All Chapters of Ascend or Be Consumed: Chapter 141 - Chapter 148

Dominic leaned close, his voice dropping to a low, steady command. “Give me a moment. Stay still.” Something brushed my fingers—the fork. He was placing it carefully into my hand. “Eat while I deal with these nuisances.” I almost laugh at the plain annoyance in his tone. I nodded once. “Be careful.” He didn’t answer. His presence vanished in a rush of heat and power, and a heartbeat later, I heard the whole restaurant explode with shouts. Amidst the noise, I kept my ears down for Dominic’s voice, but he didn't go there to talk gently to them. His growl resounded from a distance, followed by the crash of bodies hitting walls and tables. Furniture splintered. Someone screamed. Someone else begged. The atmosphere thrummed with dark magic, vibrating through the floorboards. Inside the restaurant, whispers rose like a swarm of insects. “I can’t believe the Phantom is thrashing elders for a blind girl from Blackcroft…” “Who is she?” “She can’t be ordinary.” “Has he finally go

I pressed my fingers into the disk array embedded in my palm as I thought of my godmother, and sister. Space shifted, tugging at my stomach. The fresh aroma of flowers, herbs, and warm sunlight suggested I had landed myself near House Vitae, or something close to it, but I couldn’t quite identify where exactly. That uncertainty filled me with a sense of frustration. It was taking a lot of time to get used to my sightlessness. Then, a familiar voice broke through the haze, calm and confident, with a hint of arrogance. “Juno?” Maxon. How come he's here? I thought once again that he must have belonged to House Vitae. The sound of his footsteps approached gently, initially slow then quickening slightly. “Why do you look—” he began, then stopped suddenly. He took a deep, shaky breath. His voice softened, filled with disbelief and concern. “Your eyes... Juno, what happened to you? Last time I saw you, you weren't blind. And it's not even up to 24 hours.” I could sense the shoc

“My great-grandfather is from the Upper Realm, and he knows dark magic that no one else does. I can tell the curse is… layered,” Maxon said, his voice low but certain. “Not simple blindness. More like bound. A seal. A lock. And locks can be undone.”I swallowed hard. His words were just like what Dominic had translated from the stranger. Remembering the stranger’s warning that forcing the seal open could tear me apart long before it ever broke made it even harder to believe in Maxon’s fragrant broth.“Undoing something like this isn’t that easy.” “No,” he agreed quietly. “But your body is fighting it. That’s why it will hurt in a few hours. It won't be sharp at all times…but when it is, it might be unbearable. The broth will agitate the seal—force it to react. If it reacts, you can break it.”His confidence should’ve comforted me. But instead, something twisted inside me, fear, hope… disbelief. He was more powerful than I expected. He was damn worthy of being an Apex Initiate. “A

On the journey to the Void, Elara and I had barely been acquaintances. And yet somehow… somehow she’d lodged herself deeper than I realized. Deep enough that the loss hollowed something inside me.And the guilt—fuck, the guilt never stopped.If I’d gone to her, if I’d been stronger, if I hadn’t been lost in a man’s arms… maybe she wouldn’t have fallen. Maybe she wouldn’t have hanged herself.Mistress Lune exhaled shakily and stepped back.“Well,” she said quietly, collecting herself, “since you’ve already taken some kind of cure today, whatever that Apex Initiate gave you, we’ll need to postpone your actual treatment.”My stomach clenched. “Postpone? For how long?”I had been counting on her cure after everything. She was renowned throughout Blackcroft for her Cures, and I had pinned all my hope on her skill.“Until I know exactly what was in that broth he gave you,” she said firmly. “Mixing cures is dangerous. It could force the seal on your eyes to… close permanently. And if that ha