All Chapters of The Useful Son In-Law: Chapter 231
- Chapter 240
253 chapters
Chapter 215: The Spiral Beneath
The steps spiraled downward into a crimson haze, each one formed from a stone that pulsed faintly—as though blood flowed beneath its surface. The deeper Elira walked, the more she felt the air thicken, warmed by an unseen current that brushed along her skin like a living breath.Kael stayed close behind her, silent but alert. Tarin brought up the rear, scanning upward often, as though expecting something to follow them down the spiral.None of them spoke at first.Voices felt dangerous here—like sound itself would awaken something waiting beyond the mist.The only noise was the rhythmic hum pulsing through the stone steps and the distant rumble of machinery buried far below the earth. Once, the hum synchronized with Elira’s heartbeat so perfectly that she stopped walking, clutching her chest.Kael nearly collided with her. “Elira?”She raised a hand, signaling him to wait.The hum wasn’t random. It wasn’t mechanical.It was… responding.She stepped forward again, and the hum deepened—
Chapter 216: What Remains Unbroken
The sanctuary did not return to silence all at once.At first, there was only the sound of breathing—ragged, uneven, alive. Then came the slow settling of stone, the soft drip of melted candle wax striking the floor like a ticking clock, marking moments no one dared to count.Clara was the first to move.She lay half-curled on the cold ground, her palms scraping against the stone as she pushed herself upright. Her head rang, her vision blurred, but one thought cut through the haze with terrifying clarity.Michael.“Michael?” Her voice came out hoarse, barely louder than a whisper.A shape shifted several paces away. A low groan followed.Relief struck her so sharply her knees nearly buckled again. She crawled toward him, ignoring the ache in her limbs, ignoring the sting in her lungs. Michael was on his side, one arm tucked beneath him, his breathing shallow but steady.She touched his shoulder. “Michael. Look at me.”His eyes fluttered open.For a brief, awful second, she feared they
Chapter 217: Beyond The Last Threshold
The sanctuary did not greet the dawn.Instead, it clung to the night as though afraid to let go.A thin gray light pressed against the high windows, struggling to enter, but the glass resisted it—darkened by old magic, by years of secrets whispered into stone. The air inside felt heavier than it had the night before, thick with the residue of what had nearly crossed over. Whatever had reached for Michael had not vanished entirely. It lingered, like a wound that had not yet learned how to bleed.Michael sat on the edge of the altar steps, elbows resting on his knees, hands loosely clasped. He had not slept. Sleep felt dangerous now—too close to surrender. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt it again: the pressure, the pull, the sense of being copied, not merely watched.Clara stood a few paces away, quietly packing what little they could carry. There was a deliberate calm in her movements, but her eyes betrayed her. They flicked toward Michael again and again, as though she feared h
Chapter 218: The Land That Watches Back
The ground beneath them was not stone, nor soil, but something in between—compact yet faintly pliant, as though it remembered movement long after footsteps passed. Clara became aware of this first, the unsettling sensation that the earth was aware of her weight. When she shifted her footing, the surface responded with a low, almost inaudible vibration.Michael felt it too.He straightened slowly, scanning the horizon. The landscape stretched outward in fractured layers—ridges folding into one another at impossible angles, valleys filled not with mist but with drifting shadows that pulsed like breath. Above them, the sky glimmered with vein-like streaks of dim light, slowly rearranging themselves as though mapping something unseen.“This place is alive,” Clara whispered.Alistair nodded grimly. “Not alive as you understand it. It is conscious without compassion. Everything here remembers what has crossed into it.”Michael flexed his fingers again, grounding himself in the sensation of
Chapter 219: Breach Marks
The ground beneath the sanctuary did not break all at once.It remembered first.Clara felt it before she understood it — a subtle vibration beneath the soles of her boots, like a pulse traveling upward through stone, bone, and breath. It wasn’t violent. It was deliberate. The kind of movement that suggested intention rather than collapse.Michael staggered forward, catching himself against the fractured altar. His reflection did not follow.That absence — that wrongness — struck Clara harder than the darkness had.“Michael,” she said, her voice steady only because fear had already hollowed it out. “Look at the floor.”Hairline fractures traced outward from where the shadow had struck moments earlier. They weren’t random. They curved and looped, forming patterns that twisted into symbols Clara had seen before — not written, but felt — in the moments between sleep and waking.Alistair knelt slowly, pressing his palm just above the stone without touching it.“These are breach marks,” he
