The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss
Chapter 185 - 186: Rescue?

Chapter 185: Chapter 186: Rescue?

"Eureka!!!.....his Highness Atlas would be pleased..." The mad mage voiced.

Veil, who had been lurking beneath the cackling shadow of the deranged mage, flinched. A tremor ran through his incorporeal form. One eye snapped open—slitted and red. The world blurred for a heartbeat. Something inside him snapped like a thread pulled too tight.

Atlas’s shadow... it was gone.

No, not faded. Not suppressed.

Severed.

Cleanly. Entirely. A void where life once echoed.

A crack of panic widened within him. He jolted out from beneath the mage’s feet, phasing through the underbelly of the camp’s flickering torches, sliding between cracks of light like oil between teeth. The night swallowed him, but even in its womb, something in Veil’s movements faltered—jittered. His domain, yes, but even the shadows recoiled when one of their own was extinguished.

As he passed through flickering walls and muttering soldiers, a distant voice made him pause.

"Father! FATHER!" The girl’s voice rang—raw, desperate.

He turned and saw her—Lara.

The blue-haired girl stood before the King’s chamber, slamming her fists against the wooden door, her palms trembling. She wasn’t hiding the fear that etched itself into every vowel.

"Contact the front lines!! Now!!" She beloud.

She was shaking. Something in her eyes—Veil saw it.

’Did she notice too...?’

He didn’t linger. Time had stopped being kind the moment Atlas vanished from his perception.

He needed to reach Loki. And then the high mage. One of them had to—

No. No delays.

Veil swirled again, his form stretching into ribbons of ink beneath torches, slipping between shadows like lightning between clouds. Atlas’s quarters came into view—dimly lit, nearly silent. Loki’s room was on the opposite end, but predictably, the idiot had fallen into slumber just outside Atlas’s chamber. Head lolled, snoring like a beast.

Veil exhaled.

He seeped beneath the doorframe, reconstituting beside the snoring mess.

"Wake UP!! Cunt!" he belled, voice rising like a curse.

The floor twisted. His shadows surged upward like claws from the underworld, flipping the bed into the air with a thunderous clatter. Loki screamed—not from fear but the sheer insult of being jarred awake like that. His limbs flailed, landing gracelessly on the stone floor with a bone-thudding slap.

"Wha—?! What the hell!?" Loki rubbed his face, blinking furiously. "...Veil?"

"Atlas!" Veil’s voice cracked. "Something happened to him."

"...What!?" Loki sat up like someone had poured fire down his back. His eyes snapped fully open, wide as moons. "What do you mean something happened?!"

"I mean," Veil growled, "his shadow is gone. I can’t feel it. I can’t feel him."

There was silence.

Loki’s heart pounded. He reached instinctively for the talisman around his neck—one of many gifts from Atlas during their long-ago missions.

"...That shit face," Loki muttered, not with hate, but with a grief strangled in denial. "I told him... I told him to take us with him..."

He pushed himself up. "Let’s go."

"Yeah—let’s go—wait. Go where!?" Veil snapped, floating behind him as Loki dashed toward the balcony.

"...The border, of course."

"Fuck. Then contact that rooftop mage of yours. The girl who never sleeps."

"Aurora?" Loki grunted, half-leaping off the steps as he moved toward the stairwell. "Yeah, yeah..."

.

.

.

Far above, upon the tower drenched in starlight and silence, Aurora opened her eyes.

Her breath curled out in white vapor. The night was warm—but not to her. Around her, the air was still, as if it feared disturbing what she had just done.

A floating book pulsed above her, etched in crimson runes—the Book of the Damned. Its pages trembled like leaves in a storm, magic leaking out in threads of black light.

"...I reached it," she whispered, lips dry. "Finally.... I made another law."

Exhaustion burned her bones. But pride smoldered behind her crimson eyes. A new law: reality bent to her words once more. She had shaped it.

But even as her triumph bloomed, another part of her—a quieter, colder tether—began to hum. The web of communications she maintained to monitor the kingdom had begun to screech.

Lines were converging. Interrupting each other. Chaos.

Then, a familiar voice burst through—strained, frantic.

"—this is Claire—do you hear me? Claire from the main camp. The field is collapsing. I repeat, collapsing. The empress is—no, I don’t—WHERE IS HE—"

Aurora blinked.

"...Claire? Why is she panicking like this...?"

Her gaze narrowed. A cold weight dropped into her chest.

"Atlas... didn’t they go on a simple recon? A week ago?"

She remembered the voice in his tongue the day she gave him the reversed dragon-echo spell. How calmly he thanked her. Too calmly.

"What... did you do, you bastard?"

Her hand flicked. She intercepted the call spell. Redirected it to her personal thread.

"Claire. Claire—calm down! God, I’ve never heard you sound like this before. It’s me—Aurora. Stop panicking."

There was static. Then silence.

Aurora held her breath.

".....Okay, okay. I’ll inform Henry. Where is he now?"

There was a pause.

"...WITH THE EMPRESS!?"

Aurora stood so quickly her knees cracked. Her spellbook snapped shut with a vicious slap.

"How did it escalate this high, this fast?"

Her voice trembled. Not with fear—but fury.

She didn’t notice at first, but at the corner of her vision, she saw them—Veil and Loki, barreling toward her with chaos in their wake.

"Aurora! Atlas—something—"

"I know," she said. Her voice flat. Her eyes already burning again. "We lack the manpower. We can’t reach him in time...."

Veil opened his mouth to argue, but Loki grabbed his form, halting him.

"Aurora," Loki said.

She ignored him.

"...It’s too late. We can’t do anything. That place is miles away and fortified by—"

"Aurora."

She turned, snapping.

"What!?"

Loki stepped forward. His hair flickered, glowing with threads of white heat like embers waking.

"...Use that spell," he said.

She went silent.

Then her expression cracked with horror.

"You’re insane," she said. "You’re actually insane. Did Atlas’s fever get you too..."

Loki met her eyes. He didn’t blink.

"Do you care about him or not?" he asked, softly. "He’s the first friend I ever made. The first one who looked at me and didn’t see a monster."

He paused. His fists clenched. "He pulled me out of a cage I was born inside. And if I have to burn half the world to bring him back, then so be it...."

"A giant," he whispered, "....always repays his debts."

Aurora stared at him. And then, slowly, her fingers trembled.

She looked down at her palms.

They were shaking. Shaking so hard she had to clench them to hide it.

"...You’ll die midway."

"Then let me."

She exhaled a sharp breath. Her shoulders fell.

"Gods damn all of you. Fine. Don’t blame me if you start rotting mid-flight."

Loki grinned. Flames licking his arms now. ".....Then let’s do this."