All Chapters of Ashes of a Good Man: Chapter 61
- Chapter 70
97 chapters
Chapter 58: The Choice with No Mercy
Darkness swallowed the corridor, thick and absolute—except for the light radiating from the golden Malik. His glow didn’t spill outward like normal illumination; it carved through the darkness in clean, deliberate lines,outlining only what he chose to see. And right now, that was Malik. On the floor. Collapsing. Breaking.Rina held him upright, her hands pressed to his cheeks, her forehead against his. His skin was cold, too cold, and the faintest shimmer of gold flickered at his temples like dying embers.“Malik, stay with me, just look at me, baby, come on”His eyes fluttered open. One brown. One gold. Both unfocused. “Rina… I can’t… hold on…”A pulse shuddered through his body. His breath hitched. His back arched, hands spasming in hers. Rina choked on a sob. “You stay right here. Do you hear me? Right here.”Behind her, Maya whispered, “Rina… we’re out of time.”Caleb stepped forward, dampener in hand, its glow weakened, its casing cracked, barely able to hold another charge. “If
Chapter 59: When the Signal Rejects Her Choice
The golden Malik’s expression didn’t change, but the light around him did. It flared. Not warmly. Not gently. Violently.A harmonic shockwave ripped through the corridor, snapping overhead pipes, cracking concrete, shattering the silhouettes behind him into shards of fractured light.Maya was hurled against the wall. Viktor crashed to the floor. Caleb braced himself, dampener raised, teeth bared against the force.Rina curled protectively over Malik as the blast tore past them, shielding his body with her own. The imprint’s voice, usually calm and eerily serene, now cracked with something new.Anger. “You choose an unstable fragment,” it said. “An incomplete identity. A flawed host.”Rina lifted her head, breath shaking, hair falling wild around her face. “You don’t get to choose for him.”The golden Malik’s eyes glowed, brighter, harder. “He will not survive the next pulse.”Rina glanced down. Malik’s breathing had grown shallow again, his skin cold, veins glowing faintly with gold b
Chapter 60: The Mind Unraveling
The hatch clanged shut behind them, echoing through the narrow service shaft like a struck bell. Rina didn’t stop moving.She couldn’t. Malik was fading in her arms, his breath shallow and uneven, his skin cold but lit from within by an unsteady, flickering gold.The analog tunnel stretched ahead in darkness, broken only by dim emergency strips and the harsh beams of Viktor’s flashlight. “Left!” Viktor barked, breathless. “This sector’s insulated, less harmonic bleed!”The team sprinted through the narrow passage. The walls were steel, riveted and humming faintly with old generator lines, technology too ancient for the Signal to influence.But Malik, He was still glowing. Rina gripped him tighter, her heart hammering painfully. “Malik… look at me, okay? Just look at me.”His eyelids fluttered. For a moment, his gaze found hers, brown, exhausted, human. Then it shifted. Slipped. The gold bled through again.“R…Rina…?” His voice echoed strangely, as if more than one version of him was t
Chapter 61: The Breath That Wouldn’t Come
“Malik!”Rina’s cry tore through the tunnel, raw and uncontained. She dropped with him to the floor, palms trembling as she pressed her ear to his chest. No breath. No pulse. No Malik.“NO—Malik—NO” She slammed her hands against his sternum, desperate, frantic. “Come on, come on, breathe, don’t do this, don’t you do this to me!”Maya stumbled beside her, face chalk-white. “Oh god—Rina—he’s—he’s”Rina didn’t let her finish. “Viktor!” she snapped. “Find a pulse—ANYWHERE!”Viktor crawled over, still dazed, moving on instinct. He pressed trembling fingers to Malik’s neck. His expression collapsed. “I—I don’t, he’s not”“DON’T SAY IT.” Rina shoved his hand away and started chest compressions. Her arms shook violently, tears blurring her vision. “Malik, breathe! Breathe, baby, breathe”Caleb fell against the wall, staring at Malik with a hollowed-out expression, horror choking him silent. “Rina” Maya whispered. “He’s gone”“HE IS NOT GONE!”The scream ripped out of Rina like her soul was te
Chapter 62: The Mind That Refuses to Die
The golden smile froze on Malik’s face, too perfect, too still, while beneath it, the human part of him twitched like a trapped heartbeat.Rina stepped forward before anyone could stop her. “Malik,” she whispered, voice cracking, “I heard you. I heard you. Keep fighting.”Malik’s hands clenched at his sides, knuckles whitening. His face spasmed, gold rippling across the surface like static over wet paint.Maya grabbed Viktor’s sleeve. “It’s destabilizing, look, look at his skin”Hairline fractures of light spidered across Malik’s jaw, his neck, his arms, veins of gold pulsing under the surface like something trying to break through.Caleb lifted the damaged dampener, voice tight. “Move back. Rina, MOVE”“NO.”She stared directly into Malik’s burning eyes. “Let him speak,” she demanded.The thing inside Malik tilted his head slowly, the motion eerily calm despite the tremors running through Malik’s frame.“He is incapable of speech,” it said.“But I can interpret him.”Rina stepped clo
