattered into a million pieces of blinding, final pain, and then… nothing.
I passed out solemnly...
To be continued.....