All Chapters of The Healer’s Ascension: Chapter 151
- Chapter 160
241 chapters
Chapter 146: The False Whole
The shard in the furnace-eyed figure’s hand burned like a star, gold and blue woven together. Jason’s chest ached as if a hook were tearing through what remained of his ember.His body swayed, ash drifting from his arms where flesh had begun to split into light. Yet he did not falter. “Aria,” he rasped.The figure smiled, and the storm around them hushed to hear it. Her voice rolled across the void like molten bells.“I am she, Jason. Not a shard, not a fracture, not a broken echo scattered across dying realms. I am her whole. All of her, without contradiction. Stronger. Perfect.”Jason’s throat constricted. For one heartbeat, just one, he believed. The tilt of her head, the curve of her lips, the rhythm of her breath, they were Aria’s.Not imitation, not mere shadow. Real. And yet, His fists clenched. “No. You’re missing something.”Her golden eyes flared. “And what is that?”He swallowed hard, his body threatening collapse. “Her doubt. Her fear. Her stubbornness. Her fragility. Her
Chapter 147: The Ember and the Shard
The silence after the strike was worse than the clash itself. Jason staggered in the void, his chest heaving, ash peeling from his skin where his ember had cracked itself open in the push.He could still smell her, smoke and starlight, the scent of Aria when she’d burned bright beside him, but now it was drowned in scorched nothing.The furnace-eyed figure was gone. Where she had stood, only fire residue drifted, curling like smoke across the black. No body. No echo. No confirmation.Jason dropped to his knees, hands pressed to his ribs as his ember pulsed like a broken heart. Each beat was shallow, ragged, as if the next might be the last.“Aria…” His voice cracked. He didn’t know if he was calling to her or to the ashes.Then he saw it: the shard. The one he had driven his ember into had not vanished. It had broken, split into dozens of pieces, each glowing faintly. They hovered before him like a scattered constellation, orbiting his husk.And from them came whispers. Jason. You pro
Chapter 148: Into the Fracture
Jason’s chest was splitting. The shards burned inside him like coals shoved beneath his ribs, each one pulsing to the rhythm of her voice.But it wasn’t his name she called. Over and over, clear as light through glass, he heard her whispering another. Soft. Tender. Sometimes frantic. Sometimes furious.He didn’t recognize it. That made it worse. Jason staggered, one hand pressed against the jagged scars of light carved across his chest. “It’s not real,” he muttered.His voice shook, half to himself, half to the shards gnawing at his ember. “It’s the Ancient playing tricks. It’s not her.”But the warmth of one shard, the memory she’d never meant him to hear, throbbed against his ribs like protest. And he couldn’t ignore that either.The rift ahead yawned wider, spilling light so sharp it cut. The shards dragged him toward it, tugging like chains inside his flesh. Jason gritted his teeth and stepped in.The fracture opened into a corridor of stars collapsing one by one. They burst into
Chapter 149: The Chamber of Light
Jason staggered into the chamber, and the light hit him like fire. It wasn’t warmth. It wasn’t illumination. It was pressure, radiant, crushing, peeling the skin from his soul.His ember cracked in his chest, shards rattling like broken glass beneath his ribs. He bit back a scream and forced one foot forward, then another.The voice was everywhere. Not Jason. Never Jason. Him. Him. Her voice, not his name. Never his name. And ahead of him, silhouetted against the unbearable blaze, stood the figure. Motionless. Waiting.Jason’s fists clenched until light bled through his knuckles. “Turn,” he rasped. His throat was ash. His fury was fire. “Show me.”The silhouette didn’t move. The chamber pulsed. Light rippled across its walls, bending around the silhouette.Jason squinted, forcing his eyes open through the blaze, but no matter how he strained, he couldn’t see the face. It was a mockery, human shape without identity, a weight pressing on him heavier than any blade.His heart lurched aga
Chapter 150: Voices in Collision
The chamber shook with her voice. Jason staggered under the weight of it, the sound wrapping around him like fire and silk, unbearable in its beauty.Aria. Alive. Clear. He wanted to collapse, wanted to weep, until he heard who she was speaking to. Not him. “You came. I thought I was lost.”Her words carried warmth, relief, a softness Jason had prayed to hear again. But they weren’t for him. They spilled toward the silhouette standing in the blaze.Jason’s lungs froze. The shards inside him thrashed violently, each one trying to tear itself free. He clutched his chest, gasping against the fire.“No,” he whispered. His voice cracked like glass. “I’m here. I’m the one”The chamber pulsed, and her voice drowned him out. “I can’t fight alone anymore. Please. Please, don’t let me disappear.”Jason roared her name, but his cry was swallowed by light. She poured everything toward the faceless shape. Confession. Rage. Begging.The torrent of words was alive, rich, tangled in all the contradic
