CHAPTER 32

최신 챕터

• Rejected by the lycan king    CHAPTER 40

  Vareya wore my face like a prophecy fulfilled.Same eyes, but hollow.Same mouth, but void of mercy.Same hands, but they held not the Hollow Crown, but the blade that could end it.She stepped fully into the world as the Hollow Gate screamed closed behind her, sealing with such finality that the stone walls of the vault cracked. Power surged across the room. Magic warped the air.And still, she smiled."They chose you," she said. "Fools. You were never meant to hold balance. You were meant to break."I held the Hollow Crown tight in my hands."Then let’s break together."The Final BattleDahlia pulled the Circle of Flame from her satchel. Xander and Rafael formed the guard line. Seris stood at my side, her sigils blazing white.We did not wait.We attacked.Magic tore through the chamber. Sigils cracked stone. The air became fire and shadow, roaring and silent all at once. Vareya moved like a memory slipping through strikes, appearing in flame, countering with ancient power that bled

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 39

  The Hollow War did not begin with swords. It began with silence.The morning after the fire, no birds sang in Duskfall. No bells rang. The Crescent Court’s banners hung limp, unguarded. The Hollow Garden stood scorched, the fountain blackened by unnatural flame. Even the children those too young to understand magic or war refused to speak.The mark of Vareya lingered on the horizon like a scar.And the Gate beneath the city had begun to hum.EvacuationRafael stood beside me in the observatory as the first wave of citizens fled. They streamed through the outer gates with their wolves, their families, their fear. The Hollow Blooded were divided some remained, defiant. Others ran."We can’t hold Duskfall if the people turn," Rafael said quietly."We’re not losing the city. We’re defending it.""Then tell them. Show them. Be more than the queen. Be the myth they’ve made you."He didn’t say it cruelly.He said it as a challenge.So I accepted it.The Binding FlameThat night, in the heart

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 38

  I didn’t sleep the night after we uncovered Vareya’s name.The wind had begun to change, carrying with it the kind of cold that didn’t touch the skin, but the soul. Every sound in the palace felt heavier, every flicker of candlelight more uncertain. Even the Hollow Crown once a steady glow beside my bed had dimmed.I sat at my desk and stared at the cracked sigil Dahlia had drawn the night before. Not the Gate. Not the throne. Just a symbol that pulsed between both.A broken circle. An open mouth. A single eye at its center.It was appearing in strange places.On walls.On skin.On dreams.It was her mark.Vareya had begun her return.The DisappearanceRafael found me before dawn."Two Hollow-born from the city quarter have vanished. And another Crescent noble’s daughter the one who came to ask for protection she’s missing too.""Taken?"He nodded. "No blood. No signs of struggle. Just...gone. And each time her mark appears."I stood, rage and dread coiling inside me."Then she’s not

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 37

  Duskfall woke to silence.Not peace. Not calm. Just a hush that settled over the city like dust before a storm. The Hollow Gate had been sealed, but it hadn’t vanished. And though Nyra now lay in guarded confinement, the ripples of her escape, her connection to the Gate, and the magic that still thrummed in the lower vaults it was all too fresh.We were walking a fragile thread, and I could feel it fraying.I met with the council at dawn.Rafael at my side, his eyes storm dark. Xander grim, arms crossed. Dahlia, silent but watchful, her fingers stained with fresh ink. Half the Crescent lords had not even shown."What now?" Xander asked. "We can’t keep it quiet anymore. The city knows something’s stirring."I studied the map. The Hollow Court, the Bone Heir’s former strongholds, the sealed vault all lit like pinpricks of fire."We tell the truth," I said. "No more silence."The AddressBy nightfall, I stood on the highest platform in the Temple Garden. The entire court below. Crescent

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 36

  The Hollow Gate’s whisper haunted me.Not in the way the Mother had the seductive call, the echo of bone and blood and promise but in a quieter, colder way. It had recognized me. And not just as a vessel. As a key. A trigger. A final move in a game played long before my birth.Back in the palace, the world continued. But I was no longer walking through it as one of them.I was beginning to see everything from a higher vantage.And that frightened me.Because I didn’t know if I wanted what came with that view.Duskfall FracturesWord of the Hollow Gate had not yet spread, but fear was taking root in the cracks of silence. The Crescent wolves those who had once ruled the courts with steel and oaths had begun to whisper of evacuation.Dahlia told me of three minor lords who had already fled south under cover of night. They took their households, their banners, and worst of all their oaths.Rafael stood before the Crescent Court that morning and demanded loyalty. Some gave it.Others simp

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 35

  Nyra's screams echoed long after the Hollow Crown had seared her magic into silence. They followed me down the corridors of Duskfall and into my sleep, where I found her eyes staring back at me in dreams, empty and white. She was alive barely but something inside her had shattered. Whether it was the power she'd claimed or the part of her that believed she could wield it, I didn’t know.The dungeons had never been meant for people like her. For people like me. Hollow-Blooded with power that bent the rules of the realm. She was bound in sigil-etched chains, her magic dampened by moon-forged cuffs. She no longer spoke. She watched. Waited.The court buzzed with questions. Whispers. Warnings. Some wanted her executed. Others feared what her death might awaken. Xander argued for silence. Dahlia for mercy. Rafael for strategy.I sat in my throne not the Lycan seat beside Rafael, but the obsidian chair carved from the old mountain stone, newly raised in the Hollow Garden. My crown rested be