Chapter 35: Serpent's Visitation
Angel’s gasp of pain echoed through the infirmary as she jolted upright.
A sharp, electric ache tore through her ribs, her back, her skull. The sterile white light of the room felt like a physical assault. Her glasses were folded on a side table. Everything was a blurry smear of white and pale green, punctuated by the steady, slow beep of a heart monitor.
Her gaze snapped left, focusing with painful effort.
Jack Death lay in the cot beside hers, still as marble. His usually pristine black suit was gone, replaced by a standard hospital gown. His head was bandaged, but three distinct patches of crimson had seeped through the white gauze, perfectly aligned over the three white stripes in his hair. An oxygen tube rested under his nose. His chest rose and fell, but just barely.
To her other side, Alyce Kingston slept in a twisted nest of sheets, one arm flung over her face. Red hair splayed across the pillow like a warning sign.
The door hissed open. A nurse walked in, her face entirely wrapped in aged, beige bandages, only a slit for her eyes. She froze, her clinical survey of Jack’s IV line halting as her head turned toward Angel.
Their eyes met.
The nurse let out a muffled sound, turned on her heel, and ran back out into the hallway, the door swinging shut behind her.
Confusion cut through the pain. Angel tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed. The movement was agonizingly slow, her muscles responding like rusted machinery. She felt a tug on her arm, saw the IV line, felt the nasal tube for feeding taped to her cheek. The memory of the last time she’d woken up like this—after the graveyard—flashed briefly, but this was different. This was a deeper, more total exhaustion.
The door burst open.
“Angel!”
Kilson Delacroix filled the doorway, his massive frame tense. He was followed by a blur of motion—Amber, her face pale, tattoos stark against her skin, and Leo right behind her, a deep worry line between his brows.
“Oh, thank god,” Amber breathed, rushing forward but stopping short, as if afraid to touch her.
Moments later, Crow entered. He moved stiffly, one arm in a sling, his torso wrapped in bandages visible under a loose black tank top. More gauze was taped along his jawline. His silver eyes found Angel immediately, scanning her with a ferocious intensity that felt more assessing than relieved.
The small room was suddenly, overwhelmingly full. The air felt thin. Angel’s heart monitor picked up its pace, the beeping growing more frequent. The noise, the crowding, the concerned faces leaning in—it was too much. She brought a shaky hand to her temple.
The flurry of movement and low voices woke Alyce. She snorted, blinked blearily, and pushed herself up on her elbows. “Wha’s all the…?” She saw Angel. Her sleepy irritation vanished, replaced by wide-eyed alertness. “Hey. You’re back.”
“How long?” Angel managed to whisper. Her voice was a dry rasp.
“Three weeks,” Crow said flatly from near the door. He hadn’t come further inside. “You’ve been under medical sedation. Your soul wavelength was… volatile.”
Three weeks. Angel looked at Jack’s motionless form. “Is he…?”
“Alive,” Kilson said, his voice uncharacteristically grim. He was looking at Jack, not at her. “Stable. But not awake. His soul took a direct hit from the backlash when the dome fell.”
Angel processed that. The guilt was a cold, heavy stone in her gut. She flexed her toes beneath the thin blanket. The memory of the total, terrifying numbness in her legs during the fight resurfaced, a ghost sensation that made her shiver. But she could feel the sheet. She could move her feet. A weak, tentative relief stirred.
“Did I… heal myself?” she asked, mostly to herself.
“Your wavelength exhibited unprecedented regenerative properties during the event,” Crow stated, as if reading from a report. “The cause is unknown.”
Angel turned her head, wincing at the stiffness in her neck, to look directly at Kilson. “Where’s Asura?”
Her father’s eyes, finally meeting hers, flickered away. He adjusted his stance, his large hands flexing at his sides. “He’s being kept in the containment dungeons below the school. For now.” The answer was too quick, too simple.
Before she could push further, the door opened again, quieter this time.
Silas Blackwood slipped inside. He seemed to absorb the room’s chaotic energy without a ripple, his white hair impeccably slicked back, his lean frame draped in a dark, elegant coat. His eyes, ancient and knowing, settled on Angel.
“The Headmaster has been waiting,” Silas said, his voice a low, smooth murmur. “He wishes to speak with you the moment you are conscious. Which, I see, is now.”
A wave of dizziness washed over Angel. The thought of getting up, of moving, seemed impossible.
“She can’t go anywhere,” Amber protested, stepping slightly in front of the bed. “Look at her!”
“The Headmaster does not make requests,” Silas replied, not unkindly, but with finality.
“It’s okay,” Angel whispered. She looked at Alyce. “Help me up?”
Alyce was already disentangling herself from her the blanket she was using to nap on with a practiced, irritated efficiency. She swung her short legs out of bed, bare feet slapping the cold floor. “Yeah, yeah. C’mon, Delacroix. Let’s get you vertical.”
