All Chapters of Shadows of the General: Chapter 61
- Chapter 70
98 chapters
Chapter Sixty-One – The Fracture of Love
Her body, if it could still be called that, was splintering into molten shards of flame and memory. Her face flickered, first the woman who had once kissed him in a quiet kitchen, then the woman who had glared at him across divorce papers, then the warrior who had stood against gods.Each version fractured, bled away into the storm, and still, Adrian clung to her.“Selene!” His roar was jagged, half choked by pain. “Don’t you dare do this. Stay with me. Stay!”Her eyes opened, glass-bright, threaded with tears of fire.“Adrian…” Her voice was faint, the echo of a woman who had already stepped beyond the veil. “You have to let me go.”“No!” His grip crushed tighter. He dragged her burning frame against him, ignoring the fire that seared into his flesh. “Don’t you dare ask me to let you go. I’ve lost you once. I won’t lose you again!”Her trembling hand lifted, touching his cheek. It was fragile, fading even as it cupped him. “You’ll survive this. You’ll live. You always had that streng
Chapter Sixty-Two – Ashes of Her
The storm imploded. Adrian fell to his knees, though there was no ground, no sky, no air left to breathe. Just the endless, tearing void and the shards of Selene raining around him like dying stars.His arms closed on nothing, His chest heaved, searching for breath that wouldn’t come, screaming her name into the abyss until his throat split raw.“Selene!”The fragments drifted, burning motes of her laughter, her rage, her tenderness. Each piece pulsed once, twice, then dimmed, fading into the darkness.“No. No, no, no!” Adrian staggered forward, clawing at the light, his fingers ripping through the nothing where she had been. “Don’t you leave me! Not like this!, please”The Eye’s voice rose, a hymn of triumph. At last. The chain is broken. The woman fades, the man remains. As it was written. Adrian’s head snapped upward, his eyes wild, his face streaked with ash and flame.“Shut your cursed mouth!” His roar shook the storm. His fists ignited, his veins burning with fury so violent it
Chapter Sixty-Three – The Gathering Flame
The void boiled, Adrian clutched the shard of Selene to his chest, its glow bleeding through his arms, searing his flesh, scarring his bones. The other fragments drifted closer, drawn by some tether stronger than gravity, drawn by his plea, his fire, his love.“Come back to me,” he whispered again and again, each word breaking, each syllable a prayer and a command. “Come back, Selene. Don’t leave me in the dark.”The first shard sank into his chest, He gasped, his body arching, his veins exploding with fire and memory. A thousand images ripped through him, Selene’s laughter, her scorn, her tears, her smile in the morning when she thought he was still asleep.It burned. Gods, it burned. But he welcomed the fire. “More,” he snarled, reaching into the storm. “Give her back to me.”The Eye screamed, fury rolling like thunder across eternity. Stop this! She is mine! Ash cannot rise! Dust cannot love!Chains of shadow tore at the fragments, trying to scatter them. Adrian ripped them back, h
Chapter Sixty-Four – The Fracture of Worlds
The horizon split, Vivienne Hale staggered backward as the black sky tore open, light searing through cracks in the abyss like molten veins in shattered stone.A wind that wasn’t wind howled across the desolation, ripping ash and shadow into spirals that clawed at her skin. She shielded her eyes, throat raw. “Gods above…”Damon’s arm snapped around her, dragging her close as the storm detonated at its heart. A sphere of searing white and impossible black expanded outward, swallowing distance, swallowing sound, and inside it, two silhouettes bound in fire, Adrian, Selene,Vivienne’s heart stopped. The shockwave struck like a hammer.They hit the ground hard, Damon’s body shielding hers, though even he groaned as the wave crushed ribs, tore through muscle. The earth convulsed, cracking open into glowing fissures.Vivienne clawed up, hair whipped around her face. “Adrian!” Her scream vanished into the roar.Another fissure split before them, vomited flame and shadow in equal measure. Rea
Chapter Sixty-Five – The Fire That Devours
The silence was worse than the storm, Adrian’s body hung suspended in light, every nerve ablaze, every muscle torn open. Blood floated from his wounds in thin ribbons, evaporating into sparks before it touched the ground.Selene’s face was inches from his, flickering, incomplete. Her form dissolved and reformed in his arms, shards of light splitting and fusing again.She whispered, her breath brushing his lips. You can’t hold me like this, Adrian’s teeth clenched, his grip like iron around her trembling shoulders. “Watch me.”The storm rippled, Light surged through his veins, searing down to his marrow. He gasped, choking on fire, as her fragments forced themselves deeper into his soul.Memories poured into him, too fast, too raw, her childhood laughter, her wedding tears, her rage the night she signed the papers, each memory was a blade. Each one cut him open, and still he clung tighter.“You’re not leaving me again, Selene. Not like this. Not ever.”The Eye’s voice boomed through th
