Midnight Crown의 모든 챕터: 챕터 21 - 챕터 30

Smoke curled along the floor like something alive.Not fire.Gas—thick, chemical, blooming beneath the doorframes as the building shook with another breach.Eirwen’s eyes burned.Her lungs clawed for air.Domenik caught her wrist before she could falter.Not gently.Not kindly.Claiming.Grounding.Dragging her back into her body by the force of his grip alone.0“Stay with me,” he ordered, voice low enough that she had to lean closer to hear it.Even here, even now, he didn’t raise it.His control was its own weapon.“I am,” she rasped, fighting the bite in her throat.“Not enough.”He stepped into her space, hand bracing the side of her jaw—not stroking, not comforting—holding.“Look at me.”Her vision blurred.Gas. Fear. The sound of boots pounding upstairs.But his voice cut through all of it.“Good,” he said when her gaze locked on his. “Again.”Another explosion rocked the level below.Talia cried out behind them, her weight dragging on Heller’s shoulder as he half-carried, half

The Widow enters. Silence bends. Allegiances fracture.The door hung crooked from its hinges.Smoke curled in from the hall.Rain hissed through bullet holes in the window frame.But the Widow didn’t step over the threshold—she glided, the way a knife glides across a throat when the hand holding it has forgotten mercy.Her coat was black silk soaked through with stormwater, clinging to her like a second skin. Her hair was pinned high, streaked with silver—not from age, but from fire that hadn’t finished burning. Her eyes—Gods.They were Eirwen’s.Talia choked on a breath behind her. Heller pressed himself to the wall like a man awaiting execution. Domenik didn’t move at all, but every muscle in his body coiled, slow and lethal.The Widow’s gaze landed on Eirwen.Not Domenik.Not the blood on the floor.Not the guns.Just her.“Hello, little ghost.”Eirwen’s heart stuttered. Her mouth went dry.“You’re dead,” she said, but it came out soft, wrong, too fragile for someone who’d survive

BONUS — The Widow: The ApproachPOV: The WidowThe city knew her footsteps.Even after all these years, New Eidolon shivered when her boots hit wet concrete—soft, deliberate, the way a blade whispers through silk. Rain slid down the back of her coat in thin silver ribbons, catching on the hem where fire had eaten the fabric long ago. She never replaced it. Let the burn marks speak.Streetlights flickered as she passed beneath them.Not from electrical faults.From recognition.A pack of gutter wolves—young Várgr initiates with fresh paint on their faces—stood guard at the mouth of an alley. They stiffened when she stepped into view. One reached for his weapon before the oldest caught his wrist and shook his head hard.The Widow didn’t break stride.She didn’t need to.Fear parted her path like scripture.She walked until she reached the rusted scaffolding behind the safehouse—close enough to hear raised voices inside.Her daughter’s.His.Eirwen’s fury was a wildfire she knew by memor

The Tower had no skin left, only bones—steel and black marble splintered by violence, glass teeth jutting from the corpse of yesterday’s kingdom. Dawn crawled through the smoke, painting the world in colors meant for graves, not rebirth.Eirwen stood at the shattered window, naked except for blood, bruises, and the lion’s bite on her throat. The city sprawled beneath her—sirens, ruin, bodies in the street. Her gun was still warm in her hand, but the night’s war was colder than the rain that hissed against her feet.Behind her, Domenik was a silent shadow, bare-chested, hands stained with more than blood. He moved like gravity—slow, inexorable, claiming the space between her and the end of the world.She didn’t turn when he reached her. She didn’t need to. His palm fit around her throat, thumb tracing the bruise he’d left hours before, just above her pulse.“Count the dead for me,” he murmured, voice like broken velvet. “Who do we grieve today?”She let the question hang in the smoke.

The truth opens like a wound. And blood is the only language it speaks.The safehouse Domenik chose wasn’t one of his polished, gilded sanctuaries.It was an old rail-control station buried beneath Crown District—steel bones, flickering lights, the hum of forgotten trains vibrating through the floor.A place the city had stopped looking at long ago.Perfect for opening a message that should have stayed dead.Eirwen sat on a crate near the center of the room, the Widow’s sealed note in her hands.The obsidian wax felt warmer than it should have—like whatever waited inside wasn’t a message, but a heartbeat.Domenik stood a few feet away, arms crossed, back against the wall.Watching her.Not touching.Not controlling.Waiting.Talia lay curled under a thermal blanket, breathing steadier but still pale.Heller paced near the rusted door, muttering something about how every hour with the Laevs shaved a year off his life.The station lights flickered.No one spoke.Finally, Eirwen broke