All Chapters of Marked in the Middle: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

The mountain air bit like glass.Every step down the ridge sent gravel sliding into the mist that blanketed the valley below. Kael led the way, boots crunching against the scorched rock. Behind him, Lira moved with her usual silent precision, though she couldn’t hide the exhaustion weighing her down.They’d been traveling since dawn, two days now without sleep. The seal’s hum had faded behind them, but the whisper of the Warden never truly left. It followed like a phantom echo in Kael’s skull, threading through his thoughts, patient and poisonous.By the time they reached the foot of the slope, the world had changed. The once-green pass that separated the northern ranges from the old roads was now nothing but ash and bone. The ground was black, the trees burned into jagged silhouettes. Rivers of molten silver cut through the landscape like scars, flowing uphill, against logic, against gravity.“The Scar,” Lira murmured, her voice barely audible over the low hum that filled the air. “I

The light burned out behind them as soon as they stepped through.One moment, Kael and Lira were surrounded by the endless brilliance of the Crown’s realm, white skies, mirrored ground and the next, they stood ankle-deep in ash. The world here was wrong. The air hummed faintly, like a low heartbeat, and the sky was neither dark nor bright, just a dull, pulsing gray that stretched forever.Lira’s boots sank into the soft ground as she scanned their surroundings. “Where… are we?”Kael looked ahead. The horizon was jagged, filled with the shapes of colossal spires rising out of the earth, not buildings, but something older. Bones. Towering, fossilized ribs of creatures so ancient they could’ve been gods. Between them ran rivers of black glass, winding and glimmering faintly under the dead light.“The Cradle,” he said quietly. “This is where the Warden was born.”Lira swallowed. “Born from what exactly?”He hesitated. The words felt heavy even in his mouth. “From the same power that made

The air burned cold as Kael stumbled out of the ruins.The world that had once thrummed with life now lay draped in silence. Smoke drifted between skeletal trees, and the stench of blood lingered like an echo that refused to die.Behind him, the temple had fallen, stone by stone, light by light, until nothing remained of the Crown’s chamber but a crater of ash and humming energy.Lira followed a few steps behind, her breathing ragged but steady.Her eyes, sharp and battle-worn, scanned the horizon. “We’re too close to the rift. If we stay here, we’ll be torn apart when it collapses.”Kael didn’t answer. His gaze lingered on the shifting air above the crater, the faint shimmer of power he had felt before. It pulsed once, weakly, then stilled. But the rhythm of it… the cadence… it reminded him of something he couldn’t forget.Her heartbeat.“Kael,” Lira said again, gripping his shoulder. “We have to go.”He turned to her, his face pale under the fading sunlight. “She was here.”“Evelyn

The path toward the Deadline Mountains looked nothing like it used to.Once, Kael remembered the range as a gray wall of stone, sharp, cold, and unmoving. But now, the peaks shimmered faintly with color, as though they pulsed with veins of light beneath their skin. Every few minutes, the mountains seemed to shift, exhaling wisps of fog that carried whispers across the valley.Lira was the first to speak. “They’re alive.”Kael glanced up at her. “Mountains don’t live.”“They do now,” she murmured, tightening her cloak. “The Crown changed everything. You feel it too, don’t you? The ground’s breathing.”Kael didn’t answer, but he did feel it, that subtle rhythm underfoot, like the earth itself had a heartbeat. And beneath it, a softer pulse that matched his own, echoing through the hollows of his chest.Evelyn.Even when he tried not to think of her, her name lingered like smoke on the edges of his mind.They crossed into the foothills by dusk. The air was colder there, thin and metallic

The first thing Kael noticed was the silence.No screams, no roaring flame, no thunder cracking through the Citadel’s spine, just the sound of his own breath, shallow and ragged, echoing inside a ruin that no longer remembered it had once been a palace.He was on his knees in what used to be the Great Hall. Or what was left of it. The marble floor was a field of fractures; every column had splintered into white dust. Above, the sky was open, wide and gray, bleeding light through the broken ceiling, the scent of ash clung to everything was thick, burnt, metallic.Lira stumbled out from behind a half-collapsed archway, her hair tangled with soot, her eyes wide. “Kael,” she rasped, voice hoarse from smoke. “You… you’re alive?”He looked at her, dazed, still gripping the feather that pulsed faintly in his palm. “I think so,” he whispered. “Mostly.”Lira fell beside him, coughing until her voice cracked. Around them, the air shimmered faintly, as if reality itself hadn’t decided what it wa