Novels by Rukky

The abyss convulsed. Where Kael stood, the flames of his reflection and the light of Mira’s tether bent inward, collapsing into him but what spilled out was not either of them.It was something raw, older than fire, older than light. A current that burned without heat, shone without radiance.The Sovereign’s laughter cut short, replaced by a silence so vast it swallowed the void. The reflection staggered, molten cracks racing across its body. “What… what is this?”Mira, trembling on the broken stones of the throne, felt her tether snap taut like a string stretched too far.The golden thread shivered, threatened to unravel, but at the other end Kael burned brighter than ever. She whispered hoarsely, “Kael… what did you do?”Kael’s voice was ragged, every word drawn from the marrow of his bones. “I stopped choosing between pain and hope. Between rage and tether. This… this is mine.”The abyss rippled. Chains of Sovereign fire lashed at him, but the new flame devoured them without effort

The world around Kael fractured into mirrors. Each shard was a battlefield, each reflection a different Kael. Some bore chains that cut into their wrists, dragging them through fire.Others had eyes hollow and soulless, nothing but walking husks. Still others were wreathed in storm and flame, laughing as they burned everything in sight.And at the center two versions of him. One tethered to Mira’s hand, trembling but alive. The other blazing like a god, fire consuming his every step.They collided. The abyss screamed as the two Kaels slammed into one another, a clash of tether and fire.“YOU’RE WEAK!” the reflection bellowed, its molten fists crashing down. “You cling to others like a child! What happens when they’re gone? When she dies? When everyone dies?”Kael caught the blow, his arm shaking, flesh searing. His voice was hoarse but steady. “Then I’ll burn for them. I’ll carry them in the flame.”The reflection snarled. “Pathetic!”The battlefield erupted. Ash rained down in sheets

Darkness. Not the silence of the void. Not the crushing weight of the Sovereign’s throne. This was deeper denser.Kael floated in it, or perhaps he was falling. He couldn’t tell. His body was gone; only ash and fire remained. His thoughts came in fragments, each one burning away before it could settle.Am I still… me?The ember inside him flickered weakly. He tried to hold on to it, but the darkness was greedy. It pressed against him from all sides, whispering, gnawing, pulling at every spark of flame.A voice rose from the abyss. “Child of ember… you are undone.”The words were not spoken, they lived inside his skull, in his chest, in the hollow where his heart used to beat.Kael clenched his teeth, though he wasn’t sure he still had teeth. His voice cracked like burning wood. “You don’t get… to name me undone.”The darkness laughed. The sound folded on itself, infinite, an endless echo. “Names are nothing. You are ash. Ash cannot burn.”But the ember still flickered. And with it Mir

The hand descended. Kael’s body convulsed as the pressure swallowed him. Mira screamed his name, her tether blazing like a sun, but even her light bent under the weight.The reflection hurled itself forward, flames flaring with suicidal fury, but the hand of unmaking did not slow. This was not the Sovereign. This was something deeper. A force that did not strike, it erased.The battlefield shuddered, fragments of broken realms collapsing into the mask’s approach. The god of unmaking pulled not only Kael, but all reality toward its hollow grasp.“KAEL GET UP!” Mira’s cry tore through the chaos. She shoved tether-light into him, strands wrapping his chest, his arms, his failing legs. The light steadied him, even as his ember cracked like shattered glass.Kael dragged himself upright, blood soaking his side, flames bleeding from every wound. His eyes blazed. He lifted both arms, fire screaming from his fists, and roared into the storm:“IF YOU WANT ME, COME AND BURN!”He unleashed everyt