With Alyce on one side and a silent, hesitant Kilson on the other, they got Angel into a sitting position. The world tilted. Black spots danced at the edges of her vision. Her legs were useless strands of overcooked pasta. The last time she’d done this, she’d been sore. This was a total systems failure.
“Wheelchair,” Crow barked, and a moment later a sleek, metal-frame chair was brought in by the mummified nurse, who hovered nervously in the doorway.
The transfer was a humiliating, clumsy ordeal. By the time she was settled in the chair, a thin blanket over her lap, the IV bag transferred to a pole on the back, Angel was panting from the effort, a cold sweat on her brow. The feeding tube had been disconnected, the nasal cannula left draped around her neck. She wore simple, soft clothing—a grey t-shirt and black leggings that Alyce must have helped the nurses put on her.
“I’ll push,” Alyce announced, taking command of the chair handles.
“I’ll accompany you,” Kilson said, his voice gruff.
Crow gave a single, sharp nod. “I am required to attend as well.”
The procession felt like a funeral march. Silas led the way, his pace measured. They moved out of the bright infirmary into the colder, stone corridors of the academy’s main wing. The clack of the wheelchair wheels, the squeak of a loose bolt, the echo of their footsteps—it was all too loud. Angel already felt drained, the IV fluids doing little to combat the profound weakness that seemed to seep from her bones.
They passed through the ornate, towering Tori gates that marked the entrance to the administrative wing. The air grew heavier, charged with a silent authority.
The doors to the throne room were already open.
Silas entered first, followed by Alyce pushing Angel, with Kilson and Crow flanking them like guards.
Headmaster Death sat upon his tall, carved throne. The usual cheerful, almost plastic roundness of his face was gone. His signature mask was cracked, a spiderweb of fine lines running from the left eye down to the jaw. His shoulders were slumped, not in a comical way, but in a posture of genuine, immense weight. The giant scythe that usually stood beside him was absent.
His singsong voice, when he spoke, was devoid of its normal light, bouncing cadence. It was flat. Tired.
“Angelina Delacroix.”
Angel had to tilt her head back to look up at him. The height of the throne, the vast, shadowy room, it was all designed to diminish those who entered. Even in a wheelchair, she felt the intended effect.
“Headmaster,” she said, her voice barely carrying.
He leaned forward slightly, the cracked mask making his expression unreadable, yet profoundly serious. “You have unleashed a complication. And in doing so, you have revealed something… significant.”
He paused, the silence stretching. Angel could feel the stares of Kilson and Crow on her back.
“The entity known as Asura is no longer a Kishin,” Death continued. “His madness has been… unspun. He is, for lack of a better term, a man again. A deeply traumatized, immensely powerful, and utterly unstable man.” He steepled his fingers. “He asks for you. He will speak to no one else. He will eat only if your name is on the order. He weeps, and when he weeps, the foundations of this academy shake.”
Angel’s mouth was dry. She said nothing.
“You connected with him on a soul-deep level that bypassed all known combat resonance. You performed a spiritual intervention that should be impossible.” Death’s voice dropped further. “You did what an army of Death Weapons and seasoned Meisters could not do in eight hundred years. And you,” he said, the word sharp, “are an untrained, undocumented latent with no lineage we can trace. Until now.”
He lifted a single, thick document from the side of his throne. It was a file.
“Your adoption records. Sealed, mundane, perfectly ordinary.” He let it drop to the floor with a slap. “A compelling fiction. Your biological mother was a witch of considerable power. Your father was one of my own Death Scythes. He lied, even to this day, about your mother to keep you safe. They broke every law to be together, and in the end it didn’t work out. You were hidden away to protect you from both sides. You are not merely a latent Meister, Angelina. You are a bridge. A hybrid. Your soul is capable of harmonizing with wavelengths we classify as incompatible: pure order, and pure chaos. Weapon, Meister, Witch… and Kishin.”
The words hung in the air, terrible and huge.
“Where is he?” Angel asked again, her own voice surprising her with its steadiness.
“In the dark, where he demanded to be,” Death said. “But his presence is a crisis. He cannot stay. The councils are already calling for his permanent eradication. They fear what he represents. They fear what you represent.”
He stood up, slowly, unfolding to his full, imposing height. The crack in his mask seemed to deepen.
“You have a choice. A path. You can return to your mundane life. We will wipe your memory. It will be as if none of this ever happened. You will be safe.”
He took one step down from the dais.
“Or,” he said, his tired eyes holding hers through the mask’s slits, “you can continue here. You can learn to control what you are. You can become the Meister you were born to be. And you can take responsibility for the being you saved.”
He stopped, now standing directly before her wheelchair, looking down.
“Your weapon Alyce Kingston still requires a partner that’s able to adapt to her soul wavelength. The Meister Kaelen Crow requires a stable, powerful weapon to anchor him against his own deteriorating condition. You have resonated with both. You are the variable that solves two unstable equations.”
He finally said it.
