All Chapters of TIME TO FALL IN LOVE: Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

[The Gardener’s Scythe]The air in the Vault of the Great Void was no longer something humans were meant to breathe. It had become a thick, shimmering gelatin of acoustic pressure, vibrating with a frequency so violent that the very atoms of the limestone walls seemed to be rubbing against one another. Dust did not fall; it levitated in perfect, terrifying geometric rings, dancing to the rhythm of Grace’s silver-eyed scream.Panni lay draped over her daughter’s small, shivering form, her fingers clawing into the silk padding of the Void Organ. Every bone in her body felt as if it were being ground into powder by a celestial mortar and pestle. But the pain in her limbs was nothing compared to the ice in her chest as she stared at the figure standing in the settling dust of the collapsed pillar.The man in the tattered ye

[The Root of the Poison]The morning light on the Mekong was a cruel deception. It danced upon the water in ripples of gold and amber, belying the absolute coldness that had settled into Panni’s marrow. She stood on the muddy bank of the river, her body a map of bruises and limestone dust, watching her daughter.Grace moved with a terrifying, fluid grace that no seven-year-old should possess. She didn't look back at the parents who had just weathered a collapsing mountain to save her. Her sapphire eyes were fixed on the black junk drifting toward the shore, and on the woman standing at its prow.Vera Panni looked exactly as she had in the faded daguerreotypes in the Carpathian manor: a silhouette of iron and silk. Her hair was a crown of moonlight silver, pulled back so tightly it seemed to stretch the translucent skin of her face.

[The Chamber of Echoes] The world did not return with light; it returned with a vibration that felt like a needle scratching against the inside of Panni’s skull.When her eyes finally flickered open, she was not on the muddy banks of the Mekong. There was no scent of river silt or the smoke of burning junks. Instead, the air was sterile, cold, and smelled of linseed oil and heavy brass. She was lying on a stone plinth in a room that defied the logic of the jungle she had left behind. The walls were lined with thousands of hollow copper tubes of varying lengths, arranged in a terrifyingly precise mathematical spiral that converged toward the center of the ceiling.Panni tried to move her hands, but they were bound to the plinth by thick leather straps. Her wrists were cold, and as she looked down, she saw why: heavy br

[The Heart’s Crescendo]The laboratory was no longer a place of solid matter. Under the sapphire gaze of the transformed Grace, the stone walls were vibrating at such a high frequency they had become translucent, shimmering like the surface of a disturbed pond. The copper tubes had melted into glowing orange ribbons of liquid metal that snaked across the floor, and the "Acoustic Chimney" was howling with the sound of a thousand storms.Panni stood in the center of the chaos, her hand still locked in Jinyan’s. Her wrists were bleeding where the brass cuffs had been torn away, but she didn't feel the pain. She only felt the terrifying, cold beauty of the girl standing before them.Grace was no longer the child in the yellow raincoat. She was a young woman, tall and ethereal, her hair floating in the static-charged air. Her eyes

[The City of Living Dolls]Neo-Pattaya did not look like the world Panni remembered. Gone were the soft, humid mists of the Mekong and the rugged, unpredictable emerald of the jungle. In their place stood a sprawling megalopolis of black basalt and polished brass, a city that looked as though it had been drafted by a watchmaker with the soul of an executioner. The air here was dry and tasted of ozone and expensive cologne, a sterile atmosphere where every street was laid out in a perfect, geometric grid.Panni clutched Grace’s hand, her fingers trembling. The girl, now returned to her seven-year-old form but possessing a silent, haunting stillness, looked up at the towering skyscrapers. Each building was crowned with a rotating "Acoustic Beacon"—massive bronze disks that hummed with a low-frequency vibration, a sound Panni felt in her teeth.Jinyan walked beside them, his collar turned up to hide the faint, silver luminescence that still pulsed beneath the skin of his throat. He looke