All Chapters of Bound by Vows and Vendetta: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Chapter 81 — Whispers of Li Hua~ARIA~LIJIANG MOUNTAINS, WESTERN SLOPES — 5:46 A.M.The temple was older than memory. Weather-beaten. Nestled in fog so thick it could suffocate sound. Aria stood beneath the prayer flags strung from pine to stone, her breath coiling in the air like the last remnants of a dream.A bell tolled in the distance. Once. Then silence.Inside the temple, Renata lay curled on a straw mat, her eyes open but unfocused. Sky sat cross-legged near the altar, scanning ancient symbols carved into the crypt wall. Her lens flickered, tracking anomalies Aria couldn’t see.Outside, the Ash Blades kept watch. Roji stood near the temple steps, still as stone. Inez sharpened a blade beside a pot of boiling herbs, the sound rhythmic, almost ritualistic.Aria didn’t speak.She listened.And the mountain whispered.Not in words. But in a feeling she couldn’t shake—the sense that everything around her had once been sacred, and now waited to be defiled.~~~~~~~~~~TEMPLE INTERIO

Chapter 83 — Red Sky Rising~ARIA~LIJIANG MOUNTAINS — 6:11 A.M.The silence broke like a scream.Aria sat cross-legged by the temple hearth, morning mist curling like smoke through the cracked doors. She had been sharpening her blade, eyes locked on the steel—but then the firebomb hit.It came not through the sky.But beneath.A rumble first. Then a quake.Then flame.The floor blew upward, stones erupting like shrapnel as the belly of the temple exploded. Aria was flung back, her shoulder slamming into the stone pillar with a crack.She tasted blood."Renata!" she yelled, stumbling up.Soot choked the air. Sky was already dragging Renata toward the eastern corridor. Roji pulled Inez from a collapsed beam. The fire spread fast—not natural. Chemical accelerant.Trap.Sabotage.Aria clutched the burning edge of the doorway and shoved herself upright. Her abdomen pulsed—a sharp wave, not from impact, but from within.The child.Code.The crypt behind her screamed in flame. The inheritan

Chapter 85 — Mother, Machine, Monster~LORENZO~SOUTHWEST OF LIJIANG — 10:41 P.M.The road was broken, the sky worse.Lorenzo drove the stolen jeep like it was a warhorse, tires skidding on mud-slick mountain curves. Every few minutes, he checked the rearview. Not for pursuit. For silence. For ghosts. For her voice on the comm that hadn't spoken since Renata sealed her fate.Sky had sent one last ping: coordinates of an abandoned tech outpost deep in the jungle. Umbra once used it for their earliest signal experiments, before code replaced loyalty and algorithms learned how to kill.Now, it was all they had."Ten minutes out," Matteo's voice crackled from the encrypted comm line. "You better be right about this place.""I'm not," Lorenzo muttered. "But it's where she ran. So it's where I go."He didn’t say Aria’s name.Couldn’t.He felt it burning behind his teeth, like a sin he couldn’t repent for yet.~~~~~~~~~~THE OUTPOSTThe doors groaned like they hadn’t been opened in decades.

Chapter 87 — Birth Under Fire~ARIA~SOUTH CHINA SEA COAST — 6:03 A.M.The old fishing village didn’t have a name anymore.Not officially. Not after the Triads buried the last mayor.But the locals called it Ghost Mouth, and that morning, it lived up to its name. Fog swarmed the hills like smoke with no fire, and the sea clawed the shoreline in slow, angry waves.Lorenzo carried her into the coastal clinic just before the sky cracked red."She needs a room. Now."Madam Ke didn’t flinch.She wore all black, long silver pins in her hair, and the gaze of someone who’d slit a throat while sipping tea. She pointed to the back hall."Third room. Clear it. Boil water. Get me Yulan."Aria groaned as another contraction hit. Her fingers crushed Lorenzo’s shirt."Don’t leave me," she whispered."Not even death could drag me off."~~~~~~~~~~THE LABOR ROOMNo machines. No beeping. Just the old ways.Boiled rags. Gloves soaked in white wine. Wood and silence and breath.Madam Ke slid on her glove

Chapter 89 — Echoes of Elias~ARIA~NORTHERN OUTSKIRTS, TRIAD TERRITORY — 2:33 A.M.The warehouse stank of copper and mold. Rain leaked through rusted panels in the roof. Aria sat alone in front of the only screen still running, her son swaddled in one arm, a blade resting across her thigh.The feed came in without warning.Black screen.Then white static.Then him.Elias.Smiling.The same calm, sermon-soaked expression he wore when bombs went off in parliamentary halls. Now, his voice cut through the static with the ease of a scalpel.“To the Dominion families still clinging to blood, I offer you something better.”The screen split.A cascade of faces.Infants.Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. All different, yet all bearing faint echoes of Emilio’s features. Some had Lorenzo’s dark eyes. Others had Aria’s jawline. But none were born of them.“This isn’t legacy,” Elias said. “This is evolution.”He leaned closer. Whispered like a man reciting scripture:“Every major syndicate now has