Semua Bab Bloodied Ashes: Bab 11 - Bab 20

Lira (POV)I wait for the footsteps to fade further down the hallway. It’s not just one pair—no, it’s three. Each has its own rhythm and pace. I’ve spent enough nights mapping out their paths like constellations. The heavy one drags a limp—his left leg, which I’m assuming is a torn tendon, and he’s too proud to limp outright. The second jingles faintly—keys on his belt that are poorly secured. The third guard walks too softly as if he enjoys sneaking up on others. Tonight, like most nights, they follow their pattern. The one with the limp continuously checks the eastern hall first. I used to count time in screams. Now I count footsteps. Their rhythm is my calendar, their limp and jingle my ticking clock. I know when they piss. When they pause to fondle the blade, they’ll use it next. And I know that tonight… something’s different. That's how I know it’s time.I press two fingers to my ribs, the place where their sacred knife danced over my skin days ago. I trace the edge of the bran

Lira (POV)That girl is long dead; I buried her somewhere between his first lie and my mother’s final scream. What’s left now is teeth. Bone. Smoke. And silver hunger.The second bolt gives and drops to the stone with a metallic clatter that echoes too long like a promise mid-vow. It disrupts the silence with a loud crashing warning, and I freeze, breath hitched. Not because I’m scared, but because I know the sound traveled. The stone carries secrets, but it also carries noise better.I press my bloody fingers to the edge of the vent, the share slipping in my grip as I twist. It’s slow, vicious work, and each rotation digs the shard deeper into my skin. Each flick of my wrist drips more with blood that won’t clot fast enough.My hands shake, and I can tell I probably won’t survive another bleeding. My blood is thick now- too slow, too dark. It slides down my wrist in a sluggish arc, pooling at my elbow before dripping onto the stone in steady taps. Each drop sizzles faintly against th

Lira (POV)Now that I think about it, she never feared blood. She fucking worshiped it.She once cracked open a fox skull just to study the way its blood clung to the brain. Said there were patterns there. Lessons. The way it moved when the heart still pulsed—tiny crimson threads that told stories no mouth ever could.That’s how she taught me to read the world. Through the wounds it tried to hide.“Some wounds lie,” she whispered once, pressing a poultice to my side after I’d clawed through a training run, skin raw and leaking. “But your blood doesn’t. So listen.”I thought she meant it metaphorically. I was young. Arrogant. Stupid enough to think blood was just blood.And now… now I see it.The blood on the floor beneath me has pooled in strange ways—not just in smears and splatters. No, it’s curved. Spread. Stretched itself thin like muscle torn from bone.Formed jagged spirals and hooks, some of them mimicking the shapes carved into my ribs.I blink, and they shift.Not by wind. No

Lira (POV)The blood on the stones shivers, not just a ripple but like a slithering recoil, like skin trying to peel itself off dying muscle.The floor feels wrong under my knees, almost alive, hungry, and breathing. I crouch low, tucking my broken body around the agony still thumping through my ribs as my lungs scrape at the air, every breath a jagged inhale through rusted metal.My knees tear open against the grit of the stone. Fresh blood streaks downward in slow rivers, threading itself into the old runes like veins unwilling to die.The vent above gapes like a wound ripped too wide, and the ruined hinge hangs by a single twisted shard of metal. The shard, the same blood-slick blade I pried free from my own hand, stays tucked at my ribs, warm and humming against my cracked skin. I can feel it pulse in time with my heart, or maybe it’s the other way around.The walls don’t just crack; they bleed. Tiny trickles of black-red sludge seep from the mortar between stones, trailing like t

Lira (POV)The shard hums behind me, frantic in the prisoner’s fist; it’s wild and sharp, like a second heartbeat trying to claw through the stone.Chains rattle. The walls breathe.And Kael moves. He doesn’t move fast or panicked; instead, he moves slowly and deliberately—the kind of movement that belongs to things that know they’re the end of whatever story they make.His hand brushes the hilt slung low at his hip, black steel worn down to a wicked grip, and for a breath, just a short moment, I swear the blade breathes with him.I shove myself upright, every nerve lighting up in torn, furious protest. My ribs grind, and blood soaks the ruins of my thighs. There’s too much of me outside my skin. Every breath feels like borrowing something I didn’t earn back. My vision pulses at the edges, swimming between black and gold.But I don’t care. If I die here, I’ll die standing. If someone wants my bones, they’ll have to rip them from my dead body.Beneath me, the runes stitched into the g