All Chapters of Bones of the Betrayed: Rise of the Last Bonekeeper: Chapter 91
- Chapter 100
112 chapters
CHAPTER NINETY — “WHAT RISES AFTER THE THRONE”
Elias did not fall into darkness. Darkness rose to meet him. It poured upward through the fractures in his bones, through the shattered marrow-channels the Throne had torn open inside him.He felt it first as cold then weight then a pressure so immense it pressed memories flat. Seren’s voice reached him faintly. “Elias stay stay with me.”He tried to answer. No sound came. The Echo inside him was no longer screaming. It was silent. That terrified him more than pain ever had.“Move!” Caedia shouted. The Throne chamber shook violently as another shockwave tore through the palace foundations.Bone pillars cracked. Noble balconies collapsed in cascades of white dust and screaming stone. Seren dragged Elias’s limp body across the fractured floor, teeth clenched, arms shaking.“I can’t he’s too heavy.”Lyra dropped to her knees beside her without hesitation. “Together.”They hauled him back just as a slab of ribstone slammed down where he’d been lying. Seren sobbed. “He’s not breathing righ
CHAPTER 91 — “THE MOMENT BETWEEN BREATHS”
The silence was wrong. Not peace. Not calm. It was the kind of quiet that came before something decided to kill you.Elias stood with his arms outstretched, palms open, as if holding back the sky itself. The air around him felt thin, stretched tight like glass about to shatter.Seren whispered, barely audible, “Elias… say something.”He couldn’t. The hollow inside his chest burned not with pain, but absence. Where the Echo had once roared, there was now a vast, aching space pulling at everything near it.Especially Lyra. She gasped, clutching her chest, knees buckling. “Lyra!” Seren cried, grabbing her before she hit the stone.Lyra’s voice shook. “It’s… listening.”Caedia’s staff trembled violently in her grip. “No. This shouldn’t be possible.”The Reliquary loomed over the ruined palace, ribs grinding as it shifted, ancient bone scraping against collapsed towers. The column of light from its core flickered unstable now, searching.Searching for purchase. Elias forced his voice out.
CHAPTER 92 — “THE CROWN MOVES”
Lyra’s feet never touched the ground. She hovered inches above the shattered stone, hair lifting as if caught in an unseen current.Golden-white light threaded through her veins, pulsing in time with a rhythm that did not belong to her heart. The Echo’s rhythm. Seren stumbled backward. “Lyra… please… say something.”Lyra turned her head slowly. When she spoke, the sound carried too far, too clear. “I am speaking,” she said gently. “You’re just hearing more than you used to.”Elias felt his knees weaken. “That’s not funny,” he said hoarsely. “Stop this. Come back.”Lyra looked at him and for a moment, the glow dimmed. “I am here,” she said softly. “I’m still me.”The Reliquary bowed deeper, massive ribs grinding as it lowered itself toward her. Caedia’s voice shook. “Lyra… the Echo doesn’t bow. It commands.”Lyra frowned faintly, as if noticing the thing for the first time. She lifted one hand tentative, curious. The Reliquary froze. Seren gasped. “She didn’t even touch it.”Lyra blink
CHAPTER 91 — “THE MOMENT BETWEEN BREATHS”
The silence was wrong. Not peace. Not calm. It was the kind of quiet that came before something decided to kill you.Elias stood with his arms outstretched, palms open, as if holding back the sky itself. The air around him felt thin, stretched tight like glass about to shatter.Seren whispered, barely audible, “Elias… say something.”He couldn’t. The hollow inside his chest burned not with pain, but absence. Where the Echo had once roared, there was now a vast, aching space pulling at everything near it.Especially Lyra. She gasped, clutching her chest, knees buckling. “Lyra!” Seren cried, grabbing her before she hit the stone.Lyra’s voice shook. “It’s… listening.”Caedia’s staff trembled violently in her grip. “No. This shouldn’t be possible.”The Reliquary loomed over the ruined palace, ribs grinding as it shifted, ancient bone scraping against collapsed towers. The column of light from its core flickered unstable now, searching.Searching for purchase. Elias forced his voice out.
