All Chapters of THE DEVIL'S FRUIT : Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
31 chapters
Chapter 10: Fracture.
You never have.The words were like pieces of ice, hammered in a midnight storm, that came out of the lips of Aric Blackthorn, each syllable cleaving the tense silence like a blade thrust home.“You bastard!” The stillness was broken by the scream of Vira, and the face of that girl was contorted into a mask of naked, unrestrained rage. Everything around them was moving slowly, like syrup, as the world was approaching a boiling point.The crimson eyes of Aric flashed with deadly accuracy, and narrowed to slits, as though to cut through the very air. His senses were keener, all his muscles tensed as a bowstring.He beheld it all.The slight shake in the hand of Vira holding the dagger, the fingers tightening with the venomous determination.The angry throbbing of a vein at her temple, the fury and barely suppressed rage.The sternness of her set jaw, where reason sank beneath the incoming flood of anger.The straining energy in her legs, ready to deliver a brutal attack.He had practice
Chapter 11: Blood In The Dust
Crimson flecks painted Vira’s face, arms, and the soil beneath her feet, yet the boy’s expression remained utterly untouched.Aric Blackthorn simply stared at her, blank, motionless, a cold-eyed statue carved from defiance and quiet rage."Why?" Vira’s voice cracked through the stillness like a blade. "Why won’t you just break?!"Her voice cracked the clearing like thunder, echoing with hysteria and disbelief. She raised both clawed hands to deliver a final, feral blow—one meant to end something deeper than pain."Mistress!"Kael’s voice struck the air like a thrown dagger.Vira froze, her talons suspended inches from Aric’s battered face. Her chest rose and fell in furious bursts. Her head whipped toward Kael, and her bloodshot eyes locked on his."He’s… a direct descendant of the Blackthorn bloodline."Silence warped the world.Aric might be a shattered shell of a prodigy, but that detail alone—his lineage—held terrifying gravity. Even she, wife of a Pulse, could not touch that bloo
Chapter 12: Red Letter.
Aric Blackthorn’s days bled into one another with a numb and gnawing difficulty. Though Lucien Blackthorn acknowledged him as a direct bloodline, he made no illusions about favoritism. In the halls of Clan Blackthorn, mercy was a forgotten dialect, and Aric was expected to survive it all alone: a lamb cast among wolves armed with obsidian teeth.When he failed to evolve at twelve, the cold got colder.Lucien had once glimpsed a flicker of potential in Aric, hoping that perhaps, just perhaps, the boy might awaken a spark from the ash of his father’s legend. But Aric’s failure to evolve was a scar on the clan’s pride, one Lucien could not let fester. So he threw Aric at the abyss, again and again, hurling him into encounters with the darkness beasts that festered in the outskirts—hoping violence might awaken virtue.After two years of silence and failure, even hope gave up.And now, the latest mission was not a test, but an execution dressed as duty.High above the courtyard, Corvin cle
Chapter 13: Do or Die.
The world, if it could still be called that, felt like a fever dream soaked in failure. A smearing of emotion painted across Aric Blackthorn’s mind as he knelt amid the splinters of pride and shattered bone.For years, he had ground his knuckles against the teeth of fate. He had trained, bled, and swallowed scorn like it was medicine. Every sunrise was another vow. But now, with the Sovereign’s decree upon him, the universe folded in like a cruel joke.He was going to die."FUCKKK!"His roar shredded the silence. He slammed his hand into the floor, shattering stone and screaming through splintered nerves. Cracks spiderwebbed from the impact, but the worse cracks were internal. His arms broke beneath him like wet branches.And yet..."Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!"He slammed again. And again. Each blow spat red into the air, blood soaking the ivory floor, painting the quiet room in violent grief. Pain was just punctuation now.All his hard work. All the years of endurance, of silently choking dow
Chapter 14: No Shame Left.
"Finally," Darius Blackthorn muttered, his eyes gleaming with a predator’s thrill.After dragging that useless failure of a boy along like dead weight through mission after mission, it was finally time to sever the chain.'I hope he runs. I pray he refuses.'Because if Aric Blackthorn so much as flinched the wrong way, Darius would have the legal, personal, and deeply satisfying pleasure of ending him — officially.The grand obsidian doors of the Blackthorn manor swung wide.Out stepped Aric.And behind him, silent as snowfall but twice as lethal, Seris.Back straight. Eyes like twin blades of polished winterglass. Gait fluid and fast, as though he carried not weight, but purpose.The gathered sentinels, clad in matte crimson armor, bowed as one. Aric did not spare them a breath."Ninth Vein," one murmured as he passed.He said nothing, climbing into the bloodwood carriage without so much as acknowledging Darius.Normally, such brazen disregard would have ignited Darius’ fury. Today?
