Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 111 - Chapitre 120

The chamber still smelled of Chainsinger magic—iron and salt and something like rotting lilies. My claws had retracted, but the phantom ache in my hands lingered. I flexed them once, twice, just to remind myself they were still mine. The stranger stood in the center of the Spire’s heart, head tilted toward the chains overhead as if listening for something. Seren paced near the tunnel entrance, scanning for any sign of a return. I finally broke the silence. “You said the third blow isn’t a fight. So what is it?” He looked at me then—really looked—and I hated the way it felt like he was reading every secret I’d ever tried to bury. “It’s the Spire itself,” he said. “It will demand an anchor.” Seren stopped pacing. “An anchor?” “A living tether,” the stranger explained. “The Spire is a lock. Every lock needs a key, yes—but also something to keep the key from turning. That something must be bound here. Permanently.” My stomach turned. “You’re saying it wants… a sacrifice.” “Not ju

The valley stretched before us, but it didn’t feel real. The snow looked too white. The sky too still. Even the mountains seemed like they were holding their breath. We’d barely gone a hundred steps before I felt it—the pull again. Not sharp like the threads had been. This was… gentle. Seductive. A slow, warm tide trying to coax me under. I stopped without meaning to. “Elara?” Seren’s voice was a little muffled, like she was speaking through water. And then the world shifted. I was standing in a hall of black stone and silver light. Vast arches stretched above me, etched with constellations I knew but couldn’t name. The air smelled like rain on cold metal. Someone stood at the far end. It was me. Only—older. Her hair was longer, the gold in it more pronounced. Her eyes were pure starlight, no wolf amber at all. She wore a crown of moonsteel and an expression that made my chest hurt: calm, endless, and utterly alone. “You’ll tire of resisting,” she said. Her voice echoed like

The Spire wasn’t a tower. I’d pictured something like a cathedral of stone or an obsidian needle piercing the clouds. But standing here now, I realized the “Spire” was alive. It rose from the valley floor like a tree that had outgrown reality—its trunk made of silver light braided with black shadow, twisting in ways that shouldn’t be possible. Branches arched high into the sky, fractaling into shapes my eyes struggled to hold. And the sound… gods, the sound was worse up close. The ringing in my bones had become a constant thrumming that made my teeth ache. Seren whispered, “That’s not… natural.” “Nothing about the breach is.” We stood on the cliff’s edge, looking down at the valley. The Spire pulsed slowly, like it was breathing. The map in my head had led us here perfectly—every landmark, every turn—but now it was silent. No more golden thread. Just the Spire, waiting. “Feels like it’s watching us,” Seren muttered. “It is,” I said before I could stop myself. Her gaze snappe

The Spire was… moving. Not swaying in the wind. Not trembling from the quake of some distant battle. It was breathing. The silver veins threading its black bark pulsed faster now, a rhythm too precise to be natural. The air around it tasted sharper, metallic, and the hairs along my arms lifted as though I was standing in the eye of a storm that hadn’t yet decided which way to spin. Seren stared up at it, her mouth slightly open. “It wasn’t doing that before you went in.” “Yeah,” I said, brushing dirt off my knees. “I think I annoyed it.” “Annoyed it?” She swung toward me. “Elara, the Spire is connected to everything. You can’t just… break its tests and expect it to shrug and move on.” “It gave me an impossible choice,” I said, still catching my breath. “I made it possible. That’s not breaking. That’s… problem-solving.” A deep, resonant sound rolled through the valley—half thunder, half growl. The ground under us shifted, a low rumble building. “That,” Seren said flatly, “is th

Cold wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t temperature at all—it was absence. The kind of nothing that made your mind scramble for reference, that hollow space between a lightning flash and the thunder that follows. The vortex didn’t drag me; it folded me. The moment I blinked, the ring of silver-and-black liquid was gone, and I was standing on something solid—smooth as glass but black as the void between stars. Overhead, no sky, no ceiling. Just infinite white threads crisscrossing like the weave of a massive tapestry. Each one pulsed faintly, like veins carrying light instead of blood. The air here tasted like my magic—sharp, metallic, and electric. A voice broke the silence. “You finally made it.” I turned, pulse spiking. It wasn’t my double this time. It was Seris. Not the ragged, fading version I’d last seen. She stood tall, whole, her hair the same rippling starlight I remembered, her crown a perfect crescent of silver. But her eyes… they were ancient now, deeper than before