All Chapters of Fractured: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The first crossings were accidental.A breath that wasn’t theirs.A shiver that didn’t belong to their skin.A memory of scent without a source.Yet the more the world frayed, the more those small trespasses learned to linger, to braid, to hold. Shared intimacies—uninvited and undeniable—slipped through the thin places between them and took root. Warmth traveled through cold water. Salt sighed through a forest’s leaves. Moonlight learned the shapes of roots. What had flickered at the edges of sense now arrived as presence: not voice, not letter, not ritual, but the felt weight of another soul, warm against one’s ribs.These were not random.They were threads.Invisible, potent, purposeful—drawing Ronan, Mirra, and Selene toward a center none of them had chosen and all of them felt.Ronan stood at the brink where sand surrendered to sea. A wind out of the west combed his hair and blew salt against his mouth. He had always loved this boundary, this breathing edge where tide and earth ex

The visions no longer came in fragments.They pressed like tides against the walls of their souls, relentless, swelling, bleeding across the boundaries of sea, forest, and sky. Selene, Mirra, and Ronan—though none stood within sight of the others—walked landscapes not wholly their own, their struggles folding together into a single song. It was not the lull of prophecy anymore. It was revelation, demanding to be heard.The ethereal pull was undeniable, a silent siren tugging Selene away from the moon’s familiar glow. At first, she resisted, clinging to the steady radiance of her celestial companion. But resistance was useless. Some deeper current had already claimed her, pulling her across thresholds unseen.When she opened her eyes, she stood on a desolate expanse: a silver plain that stretched into infinity, its surface shimmering as though every grain were cut from diamond dust. Above, the sky was neither day nor night but some liminal twilight, painted in bruised indigo and muted

Ronan had always loved the sea’s weight.The pressure of the deep was not a burden to him—it was an embrace, a reminder that he belonged to more than flesh and bone. Salt in his lungs, current at his back, leviathans moving in solemn procession through cathedral trenches of stone—this was the rhythm of his blood, the faith of his body.But now, the waters had turned against him.The ocean churned into a roaring tempest, each wave heavier than the last. Not just water, not just salt, but grief itself pressing against him, thick and suffocating. His arms burned with the effort of swimming, his lungs shrieked for air, and still the currents dragged him down, deeper and darker.Every kick of his legs was defiance. Every gasp a stolen rebellion. But the sea fought harder.Beneath him, the abyss writhed. Leviathans stirred from their millennia of dreaming slumber. Shadows of colossal beings uncoiled in the trenches, their scales flashing phosphorescence in streaks of green and blue. Vast ta

The forest screamed.Not with sound, not with the crack of thunder or the howl of beasts, but with the long, aching groan of a world being undone. Mirra pressed a trembling hand to the rough bark of an elder tree, only to wrench it away as black sap oozed from a fissure splitting its trunk. The liquid burned against her skin, acrid and metallic, the stench so sharp it made bile rise in her throat.The air was no longer the living breath of the woods. It was thick, suffocating, a metallic tang so potent it coated her tongue with the taste of rust and rot. Every inhale dragged corruption deeper into her lungs. The forest that had once been her sanctuary was now a cage of poisoned roots and shadows.Above her, branches writhed as though in pain, creaking like old bones being forced to bend. Ancient roots shuddered beneath her feet, twisting violently in the earth as if trying to escape their own bodies. Leaves no longer fell in their natural cycle—they shriveled into ash before they could

The plains stretched endlessly before her, a desert of fractured silver. Jagged crystals thrust from the ground like broken stars, scattering shards of moonlight in every direction. Selene moved barefoot across the glassy earth, every step a crunch of brittle sound echoing in the hollow silence.This was not the moon she had known all her life—the constant confidante, the steady rhythm of her breath and blood. This was its shadow-self, stripped bare, erratic, and wild. The lunar current that had always flowed like a calm river now surged around her like a storm, crashing against unseen walls, breaking into eddies she could barely contain.And with it came the voices.They rose from the shards themselves, vibrating through the crystal air, whispers threading into her ears until she could no longer tell if they came from without or within. They were her own voice, yet not. Her tone, but sharpened, crueler, stripped of compassion.You were always afraid.Even as a child, you trembled ben