All Chapters of Chronicles Of Moonblood 1. The Wounded Heart: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

The dawn shift passes in silence.No keys jangle needlessly, the bolt slides precisely into place, and the soles of the boots fall on the same line I marked with chalk yesterday. The house likes this kind of pedantry: predictable strain, predictable response. Stone does not like surprises.Mae is already waiting in the healing wing with the anchor stones’ readings from yesterday. A row of numbers runs across the top of the page; not for decoration, but to make decisions from.“Short report,” she says before I can ask. “On the second level, the three ‘silence points’ before the hollow all signaled at once — a fine thickening. Not a wave, more like an inhalation. Duration: eight breaths. Later, during the night shift, the same thing happened again, but lasted for five breaths. The pattern suggests: something below is seeking rhythm.” She flips the page. “The endpoint — the ‘gate-that-is-no-longer-a-gate’ — didn’t move. It’s clean.”“Any surface correlation?” I ask.“There is,” she repli

Morning doesn’t ask for attention, and that alone is an achievement. The storage locks stand where we left them last night; the kitchen’s copper bell doesn’t jingle, it just hangs mute; the eastern signal stone made no sound. The house has taken up the counter-rhythm and now breathes as if it had always done so.Mae is waiting in the healer’s wing with the night’s measurements. Three stone slabs lie on the table, a scratched date in each corner, their surfaces scored with tiny notches—in her system, that’s a number. Not ornament, data.“Briefly,” she begins before I can ask. “The three silence points before the cavity signaled a single short densening in the night—three breaths. Less than yesterday. The gate remnants remain at zero. In the corner of the Khan Hall, the thread-ring didn’t chime.” She looks up. “The house’s counter-rhythm is stable.”“Good.” I set another sheet beside her. “Outside?”Cassian steps in, cloak on his shoulder, wearing the look that says, “I’d rather say thi

The morning does not burst in; it simply opens. The mist lies low over the outer yard like a blanket someone half-slid off their shoulders during the night. The guard is changing, but even the clink of buckles is quieter today; that is a good sign. The locks in the storeroom are where we left them last night, the copper bell in the kitchen does not try to steal attention. The house holds itself, and because of that, so do I.People line the main courtyard. It is not a celebration—no banners, no drumbeat. We read aloud the House Order, which last night under Nyra’s hand was given the right words—simple words that do not want to be more than they are. I hold the sheet in both palms, Nyra at my side, a little behind are Cassian, Mae and Rhaell; the quartermaster, the cook and the wet nurse stand in the front third of the line. The children watch from the shadow of the gallery: Selin tugs at the corner of a blanket, Kael watches the post of the railing and sometimes finds his way back to

The colors of dawn crept slowly across the palace stones, and the cold light spread along the walls as if it remembered every morning that had come before. The house now breathed with us; the small sounds that once made the silence feel foreign had become part of our days. The soft clicks of locks, the steady rhythm of footsteps, the measured flow of air — all spoke of order. Not the military kind, but the sort that cannot be commanded, only learned from within.Today was different. For the first time, I allowed Lunathiel to listen to the stones together with the children.It was her suggestion to hold the lesson not in the Khan Hall, but in the inner courtyard — where the pulse of the earth could always be felt above the water basin. The place was quiet, yet alive.Selin sat at the edge of the stone ledge, her legs swinging, while Kael rested his small hands upon the stone beside her. The wind tugged at their hair, and the sunlight played upon them as though some higher power was wat

The morning began like a checklist: stones instead of coffee, a pencil behind the ear instead of loud words. Because of the “5+2” mark, I didn’t start with the usual circuit today, but with pulling the piece of chalk from my pocket—the one Nyra had picked up from the stairs last night—and setting it down on Mae’s desk.“Place, time, mark,” she summarized before I could ask. “No fingerprints on the chalk, only stone dust. The scratch in the wall isn’t deep—no intent to damage, only to signal.” She looked up. “Today we map the signs, not the corridors.”“No hunt,” I nodded. “Audit. Visual check of every dusty corner, every blind door, every break in the hallway. Whoever finds a mark doesn’t erase it, just notes it: ‘recorded.’”Cassian was already at the threshold with two of his men. “Give me the routine,” he said. “Fifteen-minute offsets, separate sections: east, west, inner ring, and the second level. We don’t sweep the house all at once—they like that.”“And one more thing,” I added