All Chapters of LOST AND FOUND: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The storm had broken, but the ruin it left behind still breathed. Smoke curled through the hollow corridors like ghosts unsure of where to go. The fortress was dying—stone by stone, flame by flame.Kaelen moved through the wreckage with his arm pressed against his ribs, blood seeping between his fingers. His breath came in short bursts, every inhale thick with ash. Around him, the moans of the wounded filled the silence that followed the storm.“Search every chamber!” he barked. His voice cracked, low and hoarse, but his warriors obeyed. The pack moved through the ruins in tight formation, faces streaked with soot. Some carried torches, others their fallen kin.The scent of Serenya still lingered—light, wild, unmistakable. It twisted through the smoke like a thread of silver. Kaelen followed it, each step fueled by a desperate need that bordered on madness.He kicked through a door half-buried under rubble. The room beyond was scorched black. The walls still glowed from where lightnin

The rain didn’t stop when the light vanished. It fell harder. Colder. As if the sky itself was trying to drown what remained of the night.Kaelen stirred beneath the ruins of the stronghold, the stone slick beneath his palms. His ears rang; his breath came short and sharp. For a moment, he couldn’t tell if he was alive or caught between worlds himself.Then he remembered the voice — her voice.Find me before the moon rises.He pushed to his knees, pain flaring through his ribs. The air still shimmered faintly where Serenya had stood, a thin veil of gold dissipating into the storm. He reached for it instinctively, his fingers brushing nothing but air.“Serenya…”Her name was a breath, half-prayer, half-curse. The wind swallowed it whole.All around him, the highland ridge was unrecognizable. What had been the fortress was now a crater of broken stone and molten glass. The battlements were gone. The great banners of the pack lay shredded in the mud. Wolves limped through the wreckage, b

The mountain was still screaming when Kaelen tore his way free.Stone scraped his skin raw, claws splitting the rock as he dragged himself up through the rubble. The air was thick with ash and silver light—thick enough to taste, like smoke and iron. Above, the sky burned crimson, choked with stormclouds that shimmered like shattered glass. Lightning flashed sideways across the clouds, splitting them open in jagged white fissures.He stumbled forward, gasping as cold rain met his skin. It stung like acid. The scent of wet earth should have been grounding, familiar—but it wasn’t. The rain smelled wrong. Metallic. Alive.Kaelen wiped the grit from his eyes and forced himself upright. The cliffs around him were unrecognizable—whole ridges caved in, trees uprooted and split clean down their centers. Pools of rainwater glowed faintly blue, and shards of something glasslike jutted from the soil like broken mirrors. They caught flashes of movement that weren’t his.He turned his head sharply.

The silence after the storm was unbearable.Kaelen lay sprawled on the cold ground, rain pooling around his hands. His body ached, his breath shallow, but it wasn’t the pain that made him tremble—it was the quiet. The world that had roared and burned moments ago now felt hollow, as if sound itself had been stripped away.When he finally lifted his head, he saw that the sky had changed.The silver storm clouds were gone, replaced by a flat, colorless dawn. The moon hung low, cracked and dim, its reflection scattered across puddles that no longer shimmered. The mirror realm was gone—or so it should have been.He pushed himself up on unsteady arms, blinking through the haze. Fragments of light drifted across the air like ash. The ground beneath him bore scars where the vortex had closed—long streaks of glass embedded in the stone, glowing faintly with inner fire.“Serenya…” His voice rasped the name, barely more than breath.No answer. Only the drip of rain off a broken ledge.He rose sl

The forest had forgotten how to breathe.Moonlight dripped through the broken canopy, silver and slow, catching in the mist that clung to the charred trees. The air still smelled of lightning and dust—the aftermath of the mirror’s collapse. Ash coated the ground like frost, muting the crunch of boots as Kaelen moved across what had once been a clearing. Now it was a graveyard of light.He stopped at the ridge. The valley stretched below him, silent and strange. Pools of mirrored water reflected a half-dead moon. Trees bent as if in mourning, their shadows crooked, wrong.Mireya crouched nearby, blood running down her sleeve. Her voice was low but steady. “No sound for miles. Even the crows are gone.”“They’re not gone,” Kaelen murmured, eyes narrowing. “They’re waiting.”A faint hum pulsed through the ground beneath them—like the slow heartbeat of something vast buried deep below. He felt it through the soles of his boots, thrumming in his chest. The sigil burned there, faint but cons