There was no falling. No motion. Only erasure. Kael gasped, but no air filled his lungs. Fire sputtered from his skin, yet it produced no heat, no light.He staggered, clutching himself, but even his body felt fractured like he was both present and absent, burning and extinguished all at once.The silence pressed closer. Not emptiness, but a living hunger, a will that gnawed at his ember, stripping memory from bone, meaning from breath.Faces flickered and died: Mira’s smile, the reflection’s burning gaze, the first flame he had ever kindled as a child. Each one was devoured the instant it surfaced.“No…” His voice cracked, thinner than ash. “You won’t take them.”The silence did not speak, but it answered. Pressure closed around his chest, crushing the ember within. His flames cracked like glass, shards of fire scattering and dissolving into nothing.And then a voice not sound, but imprint seared through his skull. “You were never yours. You were always mine.”Kael staggered, clutchi

The shards did not fall. They hung in the void, jagged prisms suspended in an orbit of impossible symmetry.Each shard reflected Kael, Mira, the reflection, and the Sovereign yet none of the images matched the reality before them. Some showed Kael burning the world to ash.Some showed Mira lying dead at his feet. Others showed the Sovereign kneeling, broken, chains shattered into dust.And in one shard, Kael saw nothing. Not darkness. Not void. Nothing. The absence bled outward. From within that absence, a shape began to crawl.At first it was small a sliver of shadow, a ripple where form should not exist.But as the shards spun, the absence grew, consuming reflection after reflection until every shard showed only the same horror: a vast figure writhing out of the broken glass, its body stitched from silence, its face an unformed abyss.The Sovereign staggered, molten frame shuddering. Its laugh broke into a wheeze. “Yes… yes. Wake. Wake, my master.”Mira’s hand flew to Kael’s arm. He

Fowler held her against his chest, her body cold, her breath gone. “No…” The word was a rasp, almost too quiet for even him to hear.His throat still burned from her grip, every swallow fire, but none of that mattered. His arms cradled her limp form, rocking as though the motion could bring her back.“Selene. Wake up.” His hand trembled as it brushed across her cheek, smearing blood and dirt. He pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes burning with a pain he’d never let anyone see. “You don’t get to leave me. Not you.”Vivienne was frozen a few steps away, her pistol hanging uselessly in her hand. “Is… is she”“Don’t.” Fowler’s voice cracked like a whip, sharp enough to silence her. His chest heaved, but his eyes stayed locked on Selene. “She’s not gone.”The scarred man coughed blood against the tree, his voice a rasping sneer. “You’re blind, General. The oath eats everything it touches. She fought it so it tore her heart instead. That woman is dead.”Fowler’s head snapped toward him,

Inside the void, Selene’s world fractured. Her hands were no longer her own. They moved with monstrous strength, gripping something warm, solid Fowler.She couldn’t see him here in the darkness, not with her eyes, but through the bond she could feel him. His heartbeat. His breath. His life.And she was choking it out. “No stop!” she screamed inside her mind, thrashing against the invisible chains binding her soul. Her body outside did not obey. Her fingers tightened, cruel and merciless.The curse laughed, its voice slithering through her veins. Look at you. So fragile. So desperate. And yet you are the perfect vessel. Do you feel his life slipping away?She shook her head violently, tears burning hot down her unseen cheeks. “I won’t kill him! I love him!”The darkness hissed, wrapping her tighter, smothering her every thought. Love? Love is a leash. That is why your father bound him. That is why I own you now. Because you, Selene Carter, are weak.The shadows shoved her forward, forc

Fowler had faced ambushes, betrayal, and warzones soaked with blood. He had walked through hell in chains and returned alive. But nothing had prepared him for this.Selene’s body writhed against him as though possessed, her back arching in unnatural angles, her throat constricting with strangled gasps.Her nails tore at her own skin, leaving streaks of blood across her arms. Her eyes, once pools of fierce light, were glazed white, trembling behind lids that refused to close.He held her tighter, his voice raw. “Selene! Stay with me, dammit stay with me!”Her mouth opened, but no sound came. Only silence. The silence of chains. Fowler’s jaw locked. He had seen this before. Not on her but on himself.Years ago, in the deepest cell of Blackwall Prison, when the curse of the Carter oath had tried to claw into him. The suffocating silence, the bleeding from within, the feeling of being eaten alive by shadows.And now it was killing her. Vivienne stood frozen just feet away, horror etched a