Chapter 15: Into the Corner.
Rowan bowed with a fluid motion, polished and precise."As you command. Follow me."Before anyone could move, Aric Blackthorn’s voice sliced through the air like a scalpel dipped in frost."Just me and Seris."Darius Blackthorn flinched. A sudden frown contorted his face. He stepped forward, that trademark Blackthorn authority radiating from every pore."I'm afraid that—"His words died on his lips. A slow, cold sweat trickled down his spine. The chill wasn't physical—it was ancestral.He turned.Rowan’s eyes had found him.And they weren’t just looking. They were daring.‘Is he threatening me?’The question laced itself with fury as Darius’s jaw clenched. His aura roared to life, a maelstrom of crimson psionic heat flooding the air. The ground beneath his boots cracked from pressure alone.He was no mere officer—he was a captain of the Sovereign’s Faction, the high seat of Blackthorn supremacy.Rowan might wear the title of Blood Champion, but so did he.To have a mutt from Black Rea
Chapter 16: Beneath The Pit.
"Ready, Ninth Vein?"Rowan’s voice fractured the quiet like a blade across ice.Aric Blackthorn blinked once, slow and unreadable, before peeling his gaze from Seris. His eyes shifted, not lazily, but with terrifying clarity, to Rowan.He nodded once.Rowan snapped the reins of his Gravethorn. The beast snorted, embers rising from its nostrils like it resented being tamed. Aric followed suit, his own Gravethorn obeying with a rumble, and Seris flanked him silently.They moved as one toward the gate.It wasn’t just massive. It was impossibly massive — a slab of forged obsidian laced with spell-etched silver, bound in mechanisms older than the dome itself.Rowan gave a slight nod to the guards.With a sound like dying titans, the gates groaned open. Chains snarled. Runes flared a dull red. Gears locked and unlocked with the weight of entire cities.A wind shrieked through the widening divide — cold, bitter, and sharp with metallic tang.Aric’s jacket flared behind him. His hair danced i
Chapter 17: Edge Of The Abyss.
Aric Blackthorn’s gaze clouded, not with fear, but with the weight of understanding that settled like wet stone in his chest.From Rowan’s initial explanation, some secret and foolish shard of him had hoped — maybe this was survivable, maybe there was a trick to it. But no. That fragile illusion shattered like glass beneath a boot.This was a dead end dressed as a test.Among all the ominous things Rowan had revealed, one detail screamed louder than the rest.They were all my age.The descendants who vanished into the pit had only just begun to bloom, power fresh and unstable, not yet rooted. They were young. His kind of young.Not like the veterans who had entered and returned untouched, aloof and stoic. No, these were fledglings who never came back.Aric’s thoughts twisted dark, circling like carrion birds.Will I vanish too?He asked without hesitation, "Where did they go?"If he knew, maybe he could anchor something. Anything.Rowan turned to him and shook his head slowly, with th
Chapter 18: The Walk.
Darkness consumed everything.It was not just the absence of light, but a complete severing of sensation. No sound. No texture. No gravity. No thoughts. Only the void.And yet, Aric Blackthorn floated within it.He drifted like a leaf on an invisible sea, and for the first time in his fractured memory, he felt peace. A peace so whole it mocked every pain he’d carried. The weight of expectation, the agony of betrayal, the screaming silence of loss—it all dissolved into nothing.Until even himself began to fade.His name.His reason.His rage.Even the outlines of his parents' faces bled out into oblivion.But then—Two crimson eyes snapped open in the void.Aric’s psyche reeled as though punched by a memory. His senses returned like glass reassembling mid-shatter."That was too close."His inner voice rang sharp, the blade of thought reforged. Something was trying to crawl into his mind, slow and subtle, like ink bleeding into paper."Don't forget... don't forget..."He clenched his ja
Chapter 19: The Blacktongue.
A spear of light cracked open the clouds above a still, secluded lake.Then came the splash.A boy’s body plummeted from the heavens, crashing into the water like a broken comet. He hung there for a breathless moment, suspended just beneath the shimmering surface, until his eyes shot open with a jolt.A gasp.Wide, disoriented eyes scanned green canopies above, then the still lake below.That lake—It froze him.His head dipped back under, submerging in silence, before erupting upward as he drank, ravenously, without care for purity or safety. The cold water slid down his throat like liquid salvation. He didn’t stop until his lungs screamed and his chest ached. Only then did he pull back, panting, his breath uneven, ragged.“A forest,” Aric Blackthorn muttered, forcing his body upright, joints stiff, skin raw.His hands roamed across himself with frantic precision.Weapon: intact. Supplies: secure. Body: wrecked.Agony pulsed through his muscles like coals buried in flesh.Gritting hi