All Chapters of Luna of the Lost Bloodline: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Smoke clung to the ruins of what once was shelter. The night bled red through the haze, and I could still taste ash on my tongue—bitter, hot, metallic. Betrayal burned deeper than any wound. I had trusted the face that turned on me, fought beside them, bled beside them—and now their blade had found my blood.I staggered through the wreckage, every step dragging the weight of exhaustion behind it. My power still flickered under my skin like trapped lightning, unstable and whispering things I didn’t want to hear. The whispers were older than me—older than the moon itself. They spoke of the bloodline, of oaths broken and bonds cursed.Auren’s presence was faint, buried somewhere deep in the noise. I couldn’t tell if it was real or if grief had finally learned to imitate his voice. But the pull toward him hadn’t vanished. It twisted through my veins, defying reason and distance.The forest ahead loomed black against a silver horizon. I stumbled into it, clutching the gash across my ribs.

The air still burned.The scent of petrified flesh lingered like a curse, and my skin hummed with power that didn’t belong to me. Kael was gone—vanished into the smoke the moment I fell—but his words stayed. Promises are meant to be kept.I stood in the clearing, surrounded by stone corpses. The silence pressed on my ears until even my heartbeat felt foreign. I wanted to believe it was over. That the worst had passed. But the world doesn’t stop for grief—it waits until you break and then demands more.A movement to my left snapped me back to instinct. I spun, blade raised.Auren stepped from the haze.Relief flooded me so fast it hurt. His face was smudged with ash, eyes bright and unshaken. “Aria,” he breathed. “I thought I’d lost you.”For one fragile second, I almost believed him.He closed the distance between us, his hand hovering as if he was afraid I’d vanish. His voice was soft, low—too steady for what surrounded us. “You shouldn’t have taken the oath,” he said.I froze. “You

When I woke again, I was no longer in the cavern.The world around me pulsed like a dying heart—slow, heavy beats that made the air throb with power. The ground was wet beneath me, but not with blood this time—with something darker, thicker, glowing faintly blue beneath the surface. The sky above was fractured, divided into swirling panels of light and shadow. The moon hung broken, bleeding silver into the clouds.For a long moment, I couldn’t breathe. The last thing I remembered was Auren dissolving into light, his voice echoing in my head: You opened the gate.Now, the gate was open.I could feel it—a vast rift humming at the edge of reality. It wasn’t just a doorway; it was a wound, leaking through time and space. Every heartbeat felt like it pulled me closer to it.Then came the whisper. “Aria…”My name, drawn out like silk and smoke. I turned sharply.The world bent inward, rippling like water. From the shimmer stepped a figure—familiar and wrong. Auren.Or something wearing his

When I woke, the world was screaming.Not the Gate’s voice anymore—this was wind, fire, human panic. The sound was too raw, too alive. I gasped and the air scalded my lungs with dust and smoke. My body jerked upright on instinct, though every nerve burned as if I’d been stitched back together with lightning.I was lying in what used to be a street. Asphalt buckled like ocean waves around me; cars were overturned, glass glittered in the ruins. The city skyline was torn open, half dissolved into light, half devoured by shadow. Somewhere a siren moaned and then cut off mid-note.The Gate was gone.I could still feel it, faintly—its echo thrumming under my ribs—but the great hum that had filled every molecule was silent now. In its place, an emptiness pulsed.When I pushed up to my knees, I saw the mark.Black veins coiled across my hands, luminous in the darkness, branching toward my wrist like ink spilled beneath skin. At my throat, heat flared; the half-crown’s sigil was seared

I opened my eyes to light.Not sunlight.Something older.It rippled through the air in waves, bending the ground into glass beneath me. The wind had a taste—metallic, sharp, alive. I stood slowly, the world humming beneath my feet like it recognized its new master. The ruins of the old city were gone. In their place stretched plains of luminous ash, rivers of molten silver carving paths through the earth, and black spires piercing the horizon like the bones of a god.And above it all hung two suns—one red, one gold—turning the sky into fire.I wasn’t breathing. I didn’t need to. The air flowed through me now, not into me. My pulse echoed like thunder, matching the rhythm of the world. Every living thing within miles bent toward me—trees, wolves, crows, even the ash that drifted through the air—all bowing as if to a queen.My queenly instincts whispered that I should have felt glory. Instead, I felt grief.I reached up, touching the glowing mark on my chest. It had changed—no longer a