All Chapters of My Sister hurtful betrayal: Chapter 21 - Chapter 28

The lantern flame flickered in Marcus’s hand, casting his sharp features in a dance of gold and shadow. The clearing seemed to shrink around Clara, the night air pressing in on her chest like a suffocating weight. Her body trembled, her lungs burned, but she forced herself to stand tall.Marcus smiled, his voice low and calm, but dangerous. “You have run far enough, Clara. The forest itself seems to conspire to lead you back to me.”Clara’s mind raced. She had thought she had escaped. She had thought she had bought herself time. But here he was, waiting as though he had known every step she would take.“How did you find me?” she demanded, her voice hoarse with exhaustion.Marcus tilted his head. “Do you really think you can outrun me in my own territory? I know these woods better than you know the shape of your own heartbeat. Every path, every clearing, every pitfall—they belong to me.”His words slithered around her, but Clara clung to her defiance. “You do not own me, Marcus. You ne

The storm had passed, leaving the forest drenched and heavy with mist. Adrian rode hard, his horse’s hooves splashing through the mud as the wind whipped at his cloak. His jaw was set, his eyes fixed on the path ahead, every muscle in his body taut with urgency. Clara was gone. The words repeated in his mind like a relentless drumbeat. He had scoured every corner of the village, questioned every frightened witness, followed every broken trail. Each path had led him deeper into the forest, and still he had found nothing but silence. But then—he had heard it. Her voice. Not with his ears, but with something deeper, something unexplainable. A whisper that had cut through the night like a blade of light. Clara calling his name. “Hold on, Clara,” he murmured under his breath as he urged the horse faster. “I am coming.” The Weight of Guilt Adrian’s mind replayed the moment he realized she was missing. One of the villagers had spoken of strangers seen near the edge of the woods—

Clara’s scream echoed endlessly as she plummeted into the abyss. The black void swallowed her whole, dragging her down into its suffocating depths. The walls of the chasm blurred around her, slick with shifting shadows that reached like claws to tear her apart. The air burned in her lungs, her arms flailed, but there was nothing to grasp, nothing to stop the fall.Her last sight before darkness took her was Adrian, his face twisted in agony, struggling against the shadows that bound him. His voice thundered across the chasm, raw and broken.“Clara!”And then he was gone.The AbyssThe fall felt endless, yet at the same time, sudden. Clara’s body slammed against something soft yet cold, sending shockwaves of pain through her bones. She gasped, rolling onto her side, her breaths ragged.The ground beneath her was not stone, nor earth. It pulsed faintly, as though alive. A faint glow shimmered around her, illuminating the abyss just enough for her to see.The abyss was not empty.Shapes

The fortress was no longer just stone and shadow. It pulsed with a life of its own, every wall breathing with a rhythm that matched the shard’s glow. Darkness seeped from every crevice, a living thing that crawled across the ground like liquid smoke. The air was thick with whispers, so many voices overlapping that they seemed to form one endless chant.Adrian lay on the cold floor of the obsidian chamber, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. His body screamed with pain, every bone aching, every muscle trembling, but the greater wound was within. The wave of darkness Marcus unleashed had not only thrown him against the wall, it had torn through his spirit, gnawing at the very light that shielded him.Clara’s cries reached him faintly through the haze. He forced his eyes open. Through blurred vision, he saw her struggling in the grip of chains that dragged her toward the shard’s heart. Her arms shook as she tried to resist, her voice raw from screaming. Marcus stood betwee