All Chapters of Bloodbound: The legacy of Serelai : Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

The next few days fell into a pattern. A pattern of grey.A blaring horn woke them. They ate the tasteless paste. They went to their work. They came back. They ate more paste. The horn sounded for sleep. They lay in their bunks, listening to the hum of the machine.It was designed to break you. To make you forget there was anything else. The sameness was a weapon.But Liora fought back with memory.Every morning, as she put on the scratchy grey tunic, she remembered the feel of soft linen against her skin. Every time she ate the paste, she remembered the taste of wild berries Elara had found near their mountain home. Every time the white lights hummed, she remembered the flicker of firelight on Ashiel’s face.She was building a fortress inside her mind, brick by brick, memory by memory. And she was not alone.Liora’s work was in the Medical Bay. It was a large, clean, cold room with rows of cots. The people who came here weren’t sick with fevers or colds. They were injured. A man with

The dim lights flickered again, a nervous twitch in the Citadel's grey skin. The hum, that constant, grinding sound, stuttered for a full three seconds. In the bunkroom, the silence that rushed in was heavier and more terrifying than any noise.Liora sat up in her bunk. This was different. This wasn't just a strain. This was a stumble.Iara leaned down from the bunk above, her face pale. "That was bad."Before Liora could answer, a sharp, piercing alarm cut through the silence. It wasn't the horn for work or meals. This was a jagged, screaming sound. Red lights began to flash at the corners of the ceiling."Containment breach. Sub-level 9. All Security Cadre to emergency stations." The voice on the speaker was no longer flat. It was sharp with urgency.Sub-level 9. The central filtration. The heart of the Citadel's lungs. Kael's schematics flashed in Liora's mind.The door to their bunkroom hissed open. A guard stood there, his face tight. "All Medical Auxiliary, report to the Bay. No

The ladder went down into a darkness that felt old. It wasn't the clean, manufactured dark of the Citadel's power outage. This was a thick, silent dark that smelled of wet stone and cold earth. The kind of dark that had been there for a thousand years.Ronan went first. His big hands gripped the cold metal rungs, his body a shield for those above. Then came the children, one by one, their small hands trembling. Liora went after them, her heart in her throat every time a child's foot slipped. Elara and Cade came last, pulling the maintenance door shut above them, sealing them in this vertical tunnel.The only sounds were their breathing, the scuff of their shoes on the rungs, and the hum.It was louder now. A deep, vibrating hum that came up through the ladder and into their bones. It wasn't the dead hum of the Citadel's machines. This was a living sound. A heartbeat.Lyra, climbing just below Liora, whispered, "It's singing. It's happy we're coming."Liora looked down at her daughter'

The Geode, after the attack, did not go quiet. It sang louder. The crystals glowed with a fierce, proud light. It had been tested, and it had held. The family felt it too. The fear was still there, a cold knot in their stomachs, but it was now mixed with a wild, blooming hope.For the first time since being captured, the children laughed. Real, bubbling laughter that echoed in the vast crystal cavern. They chased the pulses of light across the floor and marveled at the tiny, glowing ferns Elara was growing in patches of moss.Elara herself was kneeling, her hands buried in a soft, dark soil that hadn't existed a day before. She was creating a garden at the base of the crystal tree. With every seed she planted seeds she had secretly saved from the outside world, tucked deep in a pocket, the Geode hummed in approval. A small, trickling stream of clear water now ran from a crack in the crystal wall, watering her work."It remembers what the world is supposed to be," she said to Liora, he

The darkness was absolute. The only light came from the gentle pulse of the Geode’s Seed in Liora’s hands and the faint, dying glow of Elara’s plant-torch. The air was cold and damp, and the only sounds were the trickle of the underground stream and the ragged breathing of the exhausted, terrified group.They huddled together on a flat, rocky shelf beside the stream. The children were crying quietly, their sobs echoing in the vast, empty dark. Fen clung to Lyra, who held him tightly, her own small body trembling.“We can’t stay here,” Ronan said, his voice a low rumble. He stood at the edge of their tiny island of light, peering into the impenetrable black. “It’s too exposed. We need to find proper shelter.”“Shelter from what?” Cade asked, his voice shaking. “We don’t even know where we are.”“From whatever lives down here,” Ronan replied grimly. “And from them.” He jerked his thumb back in the direction of the Citadel.Liora cradled the Seed. It was warm against her chest, a tiny, l