Interstellar: Return of the Villain
Chapter 191: Her Death

Chapter 191: Her Death

Erin’s mother fainted, her eyes rolling back as she collapsed.

Teagan rushed to her side, helping her while shooting a furious glare at Frenna.

"Frenna, what are you doing?!" Teagan yelled, his voice trembling with rage. But Frenna simply glanced at him, emotionless and unresponsive, leaving Teagan boiling with anger, tempted to strike her on the spot.

"Dad! I don’t want to go to prison! Save me!" Erin screamed as she was dragged away. She thrashed wildly, consumed by panic.

Forty-seven years of imprisonment—far longer than the time she had known freedom. She couldn’t endure it. She wouldn’t.

In her desperation, Erin’s freezing powers erupted uncontrollably, breaking through the restraints of her suppression bracelet.

The frost spread rapidly across the courtroom floor, climbing up the walls and coating every surface in ice.

The officials and reporters who had been preparing to leave jumped back in shock.

Then, the air filled with the sound of crackling electricity as circuits sparked and, with a loud snap, the lights went out.

For a brief moment, the room was plunged into darkness. When the lights flickered back on, Erin’s shackles had been cut loose.

Disoriented and terrified, Erin bolted for the exit, ignoring her father’s desperate shouts for her to calm down.

Guards rushed after her, but before they could reach her, a powerful wave of psychokinesis swept through the courtroom, leaving everyone dazed and confused.

By the time they recovered, both Erin and Freon were gone.

...

In the dimly lit hallway, Lyra stood silently in the shadows, watching Erin race past her.

With a swift, practiced motion, she tossed something onto Erin’s back as she fled.

The chaos inside the courtroom had finally started to subside, but the atmosphere remained tense and heavy.

When the Judge was informed of the escape, his fury broke the ceiling. "The audacity of the Shedd family! Defying the court like this!"

The psychokinesis that had helped Erin escape made it clear who was responsible—Frenna, the Spellbinder.

"Bring them back immediately, and increase their sentences! And someone find Frenna and bring her here for questioning!" he roared.

...

Outside Central City, Erin sped across the landscape on a hoverboard, cold mist trailing behind her.

The freezing energy she unleashed had already turned her eyelashes and eyebrows into icy tufts, and her entire body had grown stiff from the cold.

Her control faltered, and she tumbled off the hoverboard, rolling through the grass and staining herself with green streaks.

Shivering violently, Erin could think of only one thing—escape. She had to get away. She was Erin Shedd! How could she end up in such a pitiful state?

As she struggled to crawl forward, a pair of black, laced leather boots appeared before her.

"Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes." A cold, mocking voice made the icy chill in Erin’s body even worse. She looked up, her eyes widening in terror.

It was the face she both feared and hated.

"Lyra..." Erin’s face twisted, purple with cold. "It was you, wasn’t it? You and Freon—this was all your plan to ruin me!"

Lyra didn’t bother to deny it. "Yes. And you took the bait even faster than I expected," she said, her voice calm and unbothered.

Erin let out a hysterical laugh, her body trembling as she staggered to her feet. "And I thought you cared about Kail! You even used your own brother! What a joke!" she spat, her words dripping with bitterness.

"Do you know he ran off to look for you after you disappeared? Nearly died out there because of you. Isn’t that hilarious?!" Erin laughed again, her voice wild and unhinged.

Without warning, Lyra grabbed a fistful of Erin’s hair and yanked her down, forcing her to kneel on the ground. "Who said you could stand up?" she growled, her voice low and dangerous.

Lyra pulled out a small black spike—the Soul Spike—and pressed it into Erin’s chest with cruel precision.

The agony hit without warning.

Erin screamed, her voice a sharp, piercing cry as she collapsed onto the ground, clutching at her chest in a futile attempt to remove the spike.

The pain was unbearable, rendering her body useless.

Her breathing grew shallow as the spike slowly destroyed her body from the inside out, leaving her paralyzed on the cold grass.

Lyra’s eyes gleamed with a disturbing intensity. "Too bad you can only handle one of these."

With that, Lyra summoned a black, prototype machine from her Space Button. She set it up before the half-conscious Erin, who could only watch in terror.

"Does this look familiar?" Lyra asked, her voice soft yet filled with menace.

Erin’s wide eyes filled with dread. "No... no, please... stop..." she whimpered, kicking weakly at the ground, but her body was too weak to move.

As the machine roared to life above Erin’s head, her eyes reflected a turbulent mix of emotions: hatred, fear, and, ultimately, madness.

"Lyra, even if I die, I won’t let you win!" she screamed, summoning every ounce of her dwindling strength, forcing her powers to surge once more.

But her body was too broken to handle such an intense outburst. Blood oozed from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth as the uncontrolled energy within her tore her apart from the inside.