“Your training under Professor Crow would continue. You will still be paired with Alyce. And your first official assignment as a student of this academy will be to manage our… guest. To find out what he knows. To determine if he can be healed, or if he must be destroyed.”
He waited. The entire room held its breath.
“So,” Headmaster Death finished, his fractured mask inches from her face. “What is your answer?”
Angel didn’t know what to say. The offer hung in the air, a clean escape hatch back to a life of textbooks and coffee shops and blissful, terrifying normalcy. It was everything she’d wanted that first night after Crow has kidnapped her from her graduate level course, when the world had cracked open. She’d ached for it.
Now, the thought of leaving made her feel hollow.
Her gaze traveled over the faces surrounding her. Kilson, her father, a stranger wearing guilt like a second skin. Amber, her sister, vibrating with protective fear. Crow, a statue of bandaged tension, his silver eyes holding a storm she couldn’t name. Finally, she returned her gaze to the cracked mask of Headmaster Death.
“Of course I will stay,” she said. The words left her, quiet but final, no tremor in them.
Death clapped his hands together, the sharp sound cartoonishly loud in the solemn room. “Wonderful!” he chirped, the singsong tone bleeding back into his voice though the weariness beneath it remained. “Let us begin by speaking privately. You all may leave. Except Crow. I must speak with Crow and Angel together.”
Alyce squeezed Angel’s shoulder, her grip briefly firm. “Don’t let the old ghoul scare you,” she muttered, then followed Kilson, Amber, and a reluctant Leo out. Silas was already a ghost in the doorway, gone before the doors sighed shut.
The throne room felt infinitely larger with just the three of them. The air grew still and close.
Death settled back onto his throne, the cheerful façade melting away again. He steepled his fingers, the cracked porcelain of his mask tilting. “Now, now,” he began, his voice a low, knowing melody. “Don’t think that because I’m not able to see everything that goes on around Death City, doesn’t mean that I’m oblivious to things.”
He looked between her and Crow. The weight of his attention was a physical pressure.
“You both know the rules of this academy very well,” Death said, each word deliberate. “And a teacher-student relationship is not something that we allow here at the DWMA.”
Angel’s cheeks burned. She looked down at her hands in her lap, the shame immediate and hot, like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar. The memory of Crow’s soul slamming into hers, the terrifying intimacy of their fusion against Asura, flashed behind her eyes. Was that what this looked like?
Death cleared his throat in a long, sing-song hum. “But,” he drew the word out. “That being said… if I don’t see it, it’s not happening.”
His eyes, shadowed by the mask’s slits, narrowed directly at Crow. The playful tone vanished, replaced by something razor-sharp and cold. “And be especially careful with your Soul Perception, Meister. They may not teach what soul-binding is anymore in the introductory courses, but it’s not hard to figure out for those who know how to look.”
Crow gulped. A subtle, almost imperceptible motion, but Angel saw the tight jump of his throat. He bowed his head, stiffly, his good arm braced against his sling. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Death’s tone lightened, dismissing them. “Begin her physical therapy tomorrow. You are dismissed.”
Crow wheeled Angel around with a jerkier motion than before. They moved in silence through the vast, echoing hallway, the click-clack of the wheelchair wheels the only sound. The grandeur of the place felt suffocating now.
“What did he mean by that, Crow?” Angel asked finally, her voice small against the stone. “Soul-binding?”
He was silent for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. His footsteps were a steady, heavy rhythm beside her. “It means,” he said, the words clipped, “that our souls are bonded. And anyone looking long enough can figure it out.”
“What does that mean, though?” She twisted in the chair to look up at him. His profile was a hard line, the bandage on his jaw stark white.
Crow was hesitant, his gaze fixed on some distant point down the hall. “I don’t think you are ready to hear that yet.”
“C’mon, Crow. Tell me.” A flicker of her old stubbornness ignited, cutting through the fatigue.
He sighed, a rough sound of pure exhaustion. “It means we are soul-bonded. That’s all there is to it.”
Angel couldn’t help but realize there was more to that than he was saying, layers of implication in the way he bit the words off. But the energy to press him further drained out of her as quickly as it came. The confrontation with Death, the weight of her decision, the lingering ache in every muscle—it all crashed down. She slumped back into the chair, defeated into silence.
He took her back to the infirmary. The mummified nurse was waiting, her wrapped head tilting in what might have been expectation.
“She requires further observation and intensive physical therapy,” Crow stated, his professor’s voice firmly back in place. “Begin mobilization exercises in the morning. I will return then to discuss her training schedule.”
The nurse nodded, taking the wheelchair handles from him. Her touch was surprisingly gentle.
Angel looked back at Crow as the nurse began to wheel her toward the sterile rows of beds. He stood framed in the doorway, a figure of battered resolve and unspoken warnings, watching her go. He gave a single, short nod.
Then he was gone, and the fluorescent hum of the infirmary closed around her once more.