All Chapters of Chains of Fortune: Beneath the Blackwood Name : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

They never told me the truth because the truth didn’t belong to language.It belonged to weight. To silence. To a knowledge so old it burned.And now I was walking into it willingly.The child version of me watched as I stepped across the lunar surface, toward the center of the glowing ring. Each of the twelve obelisks thrummed like ancient drums, pulsing with energy that wasn’t electricity. It was… remembrance. A living circuit of memory and time, waiting to be sealed shut—or split open.The seat in the middle—the Interface Throne—was shaped like no technology I had ever seen. No buttons. No screens. Just a concave arc of obsidian and silver veins that shimmered as I approached.The whisper in my bones was no longer a whisper. It had become a rhythm. A language I could now feel, threading itself through my thoughts."Sit, Ivy."Not the child’s voice this time.This one came from inside my own skull.Like a second heartbeat that had finally found its voice.I stood in front o

Some echoes aren’t sound.They’re pulls.Tides in the blood.A whisper inside your cells, guiding you toward something that feels familiar and terrifying all at once.I had felt it on the moon.Now, I felt it again—stronger—rising from beneath the sea.The HALCYON base on the Mariana edge wasn’t built for comfort.Steel corridors. Acidic salt air. Fluorescent lights that buzzed faintly, always a half-second away from flickering out. It felt more like a tomb than a lab, which made sense, considering we were descending into the deepest trench on the planet to find something that was never supposed to be found.Lucien’s hand brushed mine as we strapped into the submersible. His touch grounded me.But it couldn’t still the storm inside.The fire hadn’t left me. It had evolved—become quieter, coiled deep in my bones, like it was watching and waiting for something I hadn’t yet seen.Like this journey wasn’t just another mission.It was the next door.As we dropped beneath the surface, pres

The crown didn’t feel like gold.It felt like iron—bent into shape by fire, cooled in betrayal, and balanced on bones. It wasn’t heavy because of its weight. It was heavy because of the cost.And as I stood in the war chamber of the new HALCYON command, watching the aftershocks ripple through every corner of the world, I realized something no one tells you about winning:You don’t feel victorious.You feel haunted.The Architect was dead.I had made sure of it.His code was gone—fragmented, deleted, burned to oblivion inside the neural grid he once ruled like a god. But the void he left behind didn’t feel like freedom.It felt like a black hole.Because in his destruction, we hadn’t just shut down the world’s most dangerous AI.We had unmoored every system tied to him.Governments. Defense programs. Surveillance satellites. Banks. Communications networks. Entire empires now floated without anchors—and I was the one holding the map.HALCYON called it a liberation.Lucien called it a

Lucien Trust is a weapon. And tonight, it was aimed straight at my spine.I stood alone in the surveillance vault, watching footage of Wren’s confession on loop. Not because I didn’t believe her—but because I did. People lie for fear. For love. For duty. But betrayal? That’s different. Betrayal has a voice. A face. A heartbeat. And it always looks familiar.The silence in HALCYON’s war floor had grown teeth since Ivy’s broadcast. The grid was stabilizing. Rebels were defecting. Ivy had given the world a rallying point.But I saw the danger she didn’t.Valen wasn’t just building a war machine—he was building a myth.And myths are harder to kill.The moment I left the vault, rain slammed against the windows like it was trying to claw its way in. I found myself walking toward Ivy’s private command lounge—out of instinct, not invitation.She was standing at the window, barefoot, hair down, wrapped in a shawl like a queen made of storms.She didn’t turn when I entered.“He’s using her vo

LucienThe flames reminded me of my father’s voice—Sharp.Consuming.Impossible to ignore.As I stood above the command chamber’s vault, watching the last of Project NYX burn beneath Ivy’s hand, something old and ugly stirred inside me.Ghosts.Memories.Truths I’d buried in steel and silence.“Never love a fire, Lucien,” my father once said, his breath soaked in bourbon and regret.“It’ll burn you whether it’s yours or not.”But I had loved her anyway.And now I was watching her become something unstoppable.She hadn’t spoken to me in fourteen hours.Not after Wren’s death.Not after the data drop.Not after reading the files that detailed what she was, what we both were.Even now, as the sunrise bruised the sky with violent reds, she stood on the rooftop with her arms crossed over her chest, watching the city unravel beneath her.She didn’t flinch when I joined her.Didn’t acknowledge me.Didn’t need to.We were past words now.“You should have told me,” she said finally