Lahat ng Kabanata ng CROWNED BY BLOOD: Kabanata 51 - Kabanata 60

I moved through the sanctum with a heavy heart, weighed down by pain and confusion that no cosmic power could alleviate. How does it feel to watch your children, your precious, miraculous children who once embodied pure light and infinite potential suddenly change in ways that are fundamentally wrong? How does a mother maintain hope when every instinct she possesses screams that something is destroying her children from the inside out? I sat cross-legged within the floating lotus chamber, a space designed specifically for deep meditation and spiritual connection, my palms open and receptive, my consciousness reaching through the shimmering aether to touch the lifelines that connected me to my children. Every mother has an invisible bond with her child, something that transcends physical distance and allows her to sense their wellbeing. Mine had been carved through literal fire and soaked in blood, braided together with the most powerful magic existence had ever witnessed. These weren'

I haven't truly slept in days, maybe weeks. Time has become fluid and unreliable.Sometimes I close my eyes and try to let my consciousness drift. But my body never fully lets go of the terrible tension that's taken up permanent residence in my spine, keeping every muscle coiled and ready. My mind floats in that terrible space between states, half-awake and hypervigilant, half-braced for the next horror. Something is terribly, fundamentally wrong. I know this with absolute certainty. I feel it in my blood with the same primal awareness that lets a mother sense her child's pain before the scream leaves their throat. But this goes so much deeper than ordinary pain or illness. This is pulling something ancient and malevolent, systematically pulling at them, tearing them apart from the inside out, unraveling the very threads that make them who they are. And recently, with growing horror, I've realized it's starting to pull at me too. I can feel invisible hooks embedded in my essence, tuggin

I didn't remember climbing down the final steps of Hollowshade's undercrypt. The descent had become a blur of shadow and compulsion, each step drawing me deeper into the earth's frozen heart. I only remembered the hunger that pulled me here, the aching, maddening need to understand why my children were unraveling, why their essence was being stripped away thread by thread. I had followed the scent of my grief like a hound in the dark, and it had led me to this gate, this threshold between worlds that should never have been breached. The air around the door shimmered with unnatural cold. My breath came in white puffs that lingered too long in the still air, forming patterns that resembled words in languages I didn't recognize. The chamber itself seemed to pulse with the rhythm of a heart that beat too slowly, as if time moved differently in this place, as if the very stones were infected with the lethargy of eternity. My fingertips brushed the surface. Ice licked m

I descended the crumbling spiral steps beneath Hollowshade as if they had always belonged to me. Each step felt familiar now. My bare feet barely made a sound against the ancient stone, cold and slick with moisture that tasted of despair when it touched my skin. I left my crown behind, discarded on the altar, I no longer wore royal colors. Only a shift of mourning silk, black as coal, soaked with my own tears and the weight of sleepless nights spent watching my babies fade. The fabric clung to my skin like a second shadow, heavy with the salt of my grief. I could feel every thread against my flesh, every fiber that had absorbed the sound of my weeping, the tremor of my hands as I had held vigil over beds that grew colder each night. I had nothing left to trade but myself. The gate loomed in front of me. Black obsidian, slick with frost that never melted, veined with silver that pulsed like it had a heartbeat like it was alive, hungry, waiting. My grief had opened it once before, da

The dreams began Each time, I was running. Not away, but toward something. Through darkened forests where ancient oaks twisted into claws against the starless sky. Over soil soaked in blood that squelched beneath my paws, releasing the metallic perfume of death with every step. I ran on four legs, my silver coat glistening crimson in the moonlight, each strand catching the pale light like spun mercury dipped in wine. Behind me, a chorus of howls rose and fell like a symphony of the damned voices I recognized but couldn't name, calling me home to a place I had never been. Ahead, always ahead, a reflection I feared to reach Myself. But twisted. Unbound from every chain of morality and love that once defined me.I awoke with my breath ragged, the scent of copper thick on my tongue, and the taste of raw meat lingering in my mouth though I haven't eaten since yesterday's meager breakfast.Celeste came to me. Her footsteps echoed differently in the throne room now hesitant, measured, like