CHAPTER 93— “THE HAND THAT LETS GO”
Lyra screamed as the Reliquary pulled harder. Not a sound of pain of terror. “Elias please!” His boots skidded across fractured stone, heels carving white grooves as the force dragged her inch by inch toward the blazing hollow at the heart of the ancient construct.“I’ve got you!” Elias roared. “I’ve got you don’t let go!”Seren wrapped both arms around his waist from behind, teeth clenched, muscles screaming.“I’m not letting you die for this!”The ground beneath them split. Caedia shouted, voice cracking, “The Reliquary is asserting dominance if it completes the draw, she will be absorbed!”Lyra sobbed. “I don’t want to disappear!”Elias’s hands shook violently around her wrists. The Echo surged wild, unstable tearing through both of them like a storm with no center.“STOP,” Elias screamed not at the Reliquary, but at the power itself. “STOP DOING THIS TO HER!”The Reliquary answered. Its ribs ground together, sound like a mountain collapsing. Golden fire flared brighter.Seren scr
CHAPTER 94 — “THE PRISON THAT BREATHES”
Lyra woke screaming. The sound didn’t echo. It was swallowed. She clutched at her chest, sucking in air that burned like frost and ash.Light pulsed around her golden, dim, endless stretching in all directions like a living vein. “No,” she whispered hoarsely. “No this isn’t.”The prison answered. Not with words. With weight. The space tightened, pressure settling against her bones, her thoughts, her heartbeat. She felt herself being measured catalogued folded into something vast and patient.“You chose,” a voice murmured.Lyra froze. The voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t cruel. It was ancient. “I chose to live,” she snapped, forcing herself upright. “I chose to save them.”A pause. Then: “Those are rarely separate.” She turned slowly. The Reliquary’s core loomed before her not a shape, but a convergence of bone, fire, and memory.Faces surfaced within the light hundreds, thousands frozen mid-scream, mid-prayer, mid-command. “They’re inside you,” Lyra whispered, horror creeping into her voi
CHAPTER 95 — “THE THING THAT WAITS”
The dark inside the Reliquary was not empty. It watched. Lyra stood frozen as the golden light bled away, replaced by a depthless black threaded with faint veins of dull red.The air if it could be called that pressed against her skin like a held breath. “Elias,” she whispered again. “There’s something else in here.”Outside, Elias felt the words strike him like a blow. “I know,” he said quietly, hands still braced against the fractured bone. “I feel it too.”Caedia shouted from behind him, “Elias step away. Whatever that prison was built to contain it wasn’t just the Echo.”Seren’s voice trembled. “Then what was it?” No one answered. Because the darkness moved.Lyra took a cautious step back as the red veins brightened, pulsing slowly deliberately like a massive heart beginning to wake.“You are not the Anchor,” the prison’s ancient voice murmured, strained now. “You are an interruption.”Lyra swallowed. “An interruption to what?”A shape formed in the dark. Not a body. A presence co
CHAPTER 96 — “THE CITY THAT BREATHES”
The city beneath the palace wasn’t dead. It breathed. Elias felt it the moment his boots touched the ancient underway stone veins humming beneath his soles, walls vibrating with a slow, rhythmic pulse like a massive heart buried under centuries of marble.Seren stiffened beside him. “Elias… tell me you feel that too.”“I do,” he replied quietly. “The city is awake.”Caedia stopped walking. Her blind eyes clouded brighter than usual. “This is older than the Bonekeepers,” she said. “Older than the crown.”Sylare swallowed. “That’s… not comforting.” They stood in a vast underground avenue carved from pale stone, columns arching overhead like ribs.Faint light seeped through cracks far above, carrying the muffled echo of palace life footsteps, laughter, ignorance. Seren whispered, “They’re dancing up there.”Elias’s jaw tightened. “While Lyra is chained below.” Caedia raised her hand. “Quiet.” They froze. Footsteps echoed ahead. Not guards. Too slow. Too deliberate.Elias’s bones vibrated
CHAPTER 97— “THE THRONE THAT BLEEDS”
The palace undercorridor ended in a staircase of black bone. Elias stopped at the top step, chest rising slowly. The Echo inside him throbbed low, furious, restrained only by will.Above them, the palace breathed: voices, boots, metal, fear. Seren whispered, “They know we’re here.”“They’ve known since the sanctum,” Caedia replied. “They just didn’t expect you to survive this long.”Sylare leaned against the wall, pale but standing. “Lyra is still alive. I can feel it.”Elias didn’t answer. He was listening to the bones beneath the palace, to the walls soaked with old blood and newer lies. “They’re preparing the circle,” he said.Seren’s fingers tightened around his sleeve. “How much time?”Elias closed his eyes briefly. “Minutes.”Caedia exhaled through her nose. “Then we stop walking.”She lifted her bone cane and struck the floor once. The sound didn’t echo. It commanded. The stairway groaned. Runes long buried under marble flared awake.The bone beneath the palace remembered what
CHAPTER 98— “WHEN THE ECHO BREAKS”
The world did not shatter all at once. It fractured. Slowly. Painfully. Elias felt it before he understood it his bones screaming in a language even the Echo struggled to translate.The air around him warped, bending inward as if reality itself were trying to flee. Seren shouted his name. “Elias! Elias look at me!”He tried. Gods, he tried. But his vision blurred, white light bleeding into darkness. The palace undercroft trembled, ancient pillars cracking as resonance spiraled out of control.Caedia slammed her staff into the stone. “Everyone back! Now!”Too late. The Echo surged. Not responding to Elias. Responding to fear. “No, no stop,” Elias gasped, clutching his chest. “I didn’t this isn’t.”Seren grabbed his face with both hands. “Listen to me! You’re here. You’re not alone. You’re not breaking.” Her voice cut through the noise sharp, desperate, real.Elias locked onto it. “I can’t hold it,” he whispered. “It’s too much.”Caedia’s blind eyes snapped toward him. “Elias if you los