Chapter 151: The Unseen
Jason froze at her cry. “Jason, don’t look!”Her voice hit him like a blade through the ribs. The shards inside him flared violently, pulling him forward, urging him to defy her. His body wanted to obey the hunger, to rip away the veil and finally see.But his heart, his heart heard her plea. And for the first time since stepping into the fracture, he hesitated. The silhouette stood only a few steps away, its face hidden beneath layers of searing light. It didn’t advance further. It didn’t speak again. It simply waited.Jason trembled, fists clenched at his sides. “Why?” His whisper bled ash. “Why not? What are you hiding from me?”Aria’s voice flooded the chamber, fierce, desperate: “If you see, it’ll break you. You’ll never come back.”The shards screamed in his chest, every beat of his ember urging him to tear the truth open. He could feel it burning just out of reach, identity, meaning, the answer to the name she kept calling.His mind roared: Look. You have to. But her plea wrapp
Chapter 152: The Breaking Chamber
Jason’s body was a battlefield. Every shard inside him screamed to look, to rip the mask of light away and face whatever truth stood before him. But Aria’s voice rang through him like a chain wrapped around his ember: Don’t. If you love me, don’t.So he kept his eyes shut, kneeling on the burning floor, chest heaving. The silhouette leaned closer, its radiance spilling across his skin. He felt its heat like breath against his face, but he refused. The chamber did not forgive him for resisting.A sound like glass cracking split the silence. Jason flinched as the walls around him fractured, light dripping down like liquid fire. Through the fissures came visions, stabbing straight into his skull.He saw Aria, but twisted. Her smile, turned cruel. Her tears, turned to laughter. Her whispers, not his name but the other’s, spoken with hunger.The shards in his chest flared, vibrating like blades, trying to force his eyelids open. Jason clenched his fists until blood spilled into the light.
Chapter 153: The Unface
Jason’s knees dug into the burning floor, blood seeping from his fists where nails had carved into skin. His ember sputtered with each labored breath, but he hadn’t broken. Not yet.The whisper lingered in his ear. “Open your eyes, Jason.”It wasn’t Aria’s voice. It wasn’t the flawless counterfeit the chamber had used before. This was something else, low, rough, almost human in its imperfection. The sound carried no warmth, no hatred. Just inevitability.His body trembled. His eyelids twitched. The shards inside him howled for release. Jason whispered through cracked lips, “If this is another trick, I’ll burn the whole realm down around you.”No answer. Only silence, and the sound of breathing that wasn’t his. At last, Jason let his eyes open.He saw nothing. And yet, everything. The silhouette’s head was inches from his own, its “face” not a mask of light, nor flesh, nor shadow. It was unfinished.The space where eyes should have been was a whirl of shards, endlessly shifting, bleedi
Chapter 154: The Rift of Broken Arias
Jason tumbled through the rift like a shard caught in a hurricane. Light and void twisted around him until there was no direction, no up or down, only the tearing pull of possibility. His ember screamed in his chest, but he forced himself not to black out.When the fall broke, he hit ground that wasn’t ground at all, black glass, cracked and endless, reflecting not his own face but Aria’s.Hundreds of Arias. Thousands. Every reflection a different version. One wept, One smiled, One turned her back, One bled, One kissed a stranger’s shadow. Jason staggered to his feet, fists trembling. “What is this?”The unface was already walking across the fractured plain, shards swirling in its hollow sockets. “Her choices. Her might-have-beens. The weight you cannot bear.”From the glass, one reflection peeled free, stepping into the rift as flesh and breath. It was Aria, but thinner, frailer, with eyes hollowed by surrender. She looked at Jason with exhaustion.“Why fight?” she whispered. “Why bu
Chapter 155: The Tower of Echoes
Jason’s boots hit the mirror-street with a sound like shattering glass. Each step spread cracks that spiderwebbed outward, rippling through the ground as if the city itself resented his presence.Above, countless towers loomed, their mirrored walls shimmering with Aria’s faces, smiling, sobbing, screaming, silent. The sight made his chest seize.The shards inside him burned like molten iron, each one crying to answer a different reflection. The unface strode ahead without pause, shards swirling in its sockets, the crack of its mouth leaking whispers that skittered along the mirrored streets. “Choose. Refuse. You cannot carry her all.”Jason’s fists clenched. His voice was a raw growl. “Watch me.”The unface stopped at the base of a tower taller than the rest, its walls black with fractured light. Without a word, it stepped through the glass as though it were water.Jason bared his teeth, ember flaring, and followed. The world shifted.Inside was no staircase, no stone, only corridors