Lahat ng Kabanata ng Bound To Ruin: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

The dream came in fragments. Flickers of memory that didn’t belong to me—too sharp, too rich with magic, too full of power I didn’t understand. They slid behind my eyes like splinters of glass—images I didn’t recognize but felt with terrifying familiarity.She stood in the same hallway I’d walked days ago. The stones glistened with old blood. Her robes were torn, charred at the hem, soaked with soot and something darker. The torches burned violet-blue, casting shadows that moved like they breathed. She was younger than I expected, but her eyes were ancient. Hollowed. Heavy with knowledge.And at the end of the corridor, waiting amid the bodies, was him.The fae.He sat atop a throne cracked by time and violence, surrounded by gore. Limbs lay twisted like broken branches. Torn cloth fluttered over collapsed torsos. Blood spread in a wide fan across the floor—artfully splattered, deliberate. And he—he was reading. Calm. Still. A book resting in his lap as if the carnage were nothing mor

I didn’t sleep that night, but memories still haunted me. Not mine, hers.They slid in like whispers through the cracks of my mind—half-formed images, fractured sensations. Hands that weren’t mine reaching for warmth, for teeth, for pain that blurred into ecstasy. The taste of blood on a lover’s tongue. The tremble of surrender laced with centuries of grief.I could feel her inside me. Not as a voice. Not as a presence. Just... resonance. Echoes etched into bone and breath. I couldn’t tell where her memories ended and my body began.And I hated how much of it felt like longing.I wrapped my arms around myself and stared into the dying hearthlight, trying to separate the heat in my chest from the heat that pulsed lower, deeper. My thighs pressed together without thought. My breath came too shallow. Every flicker of memory stoked the ache I pretended wasn’t growing.I wanted to forget.But more than that—I wanted to feel it again.That terrified me more than anything else.The memory ca

By the time I reached my chambers, I was shaking. Not from fear.Not just from shame. From everything.Calyx had disappeared like smoke, the echo of his restraint still pressed into my skin. Ruarc had tried to own my body with anger and guilt and memory, then walked away like the damage wasn’t real. The fae—he didn’t need to touch me. Just his voice was enough to sink under my skin, to turn every inch of me into something he already owned.I wanted silence. I wanted distance.I wanted to disappear into my room and never see another monster again.But when I turned the final corner, he was there.Miren.He stood quietly in the hall, near my door, arms folded loosely across his chest. The lantern above him flickered, painting his hair in soft gold and shadow. No rage. No mockery. No hunger leaking from the edges of his expression.Just... calm.The sight of it undid me.Tears welled before I knew they were coming. A sob crawled up my throat, and then I was crying—messy, broken, helpless

The dream didn’t rise gently. It snapped.One moment I was curled beneath Miren’s blanket, the memory of his voice still curling in my chest like warmth. The next—I was cold. Not the kind of cold that made you shiver. The kind that made you still.The air was damp, heavy with the scent of moss and stone soaked through by centuries. My breath clouded in the dimness, but I didn’t feel my lungs move. The world around me wasn’t mine. The stone beneath my feet pulsed. Damp. Earthen. Older than any corridor I’d walked. It breathed like a beast at rest.I stood barefoot. Naked. But the body I wore wasn’t mine. The limbs felt longer. The curves sharper. The skin warmer, even in the cold.Broad hands gripped my shoulders. Not to hold me in place—just to remind me that I was not alone. That I was never alone here.His breath brushed the shell of my ear, hot and wolf-sharp."You should’ve stayed quiet," he said, voice low enough to bruise.The voice was Ruarc’s.And I—she—my ancestor—didn’t flin

I didn’t sleep.Even after the ruin faded and the corridors widened. Even when the moss returned, softening the stone beneath Calyx’s steps. Even when he laid me down in a chamber I didn’t recognize, ringed with old ivy and veins of silver light. I just stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed and hollow.Calyx said nothing. He didn’t try to touch me again. Just sat at the edge of the room, half-shadowed by the wall, like even being too close might break something.And maybe it would.I didn’t know what was worse: the silence outside me or the storm inside. My skin buzzed with leftover grief, tension, shame. The place where my ancestor had died still lingered beneath my fingernails, under my tongue. I could still taste her stillness. Still feel the echo of Ruarc’s breath against her throat—my throat—as if the dream had never ended.I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw at the walls. I wanted someone to blame, someone to shatter for what I now carried—what I could not put down.Instead, I curle