Upon The Tainted Sorrow Book Novels & Stories

If tears were the price of divinity, then let the night remember mine. END OF BOOK 1💜

The chains snapped. Elena dove for the book’s spine, fingers prying at the binding. “The counter-contract! Dad’s erasure—it’s in the glue!” She dug, nails splitting, blood mixing with the book’s. The spine cracked, revealing a single red thread, pulsing like a vein. Marco’s voice was a whisper. “Cut it. But it’ll take one of us. The storyteller has to stay.” The book lunged, pages flapping into wings, the cover a maw. It swallowed Jenkins whole, his scream cut off as the pages closed. Lila’s flare gun fired, the light consumed. The book grew, towering, a cathedral of blood and memory.

Not even the shadows that once answered my smallest thought. I close my swollen eyes. Two days. Then fire. Then perhaps… peace. In the silence of my ruined hearing, I mouth one last word against the dark: *Sorry.* To Mom. To Dad. To Victoria. To the girl I used to be. The chains creak. The torchlight flickers. And Raven Winterstar waits for the end she can no longer outrun. The Guard's Lament

I stood there for a moment, letting the night wrap around me. I should feel relieved. I should feel free. The contract was ending. I could go home. Back to my life. But I didn’t feel free. I felt sad. It made no sense. I was supposed to want this. I’d told myself this was what I wanted—to get out. To be done. But now, all I could feel was the hollow pit in my chest. Aleksander always wore the perfect mask. The successful billionaire. The polished heir. The one who took over and built something bigger. But underneath it all—there was something else. Something corrupt. Something criminal.

“Hunter, how goes the vengeance?” “Slow yet,” answered Felix. She laughed, “You heart doesn’t sound in it like usual.” “My heart is changing,” answered Felix. “Good, vengeance only corrupts and brings more heartache.” Dolorous waved her hand over the water, and a beautiful woman redheaded woman appeared before, she had my eyes, and … “momma, no” I was in a room as a little girl holding her hand in bed, pale. I shook my head. “Evelyn, are you alright,” Felix reached out to me.

And I drive the shard home. The shard punches deep—blood fountains. The Heart convulses—a wet, shuddering gasp. And finally— It dies. The air shudders, the stones shake, and the pit wails—not with anger, but with grief. Something ancient and rotted and wrong weeps into the dark, and I know—we killed something it loved. Good. Let it mourn. Let it drown in it. I collapse to my knees beside the ruined corpse, blood pouring from a hundred torn seams in my body, the shard clutched tight against my chest.

I whispered. A fresh wave of nausea hit, memories pushing like claws against the walls of my mind, shadows of a past life I had spent years trying to understand. This book...This book was the answer. This was the ritual Darren used to kill me, to kill my baby, to take power for himself.

he steps closer, placing his hands on her shoulder "Calm down Delia, breathe in and out " " I can't " She kept on shivering, body trembling. " what happened, what did the book do," Sebastian asked and she looked at him in his eyes. " It ruined my life, my family" a tear dropped from her eyes " It possessed my innocent sister, causing her to kill her father, mother, and brother… this book made my hand fill with the blood of my very own sister" " You killed her?" Delia buried her face in Sebastian's chest " I had no choice" she cried. And I'm left wondering, what exactly is in this book and what the hell have I gotten myself into.

The next morning, she heard from Lucas’s assistant that Vanessa had suffered a miscarriage. … Vanessa sat weakly atop the horse, her voice hoarse as she pleaded for mercy. From the raised platform, Lucas idly toyed with a lighter, his expression unreadable. Only after a long pause did he finally light his cigarette as he decided to let her go. Desperate, Vanessa reached for him, unwilling to accept her fate. But all she received in return was a cold, mocking sneer.

All she needed was to think before she started doing the right thing or digging her grave unknowingly. "No. I'm fine." Clara says finishing her beer and sliding a small white card alongside it before standing up. "you know the gravity gets loose on the weekends." she says before disappearing into the crowd advising June to smile, with a beaming smile as if she wasn't the same woman who appeared seconds ago and offered June a revenge plan with prize money. June collected the bottle and the card and thought about her words and their conversation and all that she has offered; she stared at the card for a long time before a voice snapped her out of her trance.