All Chapters of Beneath the Diamond Veil: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

For a heartbeat, none of us moved.The night air was thick with gunpowder and rain. Alexander Whitlock lay on the ground, blood spreading like spilled ink across his shirt — and then, impossibly, his lips curved into a smile.Ethan still held the gun, his hands trembling. “He’s not—”“Alive,” I finished hoarsely.Because he was. Barely — but undeniably.Alexander’s eyes opened, slow and deliberate, like a serpent uncoiling. “Did you really think,” he rasped, voice low but steady, “that I’d give either of you the satisfaction?”Damien was frozen beside me, one arm pressed against his wound. His face had gone white. “He should be dead. I hit an artery. I saw it.”Alexander chuckled weakly, coughing blood. “You really think I walk around without precautions?”Ethan’s expression shifted from disbelief to dread. “Kevlar.”Alexander’s hand twitched, brushing against his chest where the bullet had hit. “Custom. Lightweight. I’m not as careless as you, son.”“Jesus Christ,” Damien whispered.

The beeping sound swallowed the silence.Each tick stabbed the air—sharp, mechanical, merciless.00:25. 00:24. 00:23.For one frozen heartbeat, I couldn’t move. I just stared at those blinking red numbers, trying to make sense of them. My mind refused. My body, though, reacted on instinct.“Damien!” I shouted.He was already moving—grabbing my wrist, pulling me backward. “Run!”We sprinted down the hall, our footsteps pounding against the marble like gunfire. The timer’s rhythm followed us—beep, beep, beep—until it became all I could hear. The lights flickered again, and then the entire east wing plunged into darkness.We turned a corner. I tripped over a fallen vase, caught myself on the wall, and kept going.“Where’s the exit?” I gasped.“This way!”He shoved open a side door that led toward the back stairwell. My lungs burned; smoke was already curling under the ceiling. Somewhere behind us, something hissed.00:10.We were halfway down the stairs when the explosion hit.It wasn’t

For a few seconds, the darkness was absolute. The kind that swallows sound, thought, breath.I couldn’t see Damien, but I could hear him—shallow, controlled breaths and the faint click of metal as he drew the small gun from his jacket.“Don’t move,” he whispered.“Wasn’t planning to,” I murmured back, though my voice was thinner than I wanted it to be.The screen still glowed faintly, a square of pale light in the dark room. SERAPH PROTOCOL: REACTIVATED.“What does that mean?” I asked, squinting at the words.Damien was already moving, flashlight beam slicing through the gloom. “It means he built something down here. Something we just woke up.”I swallowed hard. “Define ‘something.’”Before he could answer, the hum of the servers shifted. The quiet whirr became a low, rhythmic pulse, like the place had found a heartbeat. The temperature dropped another few degrees, and the fine hairs on my arms stood up.“Damien…”“I know.”Then the footsteps came again—closer this time. Not running.

For a heartbeat, the hallway didn’t feel real.It was as if the world had paused between breaths—the alarms echoing, the red light pulsing, the smoke trembling in the air—and I was staring at a living reflection that shouldn’t exist.The other me smiled first.That was the part that broke me. It wasn’t a snarl or a threat. It was a slow, knowing smile, like she’d been waiting for this exact moment.Damien’s grip tightened on my wrist.“Elara,” he hissed, “what is that?”“I—I don’t know,” I whispered, but my voice betrayed me. A part of me did know.The way she moved, the faint glow under her skin—every flicker mirrored my own heartbeat.Alexander stepped forward, half-in the crimson light. “Stand down,” he said to her, voice suddenly sharp, commanding.The copy tilted her head, eyes gleaming white. “You built me to replace her,” she said quietly, voice an eerie echo of mine—so perfect it made the hairs on my arms rise. “But you made a mistake.”Alexander’s jaw tightened. “You were nev

The white light didn’t fade gently. It ripped through my mind, splintering every thought, every memory, until all I could feel was the pounding echo of something ancient and enormous awakening beneath me. My body ached, but worse than the physical pain was the sense that everything I thought I understood about myself—and Damien, and Alexander—was about to be rewritten.When I blinked, the world wasn’t what I remembered. The chamber had changed. The floor was no longer solid stone, but a shimmering expanse of fractured glass, stretching in all directions. The artifact hovered at the center, its mercury-like surface rippling as if it were alive. Around it, faint shadows moved like tendrils, writhing in the air, flickering with a dark, almost sentient light.Damien groaned behind me. He was bruised, his clothes torn from our fall, his hands covered in scratches from the jagged floor. “Elara,” he rasped, struggling to rise. “Are you—are you hurt?”I shook my head, though my limbs still tre