All Chapters of Bloodied Ashes: Chapter 91 - Chapter 98

Lira (POV)I stood slowly, more aware of the weight behind my hips, the tightness along one side where everything inside me had started to shift. I didn’t rush. I didn’t need to.Kael hadn’t moved. His gaze followed as I crossed the edge of the bank and rejoined the soft track of moss that wound through the ferns ahead.My feet found the path on instinct.It led deeper, quieter, into a hollow of white-dusted leaves that waited without judgment.We didn’t speak again as we moved through the undergrowth. The fog stayed low, curling around our ankles, tugging at roots that looked like ribs under skin. The air smelled like fern rot and wet bark. Familiar. But older than I remembered.A clearing opened up to our right. Small. Ringed in stones that looked too evenly spaced to be natural.Kael didn’t stop, but I did.He glanced back, one step ahead, then waited without question.I crouched low, pressing my palm into the soil. It was damp and soft, threaded with gray moss and bits of black ba

Kael (POV)She walked past me, quiet and measured, her hand hovering low over her stomach like it had started meaning something without her permission. She didn’t look at me when she passed, and I didn’t follow her with my eyes. I followed her presence instead. That quiet weight she carried now, steadier than when we’d escaped the Pit. No spiral glint. No unnatural heat. Just the shift of something real inside her. And it wasn't mine. Not yet. But I still felt it.I stayed seated on the root, elbows on my knees, watching the coals blink against the moss like slow breath. The ruin we’d taken shelter in was half-swallowed by the earth; moss-laced stones crumbling into themselves, ceiling low enough that even I ducked to enter. It wasn’t a place meant to hold fire, but the warmth had stayed longer than I expected. Long enough to make the silence feel like comfort, not absence.Across the fire, she knelt to sort through her pack. Her movements were slow, but not weary. Careful. She wasn’t

Lira (POV)The trees changed when we crossed deeper.Their trunks thickened, bark dark and furrowed, rising higher than the reach of light. Branches leaned inward until the sky narrowed to a gray slit. Moss climbed in sheets, swallowing stone and root alike. The air felt damp and close, not heavy with threat, but with something that remembered before we did.Each step sank quieter into the earth. Roots coiled across the path like ribs. The silence was not empty; it was listening.Kael walked half a pace behind me. His presence filled the space the way it always did; steady, bone-sure, unbending. But here even that seemed small. The Wilds pressed around us, old and unhurried, as if they had been waiting for centuries for someone to walk through again.A stone jutted from the slope ahead, taller than my hip, its surface swallowed in lichen. At first, it looked like any boulder broken loose from the ridge. Then I saw the marks. Faint, almost worn smooth, but carved too cleanly to be mist

Kael (POV)The fire had sunk to its smallest shape, nothing left but a faint glow beneath ash. I leaned forward, nudging one of the coals back into place with a stick, more for something to do with my hands than for warmth.Across from me, Lira had slipped into sleep again. Her face was still drawn tight, a shadow of the snarl she’d carried out of the dream. Even in rest, she looked ready to fight. Her hand stayed curled over her stomach, as if she were guarding more than herself. For a moment, it looked the same as another night long ago, another body I hadn’t been able to keep safe.My gaze dropped to my wrist. The scar there caught in the flicker, pale and thin but unrelenting. Old as it was, it hadn’t faded. Some marks didn’t.My fingers dragged over it, rough against skin that had never softened again. It didn’t feel like me anymore. It felt like her, still marked there, refusing to fade.The fire cracked once, sharp enough to echo. For a moment, I thought I heard her laugh again