All Chapters of Ashes of a Good Man: Chapter 71
- Chapter 80
97 chapters
Chapter 68: Leviathan’s Spine
The tunnel narrowed until the air felt like it was being squeezed out of Rina’s lungs. The walls, no longer metal, had shifted into something older, stone shaped into unnatural ridges, spiraling like the ribs of some long-dead creature.Viktor’s trembling flashlight beam jittered across the uneven surface. “That’s it,” he whispered. “Leviathan’s Spine. Pre-Signal architecture. We shouldn’t even be seeing this.”Rina didn’t care what it was called. She cared about Malik, cradled against her chest, still flickering with dying gold, breaths shallow and uneven.Caleb jogged ahead a few steps, scanning the dark. “We need a place to stabilize him. That re-link was a stopgap, he’s crashing again.”Malik twitched in Rina’s arms, a soft sound escaping him. A moan. Human. Hurting. She held him tighter. “I know, baby. I’m here.”Beneath their feet, the ground vibrated, faint, rhythmic pulses traveling up through the stone. Maya stiffened. “That’s… not seismic movement.”Viktor swallowed. “No. Th
Chapter 69: The Mind Pulled in Two
Malik’s scream tore through the chamber, raw enough to rip Rina in half. His back arched violently against the platform, golden filaments bursting across his skin like lightning veins.The red surge from the power well slammed into him again, harder this time, jerking his body upward as though invisible hands were trying to pull him apart.“Caleb!” Rina shouted. “You’re overloading him”“No!” Caleb yelled back. “He’s syncing, look!”And he was. For one impossible moment, Malik’s eyes snapped open, Brown. Deep. Focused. “Rina…” he gasped.She leaned close, gripping his face. “I’m here. I’m right here, don’t look away, stay with me”But before he could speak, A golden shriek ruptured the air. The entity plunged down the walkway, its fractured form stretching into an unnatural blur of light.It slammed into the railing, metal warping under the force, then hurled itself toward Malik, toward the surge feeding him life.Caleb swore. “It’s trying to fuse mid-stabilization, if it reaches him
Chapter 70: The First Note
Malik’s heartbeat faltered again, a thin, stuttering rhythm beneath Rina’s hands. “Malik, stay with me”Her voice trembled, breath hitching as she pressed her palm to his sternum. “Don’t you fade. Don’t you dare.”His eyelids fluttered. Cold air rattled in his lungs. Behind them, the entity straightened fully, its silhouette jagged but reforming, golden fractures knitting across its borrowed features. It felt delicate. Dangerous.Moments from collapsing, moments from evolving. Viktor whispered, horrified, “It’s rebuilding too fast”Caleb grabbed Rina’s shoulder. “We have to MOVE. Now. He’s crashing, if we don’t get him away from that thing we lose him AND whatever’s left of this chamber.”Rina shook her head violently. “He can’t be moved while he’s like this.”“We don’t have a choice!”The entity stepped forward, resonance rippling across the platform. “He is the beginning.”Rina pulled Malik closer, curling around him protectively. “You stay the hell away from him.”The entity’s form
Chapter 71: The Spine Opens Its Eyes
The moment they crossed deeper into the Spine, the walls began to shake. Not violently, but knowingly. Like something asleep for ages had felt Malik’s presence and was stretching awake.Rina tightened her hold around him, breath sharp and uneven. Malik trembled in her arms, eyes squeezed shut, the tendons in his neck straining as if trying to hold back a scream.Caleb looked over his shoulder. “It’s reacting to him, we need to move before”A golden explosion ripped through the tunnel behind them. The entity. It tore through the collapsed rock like molten light, shards of gold carving through stone.Its silhouette flickered in and out, unstable but relentless. Viktor swore, grabbing Maya’s arm. “It’s accelerating, GO!”They pushed deeper, and the Spine responded. The stone walls flexed inward, then outward, contracting like lungs struggling to breathe.Cracks split open, revealing veins of pale red light that pulsed in time with Malik’s failing heartbeat. Rina stopped. Not because she
Chapter 72: The Origin Beneath
The platform shuddered, a slow, seismic breath, and the center stone split open beneath Malik with a deep, resonant crack.Rina lunged, grabbing him before he slid into the widening fissure. “NO, no, no, I’ve got you! Stay with me!”But the chamber had already chosen. A pull, gravitational, harmonic, impossible, dragged Malik downward. Not by force. By recognition.The red veins along the walls pulsed faster, spiraling inward like they were guiding him back to something they remembered. Or something they lost.Caleb shouted over the rising hum. “Rina! We have to get him off that platform or it’s going to swallow him”“He CAN’T be moved,” Viktor snapped. “You saw the resonance feedback, pulling him could trigger a collapse!”Maya pointed at the fissure, eyes huge. “The chamber is responding to him. Not us!”Rina lowered herself beside Malik, gripping his face in both hands. “Malik, look at me. Don’t go. Stay here. Stay with me, please”His eyelids flickered. For a heartbeat, she saw br