Darkness. That was all Selene could see. It wasn’t the natural dark of night, nor the gentle black behind closed eyes. This was heavier.A darkness with weight, with teeth, with hunger. It pressed against her from all sides, crushing, suffocating, yet never quite killing.She tried to scream, but her throat was sealed, her voice chained. The sound caught inside her chest, clawing for release, but it died in silence.Am I dead?The thought echoed, faint in the void. But no she could feel. She could feel the burning shackles wrapping around her veins, the serpentine shadows curling tighter around her throat.Every beat of her heart made the chains pulse hotter, hungrier.Somewhere, distant, muffled, she felt Fowler’s arms around her. His voice desperate, furious was little more than an echo.She wanted to answer, to tell him she was still here, still fighting. But the curse smothered her words before they could form.Then a whisper slithered through the dark. Finally… you are mine. Sele

The silence hit harder than any scream. Selene’s mouth moved, her throat strained, but nothing emerged. Not a whisper. Not a sound.Fowler’s heart stopped cold. He gripped her face in his bloodstained hands, terror burning through every scar and muscle. “Selene! Say something, anything!”Her lips trembled. Her eyes, wide and shining with pain, pleaded with him. She tried again, forcing air through her throat. Still nothing.The world collapsed around Fowler. Her voice the one thing that had carried him through chains, through war, through exile was gone.Vivienne stumbled back a step, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh my God… she can’t…”The scarred man lowered his head, grim as a verdict. “The blood chain has bound her. Where it stole your tongue through fire and death, it’s sealed hers in silence.”Selene’s chest heaved, a sob shaking through her body, but it was voiceless. Her hands fumbled at Fowler’s shirt, gripping it tightly, as though her desperate touch could speak what her l

Selene’s blood mingled with Fowler’s on the scorched earth, steam rising where it sizzled against the embers. The air grew heavy, pressing on every chest as though the night itself was holding its breath.Fowler’s ragged convulsions slowed, his body shuddering before finally collapsing into her arms. His chest rose and fell in labored but steady rhythm, each breath a victory pulled from death’s teeth.Selene held him tightly, blood streaming down her cut palm and dripping over his uniform. The moment her crimson touched him, something invisible locked around her.It wasn’t pain at least not the way Fowler had suffered. It was weight. Crushing, suffocating weight.As if shackles of molten iron clasped around her bones, threading through her veins, linking her pulse to something vast and merciless.Her breath hitched. She tried to pull away, but her blood kept flowing onto him, as though the ground itself demanded more.Vivienne staggered forward, her voice frantic. “Selene! Stop you’re

There was no falling. One moment, Adrian’s ribs were shredded by chain, Emily’s body pierced alongside his. The next, the world inverted.Darkness wasn’t around them. It was inside them.The chains dragged them not through space, but through themselves pulling their souls inside-out, blood and essence unraveling like threads through an unseen loom.Their screams echoed in silence, devoured as soon as they left their throats. Adrian’s lightning stuttered, arcs collapsing into sparks. Emily’s flame guttered, trembling like a candle about to die.But the chains blazed stronger with each drop of their light. The Heir’s laughter bled into every nerve. “Yes. Yes. Burn for me. The brighter your fire, the deeper you sink into my crown.”Adrian’s vision fractured, shards of memory flashing past his eyes, his mother’s voice, the storm cresting on his first awakening, the moment Emily’s hand closed over his. All of them cracked like glass.No.He forced his hand to tighten around the chain impal

White light. It wasn’t warmth. It wasn’t cold. It was annihilation.Adrian’s storm burned him from the inside, arcs tearing through muscle and bone. His hand stretched toward Emily’s, their fingers almost locked. Almost.Every vein in his body screamed. The chains around his throat dug deeper, choking the air from his lungs. The Heir’s laughter tore through the collapsing void.“You think you can grasp her? You are already mine!”Adrian bared his teeth, lightning blinding his vision. He forced his arm forward centimeter by centimeter while the void shattered around him. “Not yours,” he rasped. “Never yours.”The crack widened. Golden fire burst through, searing the veins that bound him. Emily’s hand broke through the light. Her palm, flickering and trembling, still reached for his.He lunged. Their hands collided. The world convulsed.Chains snapped like brittle glass, fragments of shadow splintering across the abyss. The storm and the flame bled together, threads weaving, light and l

