All Chapters of Blood ,Fire and Frost: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

Selene POV:Nothing cracks.Nothing burns.Nothing announces itself with the kind of violence people expect when the world changes.That’s how I know the Axis has finished opening.I wake before dawn with the sensation of standing in a room where the walls have quietly been removed overnight. The space around me is the same—the stone ceiling, the thick tapestries, the faint scent of ash and cedar—but something essential has shifted. The pressure I once carried like a second spine is gone.Not vanished.Distributed.The Axis does not live inside me anymore.It moves around me now, like weather that no longer waits for my permission.I sit up slowly, feet touching cold stone, letting my body adjust before my mind catches up. There’s no recoil. No backlash. No hunger curling up from my gut demanding response.Just… quiet.That should terrify me.Instead, it feels like th

Rowan POV:The Clarion Assembly doesn’t call them enforcers.They don’t call them wardens, or judges, or the kind of names that make people spit when they say them. They call them Witnesses, like it’s holy work, like standing near someone’s private choices and recording them is some sacred fucking burden.The name makes my teeth itch.I don’t go in as myself.Not fully.I change my posture first. Shoulders looser. Eyes less direct. I dull my presence, let the wolf settle just beneath the skin instead of sitting at the surface like a blade. I trade my usual dark leather for plain gray cloth and a rough cloak that hides the shape of my arms. Dirt under my nails. A scratch across my cheek. A man who could be anyone.Lucien’s veil work helps too. Not an illusion that will crack, just a subtle bend in attention, a nudge that makes people’s eyes slide off my face before recognition can catch.Selene wanted to come.

 Selene POV:The fracture doesn’t happen loudly.It doesn’t shatter the hall or tear the sky open or announce itself with violence. It happens the way ice breaks beneath your foot—quietly, invisibly, and all at once.Clarion fractures within hours.By nightfall, three councils have suspended certification. Two others have doubled down, declaring emergency authority “for the safety of the populace.” Speaker Maris vanishes from public view entirely, replaced by a rotating assembly of deputies who speak with rehearsed calm and eyes that don’t blink enough.The worst part is that everyone claims they’re acting reasonably.I stand in the war room of the citadel, staring at a map that refuses to stay still. Pins glow and dim as reports arrive faster than my aides can catalog them.Riots in the lower coast.Witness tags destroyed publicly.Witness tags enforced violently.A healer beaten for refusing

Selene POV:I do not stand on a balcony.I do not wear a crown.I choose a plain hall, stone walls scarred by age, no banners except the ones carved by time. The Axis hums low and steady around me, restrained by intention rather than force.If I am going to speak to the world, I will do it without theater.The relay stones activate one by one, glowing softly as they open pathways across cities, enclaves, and fractured territories. Faces shimmer into being. Some familiar. Many not.Workers. Elders. Bonded pairs. Skeptics with arms crossed and mouths already forming rebuttals.I let the silence sit.Then I speak.“I won’t ask you to trust me,” I say. “I don’t deserve that by default. No one does.”Murmurs ripple.“I won’t tell you the comfort hubs are evil,” I continue. “Because that would be a lie. They feed people. They heal wounds. They offer safety.”I pause, letting that la

Selene POV:The city does not forgive quickly.It remembers.Even when streets are cleaned and terminals repaired, there is a residue that lingers. A tension in the air. A way people flinch when systems hum too loudly or lights flicker unexpectedly.I walk among them without guards.That alone angers my council.They don’t understand that I need to feel this with my own skin.The district where the child collapsed smells like antiseptic and scorched circuitry. The square has been partially reopened, but flowers sit awkwardly against scorched stone. Someone has left a toy near the edge of the containment field.I kneel to move it out of the way.A woman’s voice cuts through the murmurs. “Don’t.”I look up.The child’s mother stands a few paces away. Her face is hollowed, not by grief alone, but by exhaustion. The kind that comes from fighting something that never shows its teeth.