Chapter 73: Chosen Before the Echo
The light shattered, not outward, but inward, collapsing into itself like a dying star. Rina clung to Malik as the world around them reassembled in a violent rush of resonance.Shapes formed from sound; structures rose from vibration; color bled into existence like ink dropped in water.When the brilliance finally softened, they stood, not on a platform, not in a chamber, but in the middle of a vast, pulsing void.A floor of translucent red-gold light stretched beneath their feet, rippling with every breath Malik took. The air felt dense, charged, like static waiting to ignite.Malik staggered. Rina steadied him, her hands trembling. “Malik? Talk to me. What is this place?”He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring ahead. At the figure. It stood on the far side of the glowing expanse, towering, immense, its body constructed from layered harmonic waves.Its shape flickered between forms, sometimes humanoid, sometimes geometric, sometimes pure light. When it spoke, the entire world answe
Chapter 74: Returned
The memory-plain broke apart around them, shards of resonance spinning like fragments of a shattered mirror suspended in slow motion.Malik stared at the collapsing world with hollow eyes, breath trembling, voice barely a whisper: “…I died?”Rina grabbed his face, forcing his gaze to hers. “No. No, listen to me, that’s not what it means.”But she wasn’t sure. Not with the figure watching. Not with the resonance shifting around them like a verdict unfolding.The figure stepped closer, each movement bending the fragments of reality around it. “THE FIRST NOTE CANNOT BE SURVIVED.”The air tightened. Rina felt it in her chest, like the memory itself was holding its breath. “BUT IT CAN CHOOSE.”Malik shook his head slowly. His voice cracked. “Why me? I wasn’t, there’s nothing special about”The figure’s hum deepened. “YOU WERE NEAR THE FRACTURE. NEAR THE MOMENT OF WOUNDING.”Rina’s breath caught. “Near… how?”The figure turned, lifting an arm. A ripple spread across the broken plain, pullin
Chapter 75: The Consequence
The world of light snapped shut like a trap. One instant, Rina and Malik were suspended in the final moment of his “return” the First Note knitting his shattered soul back together.The next, the memory collapsed inward, pulling its brilliance into a single thread that shot straight into Malik’s chest.He arched with a cry, the impact knocking Rina backward. The origin plain dissolved around them, torn away piece by piece until, With a concussive whump, reality slammed back.The chamber. The Spine. The platform below them. The real world returned like the gasp after drowning.Rina scrambled to Malik’s side the moment their bodies hit stone. He lay on his back, convulsing, white-gold light cracking across his skin like lightning beneath flesh. “Malik, Malik, breathe, breathe”She pressed her hands to his cheeks. His eyes snapped open. Brown, white, brown, gold, a flickering storm of identities. “Rina…” His voice gurgled, broken.“I can’t, I can’t hold it, there’s too much”“You’re here
Chapter 76: The Choice the Spine Demands
The entity hit Malik like a golden thunderbolt. Rina barely had time to scream before both of them were thrown backward, Malik slammed into the floor, the entity skidding across the stone in a burst of fractured light.The chamber reacted instantly. The walls heaved inward. Red veins split open. Resonance surged in violent, concussive bursts.The entire Spine was rejecting the collision. Caleb shouted over the quake, “The chamber’s destabilizing, Rina, we need to MOVE”But Rina didn’t move. She crawled across the shaking floor toward Malik, debris raining around her, breath tearing in her chest. “Malik, Malik, get up, please”He struggled to his knees, one hand pressed to his chest, white-gold light bleeding through his fingers. He looked like he was trying to hold himself together by sheer will. “Rina… run…” he whispered.“No,” she said immediately. “Not without you.”The entity rose from the rubble in a jagged flicker of light, its form distorted, its resonance unstable, sputtering.
Chapter 77: Inside the Cocoon
The chamber didn’t simply seal around Malik, it exploded outward, red-gold shockwaves tearing through every seam of the Spine.Caleb threw an arm over his face as a blast of resonance sent debris flying. “We have to get OUT -now, this whole place is collapsing!”Viktor grabbed Maya’s wrist and dragged her toward the only intact corridor. “MOVE—before the next pulse hits!”But Rina didn’t move. She was still at the base of the rising stone shell, slamming her fists against it, breath coming in frantic, broken bursts. “OPEN—OPEN—GIVE HIM BACK”Her voice cracked until it was barely sound.The Spine answered with another violent pulse, knocking her backward. Caleb caught her before she hit the ground. “Rina—we don’t have time!”She struggled against him, eyes wild. “I’m not leaving him! He’s in there ALONE”A third pulse hit, the strongest yet, a concussion of resonance that shook the entire chamber like the heart of a beast slamming against bone. The ceiling cracked. Dust rained.The exi