All Chapters of Dream Sovereign: Chronicles of the Blood Moon: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Vera Moonlock crouched beside the cold stone hearth, her fingers sifting through a handful of candle embers. The Riverside chapel lay in ruins—a dozen shuttered pews, a collapsed roof beam, and a single brazier someone had left burning. She fed the embers one brittle scrap of wood at a time until a flicker of flame caught, then coaxed it to life. Above her, the night wind rattled broken window frames; below, rats scurried through charred floorboards.“Anything to eat?” she murmured, voice raspy as smoke.“No,” a boy’s whisper answered. He huddled against the wall, arms wrapped around a ragged cloak. Eyes—one swollen shut—tracked Vera’s every move. The child was mute, but his hunger spoke plainly. Day after day she’d stolen scraps for him. Tonight, nothing.From the alley beyond the collapsed altar came footsteps: heavy, unsteady. A man’s stagger, the rattle of armor. Vera’s heart thumped—soldiers meant trouble. She rose, straightened her patched cloak.“Get inside,” she his

Vera’s fingers tightened around the cold iron bars of her intake cell. The damp stone floor seeped through her thin leggings, and every gust of wind rattled the barred window high above. She rose on shaking legs as the cell door clanged open. Two Inquisitor guards stood at attention, their pauldrons glittering with obsidian sigils.“Subject SM-1,” one guard intoned. “You will follow.”He jangled her chains; the suppressor cuffs bit into her wrists. Vera swallowed hard but forced herself to meet his gaze. “Where are you taking me?” she rasped.The second guard snapped his gauntlet-clad hand toward a corridor. “Registration wing. Prepare for imprinting.”Vera dragged in a breath. “Imprinting?” Her voice came out brittle, as if scooped from wet ash.“Documenting psychic signature.” The guard’s helm tilted. “Stand still.”They led her down a narrow hallway lined with iron doors, each marked with gradually increasing designations: SM-2, SM-3, SM-4… A distant chorus of angu

The mirror-shattered gallery lay silent in the aftermath of their breach. Torch smoke curled beneath the vaulted ceiling. Beneath Vera’s boots, splinters of glass crunched like brittle bones. Lucien stood before her, breath steadying, crimson eyes flickering with adrenaline.“Your technique at the conduit worked,” he observed, voice low. He eased a broken mirror shard from the floor and twirled it between scarred fingers. “Your dreamcraft is stronger than I feared.”Vera managed a wry smile. “It helps to have someone worth fighting beside.”He grunted approval. “Now we must bind our wills for the eclipse.” He paused, studying her across the shard’s glint. “Tonight. In the dream plain.”She nodded, heart pounding. “We’ll need quiet—and the sigil lantern in the apex chamber.” She wiped sweat from her brow. “We can’t trust the guards to stay unconscious that long.”Lucien’s grin was feral. “Let’s make our sanctuary.”---They retraced their steps up the broken shaft,

Vera crouched amid the dust-choked ruins of the old meditation chamber, her fingers tracing the faded glyphs carved into the stone floor. Torches guttered overhead, casting wavering shadows across the vaulted ceiling. Lucien stood watch at the entrance, chains coiled at his feet like sleeping serpents.“I still can’t believe you shattered that column,” Vera murmured, lifting a jagged shard of crystalline conduit to the torch’s glow. “The frost… it’s beautiful.”Lucien cracked a wry smile, flexing sinewy fingers. “Let’s call it artistic license. But beauty won’t save us if I lose control under the Blood Moon.”She set the shard aside. “That’s what tonight’s for. I need to push beyond stabilization—to domination, if necessary.” Vera’s voice was quiet, determined. “I want to train against projections of berserk Alphas until I can bend them wholly.”Lucien’s expression softened. He stepped into the chamber, boots echoing. “You risk fracturing your mind. You’re already tethered

Vera braced herself against the quivering gondola floor as the freight zeppelin lurched skyward. The envelope sagged like a wounded beast; ropes groaned under the strain. Lucien stood beside her, one hand gripping the gondola rail, the other pressed to his wounded flank where crimson seeped through the torn edge of his coat.“Rough ascent,” Vera murmured, voice tight. “Didn’t think escaping would feel this… desperate.”Lucien’s crimson eyes flashed with humor and pain. “When was anything about this empire ever comfortable?” He glanced down: the Howling Spire’s ruined silhouette receded beneath layers of smoky red mist.Below, the capital’s stone walls glimmered like the teeth of a slumbering dragon. Fires flickered in the slums, spotlights swept the sky, and distant skyships roared in pursuit—though none dared approach the zeppelin. Vera’s dream-woven illusion still held.A sudden lurch: the gondola shuddered, and Vera stumbled. Loose crates of dream-silk supplies bounced,