All Chapters of Moonbound Hearts: Chapter 21 - Chapter 26

NyxThe earth felt different here.Beneath the soft loam and mossy roots, something beat—a slow, steady thrum, like a sleeping heart deep underground. I could feel it in my soles, in the bones of my ankles, in the marrow of who I was. As if this place recognized me… and was waiting.Caspian hadn’t followed me into the circle.He stood just beyond the stone perimeter, tense and silent. His eyes never left me, and I felt the weight of his worry like a second skin. But he understood—he had to—that this part of the journey couldn’t be shared. Not yet.Not until I earned it.The Sanctuary’s clearing was silent, hushed in a way that made sound feel like a sin. Even the wind barely dared to breathe here. Thick gray mist clung to the trees like silk, curling around the ancient standing stones in shapes that almost moved. Whispers filled the space between heartbeats. Voices too old to name.I stepped forward.The circle greeted me with a soft pulse of light from the moss-veined monoliths, each

Nyx ---The wind changed before I opened my eyes.It wasn’t the chill that stirred me from sleep, or even the way the leaves rustled like whispered secrets overhead. It was something deeper. Older. A pressure that gathered beneath my skin like a tide pulling back before the wave.The Sanctuary didn’t feel like it had when we first arrived.It had always been quiet—peaceful in that bone-deep, sacred way. But now… it pulsed. Like it had a heartbeat. A slow, thunderous rhythm that hummed through the roots and stone and air itself. I felt it in my ribs. My fingertips. My teeth.Something had entered its circle.Something that didn’t belong.Or maybe something that belonged too much.I sat up slowly, the thick blanket slipping off my shoulders. Caspian wasn’t beside me. I could hear the faint clang of him working with one of his blades nearby, the steady, familiar rhythm of metal against metal. But that comfort—his presence—didn’t reach deep enough to quiet the sensation crawling across m

Caspian---She said the name like it meant something. Like I should know it.And damn it—I did.The sound of it cracked open something I hadn’t touched in years. A name buried in old scrolls, whispered in curses by the elder rogues who’d barely survived the fall of their own bloodlines.Delun.It tasted like steel and fire on my tongue.Nyx sat on the moss-drenched stone where the Sanctuary had lured her into its dream. Her breathing was still ragged. She looked like she’d been somewhere else entirely—somewhere ancient. Her eyes had the wide, shaken look of someone who had seen something, not imagined it.And I believed her.Not just because her magic still hummed in the air like static, curling around my skin like it wanted to mark me.But because I’d seen the signs before.In war camps. In tombs. In bloodied archives scorched by time and fire.Delun wasn’t a name.She was a warning.And now she had found Nyx.“Caspian,” she whispered again, voice barely carrying over the chirp of d