The Shards Novels & Stories

“I’m listening, but I’m not sure I like what I’m hearing so I might cut you short and send you out soon.” He looked up at me and his eyes glistened with unshed tears. All of which were fake to me. He thinks that he could shed crocodile tears to move me? “I made terrible mistakes. I didn't know what came over me. Leaving you, choosing Kiara… I ruined everything good in my life. And now, I’m paying for it. Kiara and I are done. The relationship was toxic. She’s…” He explained to me before trailing off. Kendrick shook his head in shame. “It’s not what I thought it would be. I messed up.”

"Every shard is a transceiver. They are turning the Earth into a massive Passive Radar Array. They’re waiting for the Overseer fleet to return, and they’re building a beacon to guide them back." The Physiology of the Shards The shards operated on a Swarm-Intelligence model, utilizing a "Molecular Consensus" to decide their next form. FeatureData PointThreat Level MaterialLiquid Carbon-Mercury IsotopeExtreme (Self-Repairing) MetabolismKinetic & Thermal AbsorptionHigh (Harder to hit, stronger it gets) CommunicationSub-Quantum EntanglementAbsolute (Zero Latency) The Hunt: The Starlight Squad

The shard shattered completely, its energy dispersing in a burst of light. Evangeline screamed, the force of the attack disrupting her hold on the remaining shards. "You insolent little—" Before she could finish, Lucian appeared behind her, his movements a blur. He struck with precision, severing her connection to another shard. The second explosion rocked the chamber, sending all three of them sprawling. Aria groaned, pushing herself up on shaky arms. She saw Evangeline lying amidst the rubble, her body limp, her dark aura fading. The remaining shards hovered in the air, pulsating with unstable energy.

Jarek shifts mid-leap, tearing into the shadows, but they’re endless. “Run!” Ryland barks, grabbing Selene’s arm. We sprint through the crumbling fortress, the shadows closing in. Selene clutches the shard, her glow flickering. “We’re not going to make it,” she gasps. “Yes, we are,” I growl, shifting to shield her. The shadows surge, their touch like ice. --- **The Third Shard** The final shard lies in the northern mountains, hidden in the tomb of the First Alpha. The air is thin, the cold biting.

“The shards are driving them mad.” Zara dropped to her knees, palms pressed into the soil where the dust had fallen. Magic sparked like a thousand stings. The shard’s energy writhed, unclaimed, unchained. It wanted to crawl inside her veins, to feed. “It’s chaos,” she said hoarsely. “Every shard is a wound, bleeding wrong power into the land.” Above, another streak tore down. She could feel its destination before it landed. South, near the river. Witches would already be on their way—hunters, scavengers, anyone desperate enough to take hold of such power.

The shard sat in my palm when my hand retracted. "Destroy it," I looked at Valen and threw it into the air. Valen released a purple electric ball that exploded the shard into cinders. Panic-stricken, Assad trembled in my left hand. At this point, he had no voice left to speak. Blayne would want me to make him bleed for days. The thought of my friend brought water to my eyes. A profound sadness threatened to swallow me whole. In the rise of the wind, a large burst of blue-green wave infused with sun-lit white in its crescendo splashed roughly against the shoreline to deliver a choking Kodjo and Tygart at my sand-caked feet before forming a diminuendo and ebbing back to sea.

The Shardlands were unlike any place Aria had ever seen. Shards of crystal jutted from the cracked earth like the spines of a great beast, each one refracting not just light, but memory. Beneath a sky of fractured moons and bleeding clouds, the landscape shimmered with a thousand versions of itself—past, present, and future folding into one. It was a place where time bled, and the truth shattered. Aria stepped forward cautiously, Kael by her side, Lena and Tarek trailing close behind. Their Rootbound allies had refused to come this far. Even the flame-warded scouts had turned back at the edge of the crystal border.

The ground beneath the sled turned into a liquid-grey grid, and the sky flickered from bruised purple to a sterile, blinding white. ​While the Vanguard engaged the Inquisitors in a frantic, high-velocity dance of shadow and light, Aris scrambled toward the Shard. It sat at the center of a mile-wide crater, a jagged monolith of "Raw-Silver" that hummed with a sound like a choir of a million dying stars. The air around the Shard was so dense with energy that Aris’s hair began to glow with a soft, violet bioluminescence.