Novel & Cerita The Shattered Lands

Chapter 28 – The Shattered Triangle The air was a blade, sharp enough to draw blood with every breath. The storm shrieked, a howl of fractured sky tearing against shattered earth. The battlefield that had once been solid beneath their feet was now a living wound, jagged cracks glowing with shadow-fire, ash choking the air.

The crystal spreads to my fingertips-cold, beautiful, *dead*. "No." I tear free, shattering the shard. --- **The Shattering** The cavern collapses. Eden screams, the crystal fracturing, his scars reappearing as jagged wounds. The Keeper wails, her form dissolving into shards. "What did you do?!" Eden roars, clutching his bleeding arm. "Saved you," I say, pulling him into the chasm's void. We fall. --- **The Aftermath** We land in a desert of black sand, the sky a swirl of dying stars. Eden's scars are raw again, the melody in him a discordant wail. He doesn't look at me.

It was a graveyard of rubble and broken dreams. ​I gripped the edge of my mahogany desk until the wood groaned under my palms. Lysander. The bastard had finally done it. He hadn't just attacked; he had dismantled me. I had been there—I had felt the tremors of the earth when the support pillars collapsed, felt the heat of the fire licking at my boots. I’d barely made it out alive, my shoulder sliced open by flying shrapnel, barely stumbling back to the packhouse before I passed out from the blood loss.

The Lunar Shard At the center of the ruins, atop a stone pedestal, the Lunar Shard pulsed with an ethereal glow. Kaelan stepped closer, feeling its power thrumming through the air. It was beautiful—translucent, with swirling silver light dancing inside it. "This is it," Leona whispered in awe. Kaelan reached out, his fingers brushing the surface. The moment he made contact, the world around him shattered. Visions of Destruction Darkness consumed his sight. Then— Flashes of fire. A battlefield littered with bodies. Wolves howling in agony. The sky, painted red with blood. He saw himself—not as he was now, but as the tyrant he had once been.

CHAPTER 126 — THE SHATTERING The horizon tore open, and the new figures emerged—shadows taller than buildings, their forms shifting like liquid nightmares. They moved with purpose, each step fracturing the ground, sending fissures that glowed with molten light. The air burnt with static, thick and choking, as if the sky itself had caught fire.

Gabriella “This is your new room now.” Dante’s voice cut through the silence like a knife. It was icy, piercing, and utterly conclusive, enveloping my heart with the heaviness of his words like steel shackles. He towered above me, his towering figure creating a shadow so immense it seemed to engulf me entirely. And at that instant, I understood — truly understood — that any remaining hope I possessed was quickly and irretrievably fading like sand slipping through my hands.

Then the wasteland opened below. The Outlands was vast. That was the only word that came at first. Vast. From the ground, Ashvale had felt like a nightmare pressing close around us. From the sky, it became a world. Broken, yes. Burned, yes. But immense. Ash plains rolled into jagged ridges. Red cracks glowed like veins beneath black skin. Far-off smoke columns rose from places I could not name. In the distance, something moved across a grey basin, large enough that its shadow stretched long behind it. There were ruins too, half-swallowed by ash, towers leaning toward one another like exhausted giants. Dry riverbeds cut the land into scars. Some places glowed with hidden heat. Others lay pale

They ran through the valley. It had been, in the brief moments before the realm's final convulsion, a place of strange beauty—a meadow stretched between the boundaries of the between-place, a green expanse that had seemed to promise peace, a resting point before the final ascent. Now it was a battlefield of collapsing dimensions. The grass had become glass, shattering under their feet into fragments that hung in the air, suspended by the same law that was now breaking apart. The sky had become a river, flowing upward, carrying with it the debris of a thousand shattered bargains, a million discarded promises, the accumulated wreckage of a system that had governed death for longer than memory.

The Shattered Vale stretched before them, a scarred plain of ruined villages, blackened trees, and rivers turned to molten veins. The wind carried the smell of ash, blood, and smoke, a bitter reminder of Malakar’s cruelty. Ashenrealm’s army had gathered at the Spire’s edge, soldiers lined in rigid formation, banners flapping in the acrid air. Magic and fire intertwined in the sky, flickering with anticipation.

Well then, have fun watching her getting blown up! Violet shrieked at the top of her lungs. "Save me, Kev! Hurry up and kill that maniac before defusing the bomb! I don't wanna die!" Kevin just stared at Daniel numbly. "Let me trade places with Violet. She's innocent. You can strap the bomb to me instead." Daniel continued to grin. "I knew it! You really love her! To think that you're willing to die just to save her! "But then again, I won't let her go. You won't be able to escape from your doom either. My bomb's extremely powerful, you know? It can decimate the entire warehouse in an instant!"