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19: The Queen’s Gambit
Last Updated:
2025-06-24 10:06:19
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CROWNED BY BLOOD Chapter 56: The Forsaken Gate
The stone door loomed before me, breathing frost into the air like a dying god. Taller than any cathedral arch, broader than the Hall of Echoes, it pulsed faintly with a cold light buried deep within its black obsidian frame. The surface was carved with intricate reliefs that seemed to shift in my peripheral vision, faces that weren't quite faces, hands that grasped at nothing, mouths open in eternal screams that made no sound.The air around the door shimmered with unnatural cold. My breath came in white puffs that lingered too long in the still air.Kai's voice echoed in my head, trembling with pain and desperate love: Don't open it, Luna. Not this. Please, not this.I flinched back. Was it a hallucination again? Another shadow cast by my broken mind, another trick of grief and exhaustion? Or was he truly here, tethered to this curse like the thousand other souls I had seen trapped in my vision? I didn't know anymore. The line between memory and madness had blurred beyond recognitio
CROWNED BY BLOOD Chapter 55: The Hollow Thread
The archives beneath Hollowshade were colder than I remembered. Each step down the spiraling stone staircase drained warmth from my bones, dust clinging to the air like ash. I moved past broken stone reliefs, a warrior with his sword raised, a mother cradling a child whose features had been erased by time. The sight made my heart clench. My own children Alexander, Seraphina, Kai Jr. were they destined for such obscurity?The hollowed-out tomes lined the walls like ribs of some great beast, their knowledge consumed by flame or rot. Only their bindings remained, leather covers faded to the color of old bone. Deeper into the restricted wing I went, where shadows bled from the walls like wounds. The darkness had weight, pressing against my skin like oil. My fingertips brushed old glyphs etched by hands long buried, feeling the faint vibration of magic still clinging to the stone.Celestina's voice echoed in my mind: "Some knowledge buries more than it reveals." But I had no choice. Peace
CROWNED BY BLOOD Chapter 54: The Cracks Within
The night has teeth.It doesn’t fall gently anymore; it gnashes at the windows, hissing through the cracks of Hollowshade like it’s hunting something. Or someone.I haven’t slept. Not really. I rest, I close my eyes, but my body never lets go of the tension in my spine. My mind floats half-awake, half-braced. Waiting.Something is terribly wrong with my children. I know it. I feel it in my blood, the same way a mother can feel her child’s pain before the scream. But this is deeper than pain. This is pulling. Something is pulling at them, from the inside out.And it’s starting to pull at me, too.Celestine finds me before dawn. She doesn’t knock. She never does when it’s serious.She glides into my observatory like a stormcloud with silver hair, her robes a shade too dark for morning. There’s no tea. No gentle “my darling.” No comforting stories of the old days.Just her pale hand holding a single thread of silver dust.“Something old is leaking through,” she says, without preamble. “S
CROWNED BY BLOOD Chapter 53: Wounds Without Cause
I should have felt relief returning to Hollowshade.The ancient stones still remembered me, whispered my name through the marble floors and shadowed corridors. The sentries bowed, the mages stood aside, and the High Court lowered their heads in reverence. But something in the air was wrong. Too quiet. Too cold. As though the palace had braced itself for grief it didn’t know how to name.My children were no better.Alexander collapsed during morning sparring, mid-lunge. One moment he was channeling his inner flame with precision, the next he dropped to his knees, gasping, eyes wide as if he were drowning in air. And then he began to speak.Not speak. Chant.A language I didn’t recognize clawed its way out of his mouth. It wasn't an ancient werewolf tongue, nor one of the high dialects from the celestial archives. The sound was guttural and hollow, like wind dragging over bones.I knelt beside him, cradling his head as he trembled. His body was burning, his veins glowing faintly gold bu
CROWNED BY BLOOD Chapter 52: The Mother’s Instinct
Meditation in the cosmic realm was supposed to be calming pure, suspended silence but lately, all I felt was a hum beneath the silence. A trembling. A tether. I now move with a heavy heart, pain and confusion because how does it feel to watch your children suddenly change negatively?I sat cross-legged within the floating lotus chamber, my palms open, my mind reaching through the aether to touch the lifelines of my children. Every mother has a bond with her child. Mine had been carved through fire and blood, braided with magic. But nowSomething pulsed wrong in the weave.Not broken.Not severed.But hollowed.Alexander’s thread was frayed at the edges. Seraphina flickered like a candle. Kai Jr.’s had gone almost cold, as if submerged in a pool of silence so vast, it swallowed every echo.I opened my eyes, heart hammering against my ribs. The void wasn’t cosmic. It was personal. Someone or something was leeching my children’s light, here, even in the sacred halls of the cosmic realm.
CROWNED BY BLOOD Chapter 51: Flicker in the Flame
The cosmic winds no longer hummed in harmony.From the astral sanctum, I watched the stars pulse with uneasy rhythm. In the beginning, this place, our refuge between realms, had been a haven of clarity and peace. But now, something was... off. Not broken. Just bent. Like a melody almost perfect, except for one note forever out of tune.Kai Jr. had stopped speaking entirely.He would sit alone in the meditation chamber for hours, eyes vacant and fixed on a particular corner that pulsed faintly with shadow. When I entered the room, the shadows dispersed, but never completely. He never said what he saw. When I asked, he only blinked, as though waking from a trance he didn't understand.Alexander had become combative. Not physically violent yet but his energy flared hotter with each day. Every minor disagreement with Seraphina, every shift in celestial tide, sent his power sparking off him like wildfire. Once, when one of the celestial scholars tried to adjust a protective glyph on his wr
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