Buried In The Sky Mga Nobela at Kwento

My chest burned as I drowned in the silence. The scene shifted again. The water was gone, but the weight remained. It was heavy and dry now. Dirt filled my mouth and nose. I was buried deep, the earth pressing against my ribs until I couldn't expand my chest. I clawed at the soil with my fingertips, but there was nowhere to go. There was no air. There was never any air. Finally, my eyes snapped open. I was lying on my back. Above me, the sky was a brilliant, piercing blue. Soft white clouds drifted lazily across the horizon. The sun was warm on my skin. It was a perfect, beautiful day.

My name was in the system. Tomorrow I'd walk back into the one place I'd promised myself I'd never go again, carrying the greatest secret Ethan Graves had ever given me without knowing it. He thought he'd buried me. He had no idea what I'd grown into instead.

It was a terrifying, absolute myth. "He is a dead man walking," Lucian growled, his pitch black eyes snapping toward the shattered stained glass window. "The Blacksite is an underground fortress buried beneath a mile of permafrost. It was built during the Cold War to survive a nuclear holocaust. There is no extraction from that ice."

Outside the window a cloud moved across the pale November sky and the grounds went darker for a moment and then lighter again. She thought about the specific way that terrible things sometimes produced the conditions for something that could not have existed otherwise. She thought about her mother understanding that and working with it for eleven years. She thought about Harlan maintaining a file and a sourdough starter in equal measure. She thought about two people performing in a house full of cameras and slowly, accidentally, stopping. None of it was worth what it had cost. All of it had produced this. She put her hand over his. He turned his hand and held hers.

CHAPTER FOURTY-SEVEN ALL THAT WE BURIED “The deeper you dig into the past, the more it starts digging back.” The mountains rose like broken teeth from the Austrian horizon, white-capped and indifferent. They held no memory of blood, no record of names. Snow covered every ruin eventually. But buried beneath the southern slope of what the locals called Todesspitze—Death Peak—was a structure that predated the Cold War, the Reich, the Empire before it. No markers. No flags. Just the hum beneath the ground, faint and rhythmic, like a second heartbeat waiting to be acknowledged.

The light exposed everything bodies, debris, blood smeared on glass, graffiti that hadn't been there before the words written in black ash, "THE SKY LIED." "THEY'RE INSIDE US." "DON'T TRUST THE ANGELS." I didn't want to think about what any of it meant so I just kept walking. My boots crunched glass and bone and every time I passed a car, I checked the windows, hoping maybe stupidly, that someone might still be inside, alive. But they were all the same. Empty. Dead. Gone. I am selfishly hoping I am not the only one that was kept alive.

“I was only trying to clear my head.” “You are me. I am you. There is no clearing without facing.” My throat tightens. “What about her? My werecoyote. Where is she? Where am I?” The spirit tilts its head, grinding metal echoing in the silence. “Buried. Canum buried her. He bound her howl in silence, pressed her claws into the earth, and sealed her beneath chains of iron. He wanted the world to forget her, to forget you.” The words hit like a blade. “So she’s gone?”

She was playing for the crown, the one they had buried her for. "Alaric," she whispered to the empty room. "I hope you enjoyed your peace. Because I’m coming for everything."

GRAVEYARD~~ EVENING Olivia buried her daughter with the same hands that once held her the first time she entered the world. Nobody came with her to the graveyard, but she did not want anyone there anyway. At that moment, all she wanted was silence. She sat beside the freshly covered grave and slowly placed her trembling hand on it while tears rolled endlessly down her cheeks. All these years, she had only dreamed about Lily receiving a new heart and finally leaving the hospital healthy. Never once had she imagined burying her instead.