Her skin began to frost over, her muscles swelling unnaturally before the conflicting forces inside her body shattered it like brittle glass.

Covered in a layer of ice, her life ended abruptly, the bitter resentment she felt for Lyra still trapped in her throat.

Erin died in a violent explosion of rage, her body succumbing to the very destruction she had planned to unleash.

It was a tragic end, mirroring the cruel lies the Shedd family had once used to tear Lyra’s life apart.

From Erin’s broken body, white energy began to leak, slowly condensing into a radiant Crystal Core.

Lyra watched silently, unfazed, as the core hovered in the air before floating effortlessly into her hand.

With a simple motion, she absorbed it into her body, feeling an immediate surge of power—a deeper connection to the freezing energy Erin had once wielded.

Stowing away the machine, Lyra glanced coldly at Erin’s lifeless form on the ground, her expression void of any emotion. To her, this was simply another step in her long game of vengeance.

As Lyra stood there, a figure approached slowly from the shadows.

It was Kail. His face was a portrait of mixed emotions—shock, sorrow, and something that almost looked like resignation.

He stared at Erin’s body, his eyes lingering on the Soul Spike that had been buried in her chest, a grim reminder of how far things had fallen.

"Anything you want to say?" Lyra asked, her voice dripping with indifference. "Are you going to blame me for using you?"

His eyes reddened with unshed tears, but he managed a sad smile. "No, I don’t blame you."

He had been foolish before, manipulated by Ansel to harm Lyra, and now used once more by Lyra in her quest for revenge. It seemed only fitting, in a twisted way.

Lyra let out a bitter laugh, the sound cold and sharp. "Even so, I don’t need you anymore."

Once upon a time, those words would’ve crushed Kail. He would have desperately questioned her, clung to the hope that the sister he once knew was still inside her.

But now, he simply nodded and forced a smile, knowing better. "I know."

The sister who had once loved him, protected him from the world’s cruelty, had died when he was just eleven.

The Shedd family had shattered her heart, and his own naivety had helped them do it. What stood before him now was a shell of the person she used to be, driven by nothing but hatred and cold resolve.

"Well, I’m leaving," Kail said quietly, straightening his posture.

Lyra didn’t respond. She didn’t even watch him go. Her attention had already shifted elsewhere, as if he no longer existed.

Kail wiped the tears from his eyes, forcing himself to walk away with as much dignity as he could muster.

’Will she turn to look at me one last time?’—He dared not check. He just kept walking, knowing that when he finally did glance back, she would be long gone.

And in the end, that’s exactly what happened. He watched as her figure disappeared into the distance, his heart heavy but his resolve firm.

...

Back at the company, Lyra sat in silence behind her desk.

The quiet hum of machinery surrounded her, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

Her moment of solitude was interrupted by the sharp ring of her opticomputer.

Glancing at the caller ID, she smirked and pressed the answer button.

"Lyra, you truly are a child of the Shedd family," Ansel’s voice came through the speakers, calm but laced with barely contained fury. News of Erin’s death had already reached him.

Lyra chuckled bitterly. "I’ve always wondered if I really am," she replied. "What kind of grandfather could do something so heartless?"

Her hatred for the Shedd family ran so deep that even destroying them entirely wouldn’t be enough to satisfy her.

Ansel appeared on the screen. His aged seemed face unmoved, his hands resting atop his cane, his eyes gleaming with a calculating light.

"When you get to my level, you’ll learn that ruthlessness is the only way to survive," he said with a heavy sigh. "Still, Erin’s death wasn’t undeserved, not with how meticulously you set it up."

Lyra propped her chin on her hand, a sneer playing on her lips. "Do you really think all of this was just about Erin? If I wanted her dead, I could have done it long ago."

Her words dripped with venom. She had always played the long game, using each move to position herself for something greater. Erin was never the main target—just another pawn in a much larger scheme.

Ansel’s expression darkened, a flicker of unease crossing his face. He had underestimated her, that much was clear.

Leaning closer to the screen, Lyra’s smile turned sharp. "Ansel, I hope you live a long life."

His face stiffened. "And I hope you manage to climb higher," he said, his voice tight with tension.

With that, the call ended.

...

Morrison entered the room shortly after, carrying a stack of documents. "Before Kail left, he transferred some funds. It’s everything he earned from hunting over the past year—his way of compensating for losing the shop."

Morrison shook his head, unsure of how to describe Kail. The man seemed almost out of place in their world, like someone who had been chewed up and spat out by life, yet somehow still held onto a strange innocence.

Call it innocence or just plain foolishness, Kail had spent his entire life being used—first by the Shedd family when he was just a child, and now by his own sister in her bid for revenge.

Only now, after more than twenty years of being caught in the crossfire, had he come to understand the world’s cruelty.