All Chapters of Rosie's Bloom: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Aria POV The fortress slept unevenly. I could hear its breathing through the stones slow where the wounded dreamed, sharp where guards turned in their armor. Outside, rain threaded through the mist, tapping at the shutters like a pulse that wanted answering. I hadn’t slept. Every time I closed my eyes I saw light under water. Silver first, then red. Each time I tried to reach it, it moved farther away. When I finally sat up, the bandage over my chest felt hot. I drew it aside; the mark glowed softly, silver veins running outward, then darkening at their edges until they blushed crimson. It looked alive. I touched it once pain, then the taste of iron behind my teeth. "Remember the promise." The voice wasn’t outside me. It came from the space between heartbeats. “Whose promise?” I whispered. "Yours. Hers. Mine." The room tilted. For a heartbeat I was standing somewhere else: a cavern full of mirrors, the smell of salt and blood. A woman knelt beside a black pool. Her

Aria POVThe fortress no longer breathed. Stone, timber, even flame seemed to hold their breath, waiting for something older than war to decide what lived and what didn’t.I woke to that silence. It pressed against my ears until I could hear only my pulse one steady drum that wasn’t fully mine.When I opened the door, the world had turned red. Mist pooled through the courtyard like blood finding old wounds. It didn’t crawl or drift; it listened, folding itself around every sound, every heartbeat.I felt it before I saw it. The mark on my chest burned, not sharp but steady an ache that reached behind my ribs and pulled. The silver there had darkened to crimson at its edge, the two colors twisting together like vines fighting for the same root.Mira shouted somewhere down the hall. “Stay inside!” Her voice sounded miles away.I stepped onto the stones. The air was thick, sweet with the scent of ash and salt. The fog didn’t cross the threshold yet. It waited, as if deciding whether

Aria POVThe sun rose late that morning, as though even the sky hesitated to see what the world had become.Light crept across the fortress walls, silver at first, then faintly gold. The air still smelled of rain and stone dust, but beneath it was something cleaner the quiet after everything burns.Mira woke me before dawn. “The council has called you,” she said, eyes wide with the kind of reverence I never asked for. “They’re waiting in the Great Hall. You….. you should wear this.”She held out a garment I had never seen before: silver fabric woven through with threads that caught the light like frost. The Luna’s robe. The one worn only by those who had balanced blood and moon, leader and goddess.I almost laughed. “That’s not for me.”“It is now,” she said gently.The robe felt heavy as she fastened it across my shoulders. It didn’t belong to me, not yet, but the weight of it made my spine straighten.When we stepped into the corridor, silence followed. Every guard, every servant t

Aria POVThe morning came painted in wrong colors.From my window, the sea no longer shone blue. Its edges glowed faintly red not the color of dawn, but of blood caught in water. It shimmered, restless, pulsing with the rhythm of a heart too large to belong to any living thing.At first, I thought it was a trick of light, another scar left by the fog. But the longer I stared, the more I felt it that quiet thrum beneath my ribs, the pull that had begun the night Clara fell.The mark above my chest tingled, a faint burn crawling up my throat. It wasn’t pain exactly more like a memory trying to surface.Mira entered quietly, clutching her cloak around her shoulders. “You’re awake,” she said, voice low. “The council is already gathering. They say the tides are rising two days early.”“Early?” I asked, though I already knew what she meant.“The ocean refuses to rest,” she whispered. “The sailors say it hums. Like a song under the waves.”A song.The words sent a chill through me. I’d heard

Aria POVSleep never came easily anymore. When it did, it wasn’t sleep at all only silence pretending to be rest.That night, the air inside the fortress was too still. No wind, no echo of wolves, not even the sound of the guards outside. It felt like the world had folded in on itself, holding its breath.I sat upright in my bed, every nerve alert. The silver lantern flickered once, twice, then went out. For a heartbeat, I saw nothing. Then the mark on my chest began to glow, faint at first, then steady as if pulsing to a rhythm I couldn’t hear but somehow knew.I touched it gently, and pain shot through my hand. Not sharp. Deep. Old. Like the ache of something remembering itself after centuries of forgetting.“Not again,” I whispered.But the light beneath my skin pulsed faster. A whisper curled behind my ears familiar, heavy with salt."Do you hear it?"I froze. “Clara?”The whisper didn’t answer, but the mark burned hotter, turning from silver to a dull crimson. Images floo