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A Crack in the Gate

ผู้เขียน: Thomas Morau
last update วันที่เผยแพร่: 2026-02-12 22:48:32

Chapter 36: A Crack in the Gate

The self-defense gym smelled of sweat, rubber mats, and the faint metallic tang of old blood that never quite washed out of the walls.

General Julian Bathory stood at the center of the open floor like a statue carved from war. Tall, broad-shouldered, silver hair cropped military-short, scars crisscrossing his face and forearms like a map of battles most students only read about. He’d fought beside Celeste Valentina Morau in the final Swarm rift—close enough to be
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  • BludHeaven Academy    Marked

    Chapter 140: MarkedLiora was quiet for a long time.Not uneasy quiet.Thoughtful quiet.She stayed tucked close to Nico on the floor, shoulder against his, her head resting near his collarbone in a way that made the whole room feel calmer than it had any right to. Elara sat on his other side, steady and warm, the three of them arranged so naturally now that Ravenna had stopped making comments about it and Seraphina had stopped pretending she wasn’t paying attention.At last, Liora lifted her head and looked at Nico with a softness that made him still.“This is going to sound ridiculous,” she said.Ravenna snorted from the armchair. “That’s never stopped anyone here.”Liora ignored her, eyes still on Nico. “Despite how complicated this is, despite the timing, despite everything else... it feels like a dream come true.”Nico blinked once. “What?”She smiled faintly, a little embarrassed now that she’d said it aloud. “To be fated to you. Through the bond. I know it’s messy, and inconven

  • BludHeaven Academy    Close Proximity

    Chapter 139: Close ProximityThe first rule of a new bond was simple.No one pretended it was simple.Liora found that out within the hour.She had barely made it to the doorway before the pull between them tightened, subtle but unmistakable, the kind of force that made distance feel suddenly rude. She stopped, one hand braced against the frame, and looked back at Nico with a mixture of disbelief and irritation that would have been funny under different circumstances.“Oh, that is inconvenient,” she said.Ravenna, still in the common room, snorted into her coffee. “That’s one word for it.”Elara gave her a look. “Be nice.”“I am being nice.”“You’re enjoying this.”“I’m absolutely enjoying this.”Seraphina didn’t look up from her tablet. “Mathematically, the situation is escalating.”Nico closed his eyes for half a second. “Can we not make this sound worse than it already is?”Liora’s mouth twitched. “That depends. Am I allowed to leave the room or is this going to follow me like a cu

  • BludHeaven Academy    The Second Pull

    Chapter 138: The Second PullIt happened fast enough that no one in the room had time to stop it.One moment, Nico was standing near the common room table with the others, half-listening to Seraphina talk through the next round of event pressure and calendar traps. The next, Liora had gone utterly still.Not frozen.Called.Her head lifted sharply, eyes locking on Nico with a focus so sudden it made the air in the room change.Elara noticed first.Her expression shifted from curiosity to alarm in the space of a breath. “Liora?”But Liora didn’t answer.She was already moving.***Nico barely had time to turn before she reached him, grabbed the front of his shirt, and kissed him with a force that stole the rest of the room away.It wasn’t tentative.It wasn’t experimental.It was fierce, certain, and full of the kind of instinct that bypassed thought completely.The room went silent.Ravenna straightened so fast her chair scraped the floor. Seraphina’s tablet lowered by an inch. Elara’

  • BludHeaven Academy    The Shape of the Trap

    Chapter 105: The Shape of the TrapThe campus looked harmless in the morning.That was the lie of it.Sunlight spilled across the quad, students drifted between classes, and the fountains kept turning like nothing in the world had changed. But Nico had stopped believing in harmless places. Not after the ledger. Not after Jason. Not after learning how easily powerful people could make disaster look tidy.He stood beside Elara near the dorm steps, hands in his pockets, staring out at the movement below them.“You’re doing it again,” she said.He glanced at her. “Doing what?”“Looking like you expect the sky to drop.”He let out a short breath. “I’m trying to figure out which part of this is real.”Her gaze softened, but only a little. “That’s getting easier.”“Because we know more?”“Because we know who lied.”That landed.Nico looked away first. “I hate that Jason was able to make all of it look clean.”“So do I.”They stood there in the morning heat, the bond between them warm and st

  • BludHeaven Academy    What Remained

    Chapter 136: What RemainedAfter Jason, everything felt quieter in the worst way.Not peaceful.Not even close.Just stripped.The kind of quiet that came after you realized the person you thought was helping had been rearranging the room the entire time. Nico sat with that truth long enough for it to turn from shock into something harder. Something useful. Around him, the common room held the residue of everyone else arriving at the same conclusion by different routes.Seraphina’s expression was the calmest, which usually meant she was already three steps ahead.“He was never leaking,” she said, eyes on the board. “He was editing.”Ravenna gave a humorless laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”“It’s the accurate one,” Seraphina replied.Liora sat on the edge of the sofa with her sketchbook open but untouched. “He made sure the investigation would hit the lower ranks and stop there.”Elara folded her arms and nodded once. “And he made sure Darius and Alice had time to keep breathing.”Ni

  • BludHeaven Academy    Smoke and Mirrors

    Chapter 135: Smoke and MirrorsThe first thing Nico noticed was how clean the aftermath looked.Too clean.The investigation had produced arrests, statements, and enough public noise to make it seem like the matter had been handled. Lower-level men were exposed. A few coordinators took the fall. One fixer in Los Angeles lost his freedom. The sort of people who moved money through shell routes and event logistics got dragged into daylight and asked questions they couldn’t answer without putting themselves in worse trouble.On paper, it looked like progress.In reality, it looked like a curtain had been drawn over the stage while the people who mattered most slipped out through the back.Nico stood in the common room with Seraphina, Ravenna, Liora, and Elara, staring at the board full of names and red thread connections.Seraphina’s expression was flat with disgust. “The top of the chain is missing.”Ravenna crossed her arms. “Missing how?”“Cleanly,” Seraphina said. “Too cleanly. Someo

  • BludHeaven Academy    Shadows on Skin

    Chapter 13: Shadows on SkinThe dorm bathroom light flickered once when Nico flipped the switch, then steadied into a harsh white glow. He locked the door—habit, not paranoia—and stripped out of the uniform. The blazer hit the hook, the tie landed in a loose coil on the counter, trousers pooled at

  • BludHeaven Academy    Lunch in the Lion’s Den

    Chapter 10: Lunch in the Lion’s DenThe lunch bell rang like a dinner gong in a castle—deep, resonant, echoing off the vaulted ceilings of the main dining hall. West Hall transformed from lecture space to feast hall in minutes. Long oak tables groaned under silver chafing dishes, crystal pitchers,

  • BludHeaven Academy    Feathers and Fate

    Chapter 9: Feathers and FateNico stared down at the embroidered crest on his blazer pocket as the bell rang—sharp, metallic, cutting through Professor Thorne’s closing remarks like a guillotine.The bat wasn’t the usual leathery thing most vampire iconography used. Its wings were feathered. Black

  • BludHeaven Academy    The Weight of Questions

    Chapter 8: The Weight of QuestionsEven though vampires were supposed to be ancient—centuries-old predators who’d watched empires rise and fall—the four queens of BludHeaven were anomalies. Each one frozen at nineteen, their bodies locked in the bloom of late adolescence while their minds carried t

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