Chapter 63: The Empty Space Where He Should Be
Rina woke with dust in her lungs and concrete in her mouth. The world was wrong, tilted, ringing, vibrating like the aftermath of a bomb.Darkness pressed around her, broken only by the twitching flicker of a dying emergency strip far overhead.She coughed, rolling onto her side, one arm dragging uselessly behind her. “Malik”Her voice broke in half.Memory hit her in shards: the golden surge, Malik’s scream, her name ripping out of him, and then nothing. “Malik!” she called again, louder, panic sharpening her voice. “Malik!”Only echoes answered. Pain shot through her ribs when she tried to stand, but she forced her body upright anyway. Her knees shook under her weight. Her vision blurred at the edges. “Rina !”Maya’s trembling voice cut through the dust. She crawled into view from behind a collapsed pipe, coughing hard. Viktor stumbled out next, blood in his hair.Caleb was half-buried under a beam, groaning as he tried to push it off. Rina barely saw any of them. She was searching
Chapter 64 : What Lives in the Dark
Malik’s scream ripped through the chamber, raw, jagged, torn straight from his soul. Rina slammed her fists against the barrier until her knuckles blistered. “STOP! LET HIM GO!”The harmonic wall pulsed with each strike, repelling her like a heartbeat of light. Every time she hit it, a shockwave snapped up her arms, rattling her teeth.Caleb grabbed her shoulders, trying to pull her back. “Rina, RINA, this barrier will tear you apart”“HE’S DYING!” Her voice cracked into a sob she didn’t have time to feel. “He’s, he’s”Another convulsion snapped through Malik’s floating body. His head jerked back, spine arching, golden threads pulling tighter with every shudder.The glowing filaments carved along his skin, not slicing but embedding, sinking into him like roots taking hold. Maya covered her mouth, tears streaking down her face. “This isn’t integration. This is torture”Viktor whispered hoarsely, “It’s forcing synchronization. It’s imprinting itself deeper than memory”“No.”The golden
Chapter 65: The Breaking Point
Malik’s body spasmed in midair, every tremor sending gold splintering through the darkness like cracks in stained glass.His eyes, brown and gold stacked on top of each other, fought to settle, failing every time. The entity tightened its grip around him, the silhouette pulsing like a heartbeat made of pure light.Rina’s voice tore out of her, raw and shaking. “LET HIM GO!”Her steps forward were instinctive, uncontrollable, but Caleb’s arm shot out, stopping her just before a ripple of gold sliced across the floor like a wave of heat. “Rina—NO” he hissed. “That field will cut you in half!”She didn’t care. “He’s dying!”“No,” the entity said, its voice echoing through the chamber like resonance bending through metal.“He is changing.”Malik’s scream shattered the air. His back arched violently; golden filaments embedded deeper, wrapping his ribs, threading down his spine, weaving into him with surgical precision.Maya’s sob echoed off the cavern walls. “It’s, it’s rewriting him”“It’
Chapter 66: The Man Who Falls Back to Earth
The light didn’t fade all at once. It collapsed. A roaring brightness imploded inward, dragging the chamber with it, walls bending, floors splitting, golden arcs snapping like electrical whips.Rina hit the ground hard, rolling across shards of humming debris, ears ringing from the explosion. Dust choked the air. Heat pulsed over her skin. Everything vibrated.“Malik” Rina rasped, coughing, forcing her body up despite the agony kneeling through her ribs. “Malik!”Her vision swam. A flicker of gold glowed ahead, dim, sputtering, unstable.She stumbled toward it. As the dust cleared, she saw him. Malik lay on the shattered floor like a fallen star, limbs limp, chest barely rising, golden residue sparking off his skin and dissolving in the air.The remaining filaments lay severed around him like glowing dead vines. His eyes were closed. Too still. Too quiet. Rina dropped to her knees beside him.“Malik—hey—Malik, look at me” Her hands cupped his face, trembling violently. “Come on. Come
Chapter 67: The Backlash
The golden blast knocked the world out of order. A roar of resonance tore through the chamber, throwing Rina back, slamming Caleb and Viktor into the rubble, sending Maya sprawling with a cry.The cavern floor rippled like a stone dropped into water, metal bending and groaning. But Rina didn’t feel the impact.Her arms locked around Malik’s body, refusing to let him go even as the shockwave rattled her bones. His back arched against her, a strangled gasp ripping out of him as the filament spark fused against his chest. “Malik, Malik, breathe, just breathe!”A violent convulsion snapped through him. Then, His pulse steadied. Not normal. Not safe. But steadier. Alive. Relief crashed into her so hard she almost sobbed. Then a cold realization followed, The entity screamed.The fractured silhouette at the far end of the chamber erupted with golden fury, shards of light shooting outward like razors. Its rebuilding had been interrupted, violently.It staggered, shape glitching, collapsing i