All Chapters of Hunter/Hunted: Chapter 61 - Chapter 68

*THE OLD MAN*The mountain’s call was no longer a whisper or a song. It was the blade driven deep into him—deliberate, slow, unrelenting. It pressed into his bones like molten iron, and each word echoed inside his skull like a knife—sharp, precise, and all-consuming. The fan of the mountain’s voice had been a gentle tide for years; now, it was a storm crashing into his backbone.He stood in his chamber, no longer the architect of control but something fractured and trembling beneath its voice. The room was thick with silence—an unnatural hush, as if the very air had fallen away and left his body pressed against a shell of stone. The instruments, once thunderous with the echoes of his mastery, had fallen silent. The hum beneath the rock shifted into a slow, aching drone, as if the entire mountain was breathing unconsciously—an ancient, patient beast gathering its strength to devour.His eyes, which once cut wit

*XAVIA*The days had fallen into a strange, suspended rhythm—an unspoken time measured in the slow unfolding of the boy’s strange behavior. Outside, the wind twisted through the battered landscape, howling like a distant, restless beast. Inside, the house was an uneasy vessel of calm—an e

*CHARLES*He stared at the letter, reading the words again and again, feeling the tremor in his hand. The letter told of her days observing Blaire’s son—how he moved, how he responded—and her conviction that the boy, Jason, was responding not just to shadows or long-forgotten echoes but to Blaire’s spirit, calling from the long shadows of the mountain. Her words burned in his mind: “The boy may be the key.”He ran trembling fingers through his long, dark hair and looked at the storm outside, then back at the letter. The storm’s fury was a reflection of his own chaos—hope and despair, conviction and dread, warring inside him. The long silence Blaire’s spirit had left behind was no longer silent. It echoed in the bloodline, in the vessel that responded with wild joy and unsteady purpose.Could he trust it? Did he dare? The stakes were everything—his grandson, their future, and Bl

Two weeks had passed since the dawn when the shadows finally broke into light. The storm had retreated beyond the mountains, leaving the land battered but breathing again. The house—battered, fractured by long shadows—had become a place of fragile recovery. And Blaire… Blaire had returned.She was no longer a whisper in the shadows. No longer a ghost lingering at the long dark’s edge. She was whole—solid, steady, as if the long silence had been a long, deep breath that finally escaped into the dawn. Her form radiated calm amid the battered walls. Her green eyes, deep and luminous, held a quiet strength that was no longer longing but rooted in something divine.Jason had soared into thriving—a creature of pure, unfiltered joy. The boy—her vessel—had responded to the long silence by responding to love. His tiny limbs moved with agility now, learning to walk, to explore a world no longer shadowed by long-dead echoes. His fa