All Chapters of BETRAYED BY HER BLOOD, CLAIMED BY THE NIGHT: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

(NOMO HOLT’S POINT OF VIEW)"Sofia, can you hear me through that screaming static, or has that crown already turned your ears to glass?" Nomo shouted, his voice cracking as he dragged his body across the vibrating obsidian floor. Every inch was a battle against a gravity that wanted to flatten his lungs. The air was no longer gas; it was a thick, violet soup of polarized radiation that made the lead plating of his suit hiss and peel. He wasn't looking at a girl anymore. He was looking at a tectonic event shaped like a human woman, her silver hair now a dark, bruised violet that whipped around her head in a private hurricane."There is no Sofia here, little pilot! There is only the resonance of the end!" Seraphina’s voice boomed, overlapping the high-pitched whine of the merging stones. The Queen stood behind Sofia, her hands hovering near Sofia’s shoulders like a puppeteer admiring a masterpiece. "The girl you knew was a mask worn by a goddess who didn't know her own name. She is home

(NOMO HOLT’S POINT OF VIEW)"Hold on, Sofia! Do not you dare close those eyes, do you hear me? That is an order from your pilot!" Nomo’s voice was a frantic, ragged edge of a sound, echoing against the trembling obsidian walls of the primary ventilation shaft. He was staggering, his boots slipping on the slick, cooling fluid that leaked from the ruptured pipes above. In his arms, Sofia felt terrifyingly light—no longer a goddess of unyielding crystal, but a girl of fragile bone and cooling skin."Nomo... you’re shouting again," Sofia whispered, her voice so thin it was almost swallowed by the distant, tectonic groans of the Palace of Whispers. She wasn't looking at him; her dark, human eyes were fixed on the flickering orange sparks falling from the ceiling. "The noise... it’s different now. The screaming stopped.""The screaming stopped because the Queen is gone, Sofia! You did it! You broke the damn world and saved it all at once!" Nomo kicked open a heavy service door, the metal gr

(SOFIA QUISPE’S POINT OF VIEW)"If you place that circlet on my head, Jax, I will melt it down and use the gold to patch the plumbing in the Low-Levels. Do not test me today," Sofia said, her voice echoing across the fractured obsidian tiles of the grand plaza. She was standing on the edge of the fountain that no longer flowed with orange nectar, her boots caked in the gray dust of the fallen palace. She looked at the massive commander of the Covenant, her amber eyes burning with a light that had nothing to do with artificial stones and everything to do with a stubborn, human will."It isn't about the gold, Sofia, and you know it. The people are terrified. They have spent a century being told when to breathe by a woman in a silver robe. They see you, the girl who broke the sun, and they see a god. They need a Queen to tell them they are safe," Jax replied, holding the ceremonial crown—a twisted vine of metal and sapphire glass—with a reverence that made Sofia’s stomach turn. He stood

(NOMO HOLT’S POINT OF VIEW)"If I lose another toe to this frost, Jax, I’m coming for your remaining good eye. Do you understand me? I was promised a revolution, not a slow-motion suicide in a meat locker," Nomo’s voice was a jagged rasp, muffled by the three layers of scavenged wool wrapped around his face. He sat in the cockpit of the grounded skiff, his breath coming in thick, crystalline plumes that froze instantly against the cracked glass of the windshield. The heating coils had died three hours ago, leaving the cabin as cold as the obsidian ruins outside."Complaining won't thaw the pipes, Nomo. And unless you’ve found a way to burn sarcasm for heat, I suggest you start hauling those insulation blankets to the Abribi infirmary," Jax replied, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through the floor of the hangar. The commander of the Covenant looked like a mountain made of ice; frost clung to his beard, and his armor was coated in a thin, translucent glaze. He was draggin

(NOMO HOLT’S POINT OF VIEW)"Don't move, Zilo. If you so much as twitch a finger toward that scanner, I think she’ll rip your throat out before the laser even warms up," Nomo whispered, his voice vibrating with a raw, instinctive terror. He kept his pulse-knife leveled at the figure rising from the shattered remains of the central pod. The air in the laboratory had turned from stale ozone to the metallic, freezing scent of a freshly opened tomb."Nomo, that’s not possible. The biological readings... they’re off the charts. She’s not just a body. She’s a walking reactor," Zilo stammered, his boots scraping back an inch on the wet porcelain floor. The violet fluid from the pod was still steaming, coiling around the newcomer’s ankles like thick, dark ribbons of silk."Is the Queen dead, or has she simply grown tired of watching her garden of failures?" the woman asked. Her voice was an uncanny mirror of Sofia’s, yet it carried a hollow, echoing resonance that felt like a knife dragging a