Alle Kapitel von THE NIGHT MY MATE BURNED ME ALIVE : Kapitel 71 – Kapitel 80

​"You sealed the wrong door."​The words lingered, a flat echo suspended inside my skull long after the voice had faded away. Kael remained on his knees beside me, one hand clamped hard against his ribs as he dragged in thin, rattling breaths that leaked sweat down his pale temples.​My other self stared unblinkingly at the fractured stone wall. "That wasn't Aurelian."​"No."​"Then who was it?"​I tightened my grip on the hilt of the Crown Blade, feeling the cold metal bite into my palm. "I think we already know."​She looked at me, hesitation hardening her features. I didn't want to say it aloud, because the voice hadn't belonged to either of us, yet it carried the exact same cadence, the same tone, and even the subtle rasp at the end of certain words. It belonged to someone older, someone who had spent decades waiting in the dark.​Kael forced himself upright, his knees shaking beneath him. "We need to leave."​I turned toward him, eyeing the gray sweat plastered to his skin. "Can

​The voice rolled up the spiral stone, a low, resonant pressure that settled heavy and hot over the ruins of the city. My boots locked against the ground, refusing to obey the frantic commands of my own nervous system. It wasn’t just my voice echoing off the scorched masonry; woven beneath my cadence came Kael’s rough register, and then the distinct, sharper tone of the other Seraphina, layered one over the next until the amalgamation sounded entirely subhuman, a vibrating chord of memory and metal.​At the bottom of the descent, the heavy black iron of the door waited in the shadows.​Only blood may open.​My double stared down at the threshold, her reflection rippling in the dark metal. “That’s what it wants.”​The original Seraphina didn’t answer immediately. She simply watched me with an unnerving, centuries-deep scrutiny.​“Why me?” I demanded, the metallic taste of adrenaline sharp at the back of my throat.​“Because you’re carrying the awakened half.”​“And Kael?”​“His blood c

​Seraphina couldn't draw breath, her lungs freezing as the woman standing beyond the widening tear of the Veil revealed a terrifying truth. It wasn't a distant resemblance or a deceptive mirror image; the woman possessed her exact face—the precise silver contour of her eyes, the dark fall of hair, the sharp line of her jaw, and even the faint, jagged crescent of a scar beneath her left eye. Instinctively, Seraphina’s hand flew to her own cheek, her fingertips tracing her skin to confirm she wasn't looking at a ghost.​"No," the word tore out of her, broken and thin.​The woman took a single step forward, and something deep inside Seraphina violently answered the motion. Her Dragon Mark flared with a blinding heat, searing her skin so fiercely that pain tore through her chest, nearly dropping her to her knees. Kael caught her before she hit the stone, his arms banding tight around her waist, acting as a fierce, unyielding anchor against the chaos.​"Seraphina," he murmured, his voice s

​Darkness swallowed everything, rolling in thick and absolute until sight became entirely useless. Seraphina couldn't see Kael standing mere paces away, nor the phantom shape of the other Seraphina, nor even Caelan looming in the shadows. She couldn't even make out the pale outlines of her own hands when she raised them to her face.​Yet, stripped of her vision, her other senses sharpened to an agonizing degree. She could feel the entity coiled deep within her chest, stirring from its slumber.​It was awake. And it was listening.​Mother was never the one you needed to fear.​The voice returned, sliding directly into her thoughts without crossing the threshold of her lips.​It was me.​Seraphina's breath caught sharply in her throat. “No,” she whispered, her voice sounding miserably small and frail against the crushing weight of the dark.​Something laughed inside her—not with a boom or a roar, but with a quiet, almost gentle amusement that terrified her far more than any display of f

Something wearing Seraphina’s face stepped through the Veil, and for a heartbeat, Kael forgot how to draw breath.​The woman looked identical to her down to the last detail—the silver cast of her eyes, the dark fall of hair framing her jaw, and the pale, jagged sliver of a scar beneath her left eye. But the posture was wrong. It was too still, too unnervingly calm, as though the chaos of the fractured chamber held no sway over her whatsoever.​Seraphina stared at her own reflection. The woman stared back, her lips parting into a slow, deliberate smile that turned Seraphina’s stomach cold.​"Who are you?" Seraphina demanded.​The woman tilted her head, a mirror-image gesture that felt sickeningly invasive. "You already know."​"No."​"You've been hearing me for years."​Seraphina’s pulse hammered against her ribs. The random whispers in the dark, the fevered dreams that clung to her waking hours, the moments she woke with foreign words sitting heavy on her tongue—all of it clicked into