All Chapters of Marked From Birth: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The deck of Aethelgard felt like the surface of a dying star. The heat from the Sea of Salt was no longer a weather condition; it was an adversary. The massive iron plates of the city's hull were expanding, groaning with a sound like a tortured animal as the molecular structure of the steel fought the relentless thermal assault."The anchors are vibrating at twenty thousand cycles per second!" Mara yelled over the screaming wind. She was crouched behind a protective lead-glass shield, her eyes fixed on the "Light-Harpoons" that had impaled the city’s flank. "Every time they pulse, they send a shockwave through the main drive-shaft. We can't even get near the fracture without the vibrations liquefying our internal organs!"Audrey looked at the horizon. The three Southern Interceptors were circling the stalled city like golden vultures. They weren't firing traditional munitions; they were maintaining the "Tether," waiting for the sun to reach its zenith so the Sun-Forge in Solaria could

The sky above the Sea of Salt did not just brighten; it ceased to be a sky and became a solid sheet of incinerating force. When the Sun-Forge at Solaria discharged its secondary beam—the "Scrubbing-Light"—the atmosphere itself seemed to scream. The nitrogen in the air ignited, creating a corridor of violet-white plasma that raced toward the stalled engine of Aethelgard.Audrey stood alone on the salt-crust, a small, dark speck against the infinite white. She had discarded her Void-Cape. It would have vaporized instantly under this level of radiation. Instead, she stood in her simple leather tunic, her skin bared to the solar assault."Mother, get back!" Mara’s voice was a distorted shriek over the comms, but Audrey had already reached the state of "Total Filtration." She didn't hear the voice; she felt the vibration of the sound as a physical wave against her eardrums.As the beam struck, Audrey did not buckle. She invoked the "Law of the Mirror," a technique she had hallucinated whil

The descent from the Mouth of the West into the "Gate of the Deep" was a transition into a realm where the laws of the surface no longer applied. As the Great Engine of Aethelgard lumbered onto the massive stone elevator—a relic of the First Era powered by ancient hydraulic counterweights—the air began to change. It became thick, heavy, and saturated with the scent of salt and primordial silt."We are officially below sea level," Vane reported from the Bridge, her voice tight with the strain of monitoring the hull's integrity. "The external pressure is climbing by one atmosphere every fifty feet. If the reinforced basalt of our lower decks has even a single hairline fracture, the ocean is going to come in like a guillotine."Audrey stood at the forward observation port. Outside, the darkness was absolute, broken only by the city’s high-intensity floodlights. They revealed the "Gate"—a pair of monumental bulkheads made of a strange, non-corrosive green copper, embossed with the interlo

The "Root" of Solaria was a monument to the South’s pathological need for order and their utter contempt for the natural world. It was a gargantuan shaft of reinforced golden glass, five hundred feet in diameter, descending from the ocean floor into the planet’s mantle. Through this translucent pillar, liquid light—pure, concentrated solar energy captured by the Spire above—flowed downward to power the Southern empire’s sub-surface mines.To the Golden Queen, the ocean was a "Dead Zone"—a place where no light could survive, and therefore, no threat could exist. They had forgotten that shadows thrive in the dark, and that pressure is just another form of power."It’s a masterpiece of arrogance," Lucas said, his eyes reflecting the amber glow of the pillar. From the city’s forward deck, the Root looked like a frozen lightning bolt impaling the earth. "They think they’re safe because they own the sky. They never looked at what was holding them up from below. They built a throne on a glas

The transition from the elevator to the Throne Room was a descent into a divine hallucination. Audrey felt the floor beneath her feet—not as cold iron or stone, but as a warm, vibrating surface that felt like living skin. Her sight was a blurred smear of white and gold, but her "Shadow-Sense" remained. She could feel the presence of her sister, Aurielle, sitting at the center of the brilliance like a spider in a web of light."You look pathetic, Audrey," Aurielle’s voice rang out, echoing not through the air, but directly inside Audrey’s skull. "Smelling of grease and salt, dragging your broken king behind you. You have traveled ten thousand miles just to die in a room that is too clean for you to even breathe in."Audrey stood her ground, her hand reaching out for Lucas’s shoulder to steady herself. "The cleanliness is a lie, Aurielle. I saw the 'Roots.' I saw the creatures you’ve been starving in the dark to keep your mirrors shining. Your 'Radiance' is just a debt you’ve pushed ont