All Chapters of BOUGHT BY CRUELEST ALPHA: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Not sulfur or ozone like the rifts. This is sharper. Metallic. Like licking a battery. The air around it shimmers , not with heat, but with something worse—a wrongness that makes my teeth ache and my null-energy itch under my skin. The Child sees it too. Their fingers twitch toward mine, then stop. They’ve been doing that lately—reaching, then remembering. Like they’re afraid their touch might burn me now. "It’s singing," they murmur. I don’t hear anything. Just the too-loud thump of my own heart. But the Child tilts their head like they’re listening to a melody only they can hear. Their eyes reflect the Fracture’s impossible geometry—a jagged shard of crystallized reality hovering a foot above the ground, pulsing with sickly light. Inside, shadows move. Not people. Not even ghosts. Echoes. I step closer. My boots crunch on something. Glass? No. Frozen grass. The blades are suspended mid-sway, crystallized at perfect 90-degree angles. The effect spreads in a perfect circle

I notice it three days after the garden breathes again—their eyes stay open too long, their pupils swallowing hazel in slow, inexorable waves. When they move, their body flickers at the edges, like a candle fighting a draft. "You're fading," I say. My voice cracks. The words taste like accusation. They tilt their head—a movement too precise, too calculated. "Balancing," they correct. Their voice echoes slightly, as if spoken from the bottom of a well. "The newborn reality requires counterweight." I reach for them instinctively. My petrified fingers graze their wrist—the only part of me that still affects them, the null-energy in my corruption acting as some perverse anchor. Their form solidifies under my touch, just for a second. Just enough to hurt. They don't pull away. But they don't lean in either. Axiom comes at dusk. Not with Wardens. Not with weapons. Alone, their silver robes pooling around them like liquid mercury. They stand at the edge of our camp, watching the

The Void Seed pulses in my hands like a dying heart. Not a metaphor. It beats , each thump sending jagged waves of agony up my petrified arm. The blackened skin cracks further with every pulse, fissures spreading like spiderwebs through stone. I should drop it. Can't. The refugees huddle behind me, their breath shallow, their eyes wide with the kind of hope that breaks more than it heals. The Child kneels beside me, their star-flecked hands hovering over the Seed. "This one... could be a home." Their voice is distant, layered with the echoes of unborn universes. "Or a weapon. Or nothing at all." I grit my teeth. The Seed's null-energy resonates with my corruption, a vicious harmony that vibrates in my molars. "How long?" The Child's gaze unfocuses. "Seventeen minutes. Then it chooses." Chooses. As if destruction or creation could be decided by anything as simple as time. The Council warlords circling the nebula's edge don't care either way—they'll take the Seeds, crack them

The Child grips my shoulder, their fingers warm against my half-petrified skin. "You don’t have to go in." I flex my right hand—the one that cracked open, the one that’s still raw and oozing null-energy like pus from a wound. Every drop that fell here, every uncontrolled leak, birthed this nightmare. The Weeping feeds on emotion. Amplifies it. Traps people in loops of their own worst moments. "I’m going in," I say. The Child exhales. They press something into my palm—a shard of the Living Stone, dull now but still faintly warm. "Anchor yourself. Don’t get lost." I step over the threshold. The change is instant. The street folds around me, buildings bending like they’re made of rubber. A child’s laughter echoes, high and bright and wrong , cut suddenly by a scream. The air smells like burning hair and Arthur’s old soap. My chest tightens. No. Focus. I press forward, the Living Stone pulsing weakly in my grip. The first loop appears ahead—a woman kneeling in the i

I press my scarred palm against the thinning veil—the null-energy in my flesh hums in recognition. The Child stands beside me, their starlight muted to a gentle glow. "It's asking," they murmur. I know. The nascent reality—no longer nascent, really—has been asking for days. Not with words. With pressure. With dreams that aren't quite dreams. Last night I woke with the taste of alien fruit on my tongue and a lullaby in my head that I'd never heard before. My scars ache. The blackened lines crisscrossing my arms and chest haven't spread since the Loom detonation, but they haven't faded either. Permanent marks. A bridge burned into my skin. Behind us, the Council remnants argue. Their voices carry across the makeshift outpost. "—assimilation is inevitable—" "—declare war before it's too late—" "—sacrifice the bridges if necessary—" The Child doesn't flinch. They've gotten good at ignoring them. I flex my fingers. The boundary yields slightly under my touch, like