All Chapters of Fractured: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The Rift in the DeepRonan steadied himself, palms pressed against obsidian rock slick with algae, as if the solidity of stone could anchor him against the storm inside. He narrowed his eyes, forcing his intent to sharpen into a spear. He would find it—the source of this wrongness.But the moment he reached outward, he faltered.It was like trying to clutch smoke in a gale. The energy slid through his grasp, vast and ancient, swirling beyond his comprehension. It was not the familiar pulse of current, not even the fury of storm. It was alien.And it was hungry.It pressed against his senses like a cold, insidious tendril, slithering into cracks he hadn’t known he carried. It sought to unravel the very fabric of the sea, to twist the ocean’s power into something monstrous. The salt itself seemed to sour, the water’s purity leeching away beneath its touch.The ocean was bleeding.Then the vision struck.It hit him with the force of a rogue wave, shoving him backward until his spine slam

The ocean’s agony clung to him like a second skin.Ronan stood on the shore, water pooling around his ankles, the foam stained with that unsettling bruise of purple. The sand beneath his bare feet was too warm, gritty where he had always known the smooth embrace of current. The air was sharp, too dry, lacking the heavy salt-thickened weight of the deep.Everything about the land felt wrong.And yet, he could not retreat to the sea—not when it screamed.The agony was in his bones now, carried upward from the soles of his feet into the marrow of his spine. His connection to the water, once a clear, resonant chord, was frayed. It no longer hummed steady and sure, but snapped and crackled like broken wires, each tremor another jolt of pain.And beneath it—he felt them.The leviathans.Ancient, slumbering beings, cradled for millennia in the abyssal plains, wrapped in shadows and veils of phosphorescence. They had been his comfort as a boy: the knowledge that something older and mightier t

The plains shimmered beneath a pale wash of light.Selene stood barefoot in the grass, the blades cool and slick with evening dew, the night air brushing against her skin like a lover’s sigh. Her silver gown whispered in the wind, its hem catching the damp earth, the fabric clinging to her calves as though reluctant to let her move. The horizon stretched wide and endless, unbroken by mountain or wall, only the gentle curve of meadow and stone bathed in starlight. The land cupped a lake at its heart, a hollow carved for reflection, its glassy surface mirroring the moon in perfect symmetry.This was her domain.A world of silence and reflection, of serenity woven from light and shadow. Here, every star was etched in water. Here, every breath aligned with the slow pull of the moon’s cycle. The very air seemed to hum with it, steady and familiar, as if the cosmos itself leaned down to cradle her.Selene closed her eyes and inhaled. Normally she would feel her magic thrumming steady in her

The connections began as faint echoes, fragile as spider silk stretched across impossible distances. A shiver of cold where no frost lay. The phantom taste of brine where no ocean touched. A rush of green sap through veins that had never brushed bark.Each of them—Selene beneath her silver moon, Mirra in her trembling groves, Ronan in his wounded sea—felt it. And each resisted at first. Their worlds were their sanctuaries. Their powers, their burdens alone. Yet the intrusions kept returning, pulsing through the fraying fabric of reality like heartbeats out of rhythm, and with every return, the threads drew tighter.Selene felt it most acutely when she turned her gaze upward. The moon, her lifelong confidante, now seemed veiled in mist. Where once its song had been clear and singular, now it carried undertones—alien rhythms vibrating faintly in her marrow. One beat deep and slow, like the press of ancient roots into stone. Another steady and tidal, the breath of waves inhaling and exha

Mirra’s hands were stained with soil.Not the rich, loamy earth she had always known, the kind that clung beneath fingernails with the scent of rain and promise. No—this soil was brittle, sharp, and dry, its scent laced with an acrid tang that turned her stomach. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, listening to the way it rasped like sandpaper. Her forest, her sanctuary, was changing.The hues of the Whispering Woods, once vibrant and full, had dulled as though a veil had been drawn across the sun. Leaves no longer glowed in green brilliance; flowers no longer painted the grove in bursts of violet, crimson, and gold. Even the moss beneath her knees, once plush and springy, felt brittle, thin, as though life itself recoiled from her touch.And the scent—gods, the scent.Where once she breathed in damp earth, wildflowers, and mushrooms budding in secret shadow, now a metallic tang overlaid it all. Like iron left to rust. Like blood poured into soil. Beneath it lingered somethi