Semua Bab Luna’s Rebellion : Bab 141 - Bab 150

The eastern gate was still smoking when the arguments began. Sealkeeper Ryn slammed his staff against the stone floor of the war hall. “You can’t keep her here. She’s the breach’s tether now. The longer she stays, the more risk we invite.” He wasn’t looking at Kael. He wasn’t looking at the high council seated behind the long obsidian table. He was looking at me. The room still smelled faintly of blood and burned magic, and my hands were still raw from channeling the energy that destroyed the breach-core. I didn’t have the patience for his careful venom. “Say what you mean, Ryn,” I said, voice low. “You want me gone.” He didn’t even blink. “Not gone. Contained. Your magic is compromised, and your presence here endangers Starfall Keep and every soul in it.” Kael’s voice cut through before I could speak again. “She just saved every soul in it.” “By shattering a core that was never meant to be touched by mortal hands,” Ryn countered. “Tell me, Commander—how long before she becomes

The council chamber smelled of iron and old stone, the kind of scent that settles deep into your bones. I stayed standing even after the guards stepped back, Kael a solid wall at my side. My pulse had slowed into something deliberate, steady—but that wasn’t calm. That was control, the kind that could crack in an instant. Councilor Sera’s eyes swept the table before she spoke. “The decision before us is not one of politics. It is survival.” Ryn leaned forward. “Survival does not mean gambling the keep on a vessel of the breach.” “Survival,” Sera countered, “means using every weapon at our disposal. Even dangerous ones.” Her words made my stomach twist. Not because she was wrong, but because she was right in a way I didn’t want her to be. I could feel Nytherion listening. Not watching—listening. His attention was a pressure, like a hand against the back of my neck. Ryn kept talking, his voice a blade meant to cut away any doubt. “She admits herself—if Nytherion takes control, the

I didn’t sleep. Not because I didn’t want to—because I couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the breach. The shimmer of silver and black swallowing the world. And behind it, a whisper like a blade being drawn, promising, You will open the way. When dawn bled across the keep’s stones, I was already dressed, boots laced, hair tied back in a knot tight enough to hurt. Pain made me feel real. Human. The corridors hummed with activity as I made my way to the war hall. Soldiers clanked past in worn armor, faces grim. No laughter. No light. Just the weight of what was coming. Inside the war hall, maps littered the table, glowing runes marking active breach sites. Too many. The shimmer I’d seen to the north wasn’t alone—five more had opened overnight. Kael was there already, arms braced on the table. When he looked up, something passed through his face—relief, anger, something in between—but it was gone before I could name it. “Morning,” I said, voice flat. “Is it?” he muttered,

The breach wasn’t a wound. It was a mouth. And it was hungry. By the time Kael and I reached the outer wall, the world had already begun to unravel. Soldiers lined the ramparts with drawn blades and drawn faces, staring out at the horizon where the fabric of reality pulsed and tore like wet silk. It didn’t glow—not like the stories said it would. There was no holy light, no divine warning. Just a rip of blackness stretching across the snow like spilled ink, veins of silver spiderwebbing from its core. The edges bled shadow into the air, curling like smoke, and the ground around it buckled as if the earth itself was trying to recoil. And gods help me… it whispered. Not in words I could name, but in a rhythm older than time, a language that beat against my bones like a second pulse. Kael’s hand found my back as we stepped onto the frost-bitten parapet. His touch was steady. I wasn’t. “Report,” he barked at the nearest officer. The soldier—barely more than a boy, with i

The first scream wasn’t human. It ripped through the cavern like a jagged blade, making the stone walls tremble, the iron shackles around my wrists searing against my skin with a heat that was anything but natural. The air grew heavy, tasting of iron and ash, like the void itself had crawled into the mountain to breathe down my neck. Kael snarled—a low, primal sound that vibrated through the ground beneath me. When I looked at him, there was no trace of the man who used to smile like the sun. This was Kael unchained, every shred of his control burned away. His claws tore furrows into the earth as his body swelled with shadow and fury, molten gold and ink-black veins rippling across his skin. His eyes… gods, his eyes weren’t even eyes anymore. They were two suns gone supernova, blazing with a rage that had no mercy. And all of it—for me. “Stay—back,” I choked, the words tasting like blood. I didn’t even know who I was warning. Kael, who looked seconds away from tearing through eve