Darkness swallowed him whole. Adrian plummeted through an abyss with no ground, no ceiling, no horizon.His storm flickered against it, weak arcs of lightning ripping across endless night. The sound of his own heartbeat thundered in his ears, too loud, too frantic.Every breath tasted of ash. “Emily!” His voice cracked, tearing out of his throat like glass. “Emily!”No answer. Instead whispers. They bled from the shadows like veins, creeping along the air, curling against his skin. His own voice, warped, multiplied.“You failed her.” “You chained her.” “You dragged her into the storm.”He gritted his teeth. “Shut up.”The whispers hissed louder. “She will burn away because of you.”The void shifted. Out of the darkness, tendrils emerged veins of black fire, thick as serpents. They pulsed, glowing faintly with crimson light.One lashed around his ankle. Adrian snarled, storm flaring, lightning ripping it apart. The vein recoiled, screeching like a living thing.But more came. Dozens. H

Silence. Not the silence of peace, but the silence of absence. Adrian floated in an endless white expanse, weightless, hollow.No storm raged in his chest. No pain tore through his ribs. His hands were unmarked whole, clean, empty.For the first time since the chains, since the abyss, he felt… nothing. He blinked. His breath fogged against the whiteness, though there was no air, no sky, no ground.“…Emily?”His voice echoed endlessly, swallowed by the void. No answer. A panic he hadn’t felt in years clawed at him. He spun, searching the endless white. “Emily!”Still nothing. And then faintly he felt it. A flicker. Golden. Like the smallest ember in the corner of eternity.He moved, though there was no walking, no ground to step on. The white seemed to bend beneath his will, pulling him toward that tiny flicker.The ember pulsed. Faint. Fragile. Emily. Adrian reached toward it, heart racing. “I’m here! Just hold on!”The ember shivered, a whisper brushing his ear. “…Adrian…”Her voice

The clash ripped eternity apart. Spear against spear, lightning against abyss, will against will.Adrian’s roar was swallowed by the crack of thunder that split the Mirror Realm, the storm in his veins exploding outward.The Heir’s spear drank the storm, devouring every bolt in black fire, feeding it back in a spiral of annihilation.The realm buckled. Mirrors shattered in unison, shards raining down like meteors, each one reflecting the two of them locked together two storms tearing reality down the middle.Emily’s ember pulsed in the distance, a faint gold flame against endless shadow. Her warmth brushed Adrian’s skin even as blood poured down his arms, every muscle tearing under the strain.The Heir leaned closer, their faces inches apart, same eyes, same jawline, same fire except one burned with hunger, the other with defiance.“You’ve fought chains,” the Heir hissed, voice echoing across a thousand shards. “You’ve fought weakness. But you cannot fight me. I am your truth. Every f

Adrian’s breath caught. The silence was wrong. After the roar of collapsing suns and screaming chains, the quiet was suffocating, heavy as stone on his chest.He staggered, still holding Emily close. Her form was weightless in his arms, golden light barely flickering across her body. The ember of her flame pulsed faintly at her heart, fragile, fading.“Emily…” His voice cracked, raw with lightning and blood. “Stay. Just… stay.”But the realm didn’t wait for him. Everywhere he looked mirrors.Floating shards of obsidian glass drifted through the void, each one glowing faintly at the edges. They hovered in concentric spirals, thousands of them, stretching infinitely outward.Some were large enough to walk through, others no bigger than his palm. Each reflected him. But not the man he was now.The nearest shard showed him as a boy, younger, with unscarred hands and wide, innocent eyes. Another showed him bloodied, collapsed after his first failed duel.Another reflected him as a prisoner