Chapter 220: Quiet Aftermath
The sanctuary did not return to silence so much as it settled into it, like a body going still after a deep wound.Not peace. Not safety. Just a fragile quiet stretched thin enough to tear.Michael sat on the cold stone floor where the shadow had collapsed inward, his back against a fractured pillar. His breathing was slow, controlled—but every inhale felt borrowed, as if the space around him was still deciding whether to allow him to remain. The air tasted different now. Sharper. As though something unseen had passed through and left its mark behind.Clara knelt a few feet away, her hands resting on her thighs, afraid to touch him yet unable to look away. She had seen Michael hurt before—physically, emotionally—but never unmoored. Never like this.The shadows no longer reached for him.That frightened her more than when they had.Alistair stood near the altar, one palm pressed against the cracked stone where the sanctuary’s protective seal had once been strongest. The faint glow that
Chapter 221: Marked Ground
Morning did not arrive all at once.It crept in cautiously, as though the world itself was uncertain whether it should reveal itself yet. Pale light filtered through the fractured stained glass of the sanctuary, breaking into muted streaks of color that slid across the stone floor like reluctant witnesses. Once, those colors had carried meaning—hope, renewal, divine order. Now they felt fractured, uncertain, stripped of promise.Michael stood at the threshold, one hand resting against the cold stone of the doorway. He had not slept. Even if he had tried, he knew rest would have been impossible. Something in the air beyond the sanctuary tugged at him—not urgently, not violently, but persistently. Like gravity adjusted ever so slightly in his direction.Outside, the world appeared unchanged.The trees stood where they always had. The sky stretched pale and cloudless. Birds flitted between branches as if nothing had happened.But Michael knew better.The world wasn’t different because it
Chapter 222: Eyes Without Faces
The moment Michael crossed the boundary, the world noticed.Not with spectacle. Not with violence.But with awareness.The air changed first—not in temperature, but in texture. It pressed closer to his skin, thickening as though the space around him had learned his shape and decided to remember it. Each breath felt heavier, more deliberate, as if even the act of breathing now carried consequence.Clara felt it immediately.Her steps faltered, heart skipping as a slow unease crept up her spine. It was the same sensation she had felt the first night Michael’s reflection vanished—only now it was stronger, sharper, impossible to dismiss.“Michael,” she said quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. “Something’s wrong.”Michael stopped moving.He stood with one foot fully beyond the marked ground, the other still close enough that he could almost pretend retreat was possible. Almost.He closed his eyes for a brief moment, grounding himself, listening to what his body was telling him.Pres
Chapter 223: The First Answer
The message did not arrive as words.It arrived as weight.Michael felt it settle into him slowly, deliberately, as though the world had decided to lean just a little harder in his direction. Not crushing. Not painful. But undeniable. A second gravity layered atop his own—one that made stillness feel like defiance and movement feel inevitable.He didn’t stagger. He didn’t cry out.But something inside him shifted, aligning to a pressure he had never known existed.Clara sensed it instantly.She had learned the language of Michael’s silences over time—the subtle distinctions between reflection, fear, and the deeper quiet that came when something unseen brushed against him. This silence was different. Heavier. It pulled at the air between them, thinning it until even breathing felt deliberate.“Michael,” she said carefully, lowering her voice as though sound itself might fracture something fragile. “What’s happening?”He didn’t answer right away.His gaze remained fixed on the valley ah
Chapter 224: Shifting Ground
The world did not snap back into place.It settled—slowly, cautiously, like something testing its own weight after a long imbalance.Michael felt it first beneath his feet. The ground no longer resisted him the way it had since the crossing. The subtle tension he’d grown accustomed to—the sense that reality itself was bracing against his presence—had softened. Not vanished, but recalibrated.As though the world had finally decided how much of him it could allow.Clara noticed the change in him before she noticed it in the land.“You’re lighter,” she said quietly, walking a half step closer. “Not… relieved. Just different.”Michael flexed his fingers, studying them as if expecting them to blur or fracture. “It’s not lifting me,” he said. “It’s redistributing the weight.”Alistair grimaced. “That’s rarely good news.”The forest around them seemed unchanged at first glance—trees unmoved, birds still threading between branches—but the sound was wrong. The usual chorus of distant life had