Chapter Thirty-One: Chained

Night opens like a throat, and I drop into it.The chain she named hums along my ribs—a thin, bright wire. “Feed to live,” she said, and the words lodge like a splinter under my tongue. I taste them with every breath. I hate them. I need them.Hunger makes a map of the city for me. Warm rooms. Thin doorways. Hearts bright as lanterns behind plaster and brick. I could pick any of them. Tear a piece from the dark and swallow. I have done it for longer than their countries have had names.I choose an alley that smells like old rain and fresh breath. A man waits there with patience that isn’t kindness. His phone is a mirror to his face; he pretends to read. He has already watched three women pass. He will watch a fourth.She turns the corner alone, keys in her fist because some part of her knows the world’s teeth. He steps off the wall as if to ask a question.I drop behind him.He never sees me. My hand closes his mouth; my other hand lifts him by the back of the neck until his feet leav

Last Updated : 2026-01-04

Chapter Thirty-Two: Night One

Morning broke like a held breath finally let go. No sirens. No push alerts screaming death into my hands. Marianne texted a string of hearts and a blurry photo of her coffee. Jamie sent a meme about Monday trying to kill him. Normal. The word sat wrong on my tongue, chalky and fragile.I stood at the window with a mug I didn’t drink, listening to the city’s quiet. It wasn’t peace—not with the roofline cutting the sky like a blade—but it wasn’t the night’s wail either. Somewhere out there he had fed and not killed, if he’d kept his word. Somewhere out there the chain I’d named was humming against his ribs.Relief and dread twisted together until I couldn’t tell them apart. What kind of monster listened? What kind of woman wanted him to?I tried to live the day like a person who didn’t watch the roof. I showered. I dressed. I cooked eggs and burned them and ate them anyway. When I caught myself touching the small healed wound he’d left on me, I forced my hands to the sink, scrubbed a pl

Last Updated : 2026-01-04

Chapter Thirty-Three: Eternity’s First Scar

The dawn burned me for staying.I should have gone when her breathing evened, when her hand loosened against my wrist. Every instinct shrieked to vanish, to slide back into shadow before the gray touched the curtains. But I didn’t. I lay there in her bed with the heat of her pressed against me, and I let the sun’s threat creep closer until my skin itched with it. For her. Always for her.She had said, hold me. Nothing more. Does she know what it costs me to lie still? To feel her pulse against my arm and not bite? To breathe her hair and not bury my mouth in her throat?The restraint carved me hollow. It scraped my bones raw. I shook with it, every muscle locked until even the mattress trembled. She thought it was fear easing from her chest. It wasn’t. It was me, waging war with myself in silence, learning the shape of a chain I had never worn before.I could have taken her a hundred times in the hours she slept. One gasp and I could have slipped my fang through skin, licked salt, dru

Last Updated : 2026-01-04

Chapter Thirty-Four: Blackout Vows

The day unraveled like thread between my fingers. I tried to knot myself into ordinary things—coffee, dishes, errands—but every quiet moment hummed with the memory of his arm around me, the weight of it, the impossible fact that he stayed until dawn. I carried that surprise like a bruise under my skin. It hurt when I pressed it, but I kept pressing anyway.Marianne texted twice, both messages laced with worry she tried to hide as banter. I stared at the screen until the words blurred. What could I tell her—that the monster they whispered about in the streets was curling himself around me at night like a shield made of fangs? That the reason the sirens had gone quiet was because he let me chain him with a word? No. Some truths were too sharp to hand over.So I answered nothing. I let the phone go dark and sat with my own shadows instead.By late afternoon I felt raw, as if my skin didn’t quite fit. The blackout curtains I’d hung hours before shut the light out so completely that my roo

Last Updated : 2026-01-04

Chapter Thirty-Five: Mortal Exploration

The first thing I felt was heat.Not her body against mine, though memory still clung to me like smoke—her scent in the sheets, the phantom weight of her head against my chest. Not her pulse, which had carried me through the night, steady and taunting, a rhythm I counted until the hours bled thin. This was different—brighter, crueler. It gnawed at the edge of my hand where it had strayed past the curtain.I hissed and snatched back my fingers. Skin blackened and split, the smell of it sharp as iron and seared flesh. Sunlight: a predator older than me, pouring through the seam like molten glass.Too late. I had lingered too long. The night had abandoned me, and now I crouched in a room made dangerous by the very thing she worshipped with her waking.I crouched at the edge of her bed, watching the seam of the curtain burn faint gold, and considered the mathematics of leaving. How far could I make it before fire took me? Could I vault roof to roof fast enough to find shadow? Could I craw

Last Updated : 2026-01-04

All Chapters of The Sound Of Ruin: Chapter 31 - Chapter 35

Chapter Thirty-One: Chained

Chapter Thirty-Two: Night One

Chapter Thirty-Three: Eternity’s First Scar

Chapter Thirty-Four: Blackout Vows

Chapter Thirty-Five: Mortal Exploration