Chapter Sixty-Six – The Blade in the Heart
The blade pulsed inside his chest, Adrian’s body convulsed, his vision flashing white, then black, then red. Blood sprayed from his mouth, his heart thundering once, twice, before faltering into a ragged stutter.Selene screamed, her voice echoing inside his skull, sharper than any sound in the void. Adrian, no!He staggered, clutching her closer even as the blade rooted deeper into his flesh, spreading veins of shadow across his ribs. Fire sputtered along his arms, his wings collapsing into cinders.The Eye’s voice filled the storm, At last, The soldier falls. The fire gutters. Ash to ash, Kane, Adrian gasped, his teeth snapping shut on blood. “Not… yet.”His knees buckled. He sank against Selene’s half-formed frame, his arms still wrapped around her, his chest shuddering with every failing beat.“Selene…” His voice was broken glass. “Stay. Stay with me.”Her hands pressed against the wound, flickering but fierce, her essence spilling into him like a flood of light. You idiot, you c
Chapter Sixty-Seven – The Burning of Two Souls
The fire was no longer outside him, It was them.Adrian staggered forward, or thought he did, though he had no sense of legs, of arms, of body. He was flame and blood and memory, stitched together by light that pulsed with Selene’s heartbeat, and her voice was everywhere.Adrian, can you hear me?He gasped, choking on air that wasn’t air. “Yes. Too much. You’re” His own voice splintered, echoing across the storm. “You’re inside me.”Not just inside, she whispered, trembling. We’re the same now.The thought ripped through him like another blade. His memories flickered, his mother’s dying hand clutching the heirloom, the day he took his first oath as a soldier, Selene’s cold eyes as she signed the divorce papers.And threaded through them were hers, her father’s scorn, her lonely nights when she thought he’d abandoned her, her whispered sobs when she realized she loved him still. Their memories bled into one another until he couldn’t tell which belonged to whom.“No,” Adrian snarled, cl
Chapter Sixty-Eight – Through the Fall
The fall wasn’t through space, It wasn’t through time, It was through them.Selene couldn’t breathe, but she wasn’t suffocating, she was unraveling. Her thoughts slipped like threads from a frayed spool, tangling with Adrian’s until she couldn’t tell which memories belonged to her, which heartbeat was her own.A child running barefoot down marble halls, a soldier kneeling before a flag he didn’t believe in, a girl clutching divorce papers with shaking fingers, a boy watching a casket lower into the earth, no tears left to shed.The visions blurred into one another until Selene screamed, her voice tearing into the abyss.“Adrian!”He was there, his outline flickering like fire. He reached for her, but when their fingers touched, they burned.We’re breaking apart, she thought, but the thought echoed in his head, as if they were trapped in a single mind. Then hold tighter, he answered.The abyss around them shifted. It wasn’t void anymore, it was memory made landscape.They stood on a fr
Chapter Sixty-Nine – The Shadow Crown
The throne room pulsed like a living wound, Selene and Adrian stood shoulder to shoulder, though even here, even fused, she felt how thin the line between them had become.Their breaths matched. Their hearts thundered in the same rhythm. But every time she blinked, she saw him, the figure on the throne, It was Adrian, and it was not.He wore the same medals. The same scars. The same eyes, though darker, filled with bottomless hunger.The doppelgänger leaned forward, his voice silk and storm.“You’re finally here. Took you long enough.”Adrian raised his blade, the firelight trembling against shadow. “You’re nothing but a parasite wearing my skin.”The other smiled. “Or I am what you’ve always hidden. The ambition. The fury. The hunger for her.” His gaze shifted to Selene, pinning her in place. “Even now, you burn for her, don’t you? But she never believed in you. She abandoned you when you were nothing. And still you kneel at her side.”Selene stiffened, her throat tight. Adrian didn’
Chapter Seventy – The Choice of Shadows
The air was knives, Every breath Selene took burned her lungs. Both Adrians stood before her—one blazing with fire, the other dripping with shadow, and both eyes locked on hers with unbearable intensity.Her hand trembled around the sword, its flame licking up her arm. “Choose,” the shadow, Adrian whispered, his voice like silk over broken glass.“No!” Adrian’s roar shook the chamber, fire exploding outward. “Selene, listen to me, you know me. You’ve always known me.”Selene’s heart slammed against her ribs. She wanted to scream, to run, to tear the storm apart with her bare hands. But the Eye’s whisper was already in her ear, cold as a knife pressed to her throat.If you choose wrong, you’ll kill him yourself. That’s love, isn’t it? To be the weapon that ends him.The throne room dissolved into shifting landscapes, their memories bleeding together, Adrian as a boy, clutching his mother’s locket.Selene on their wedding night, staring at him while wondering if she’d made a mistake. Th