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Home / Urban / AFTER THE DIVORCE, EX-HUSBAND SHOCK THE WORLD / CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: CRAWLING THROUGH ASHES
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: CRAWLING THROUGH ASHES
Author: Pen-Goddess
last update2025-09-07 03:14:59

Silence .Not the silence of peace, but of a grave. When Gibson’s eyes cracked open, he saw nothing but red smoke curling upward through jagged ruins.

The fortress was gone, flattened, twisted, a carcass of steel and fire. His ears rang, his body screamed in agony, but the only thought that burned through the haze was a name. Clara.

He tried to move and felt pain spike through his ribs, hot and white. Every breath was broken glass. His left arm dangled uselessly, bent in ways it shouldn’t, but his right hand clawed into the rubble.

Inch by inch, he pulled himself free from the slab of concrete pinning his legs. The fortress had collapsed into itself. Beams jutted upward like broken bones. Sparks hissed where wires bled. Smoke curled thick enough to choke.

But Gibson dragged himself forward anyway. His knees tore open on jagged steel. His skin blistered from embers. He didn’t stop.

“Clara!” His voice tore raw from his throat. It echoed through the wreckage, swallowed by the ruinous quie
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  • CHAPTER FIFTY: THE DAUGHTER WHO BURNS

    Silence. Not the kind that came in moments of peace, but the kind that followed devastation. A silence so complete it rang in Gibson’s ears like the echo of a scream too loud to be heard.He opened his eyes to white. Not light, white. The abyss was gone. The firestorm erased. The endless roar silenced. He lay on scorched stone, half-buried beneath jagged rubble, his body twisted in ways bone and muscle weren’t meant to endure. Blood clung to his lips, thick and coppery, and each breath was a war. But he didn’t care about the pain. He didn’t care about the ruin. “Clara…” The name scraped out of him as a whisper, hoarse, desperate.He pushed the stone from his chest, dragging his body across the fractured ground. His arms trembled under his own weight, but he crawled forward inch by inch.Each scrape of his knee sent fire up his spine, but he didn’t stop. Not until he saw her. She lay ten paces away, still as death, her small form curled against the stone.Around her, the ground was

  • CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: BETWEEN HEARTBEATS

    The world was gone. No fire, no stone, no father’s arms. Only silence. A silence so deep it felt like sinking beneath an ocean with no bottom.Clara floated in it, weightless, her chest heavy but her body light. For the first time since the storm took root, the pain wasn’t searing.It was dull now, distant, like a drumbeat muffled by miles of earth. Am I… dead? She opened her eyes.The void stretched endless, crimson and black. Heat shimmered at its edges, but at the center, where she drifted, it was cold. “You are close, little one.”The voice rippled through her like oil spilled over water. She knew it well now, the storm, the thing inside her veins. It did not thunder this time. It whispered, calm, coaxing.Clara turned slowly, her bare feet finding ground where none existed. A shape emerged from the crimson haze: tall, obsidian-eyed, its form cloaked in fire that didn’t burn. The storm.“No…” Clara whispered, stumbling back. Her voice was thin, almost swallowed by the void.“Yes,”

  • CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: THE FALL

    The ground vanished beneath him. Gibson fell. Stone, fire, and twisted steel collapsed into a screaming chasm, dragging him down with a force that tore the breath from his lungs. His arms locked around Clara’s body, her small frame convulsing in his grip. He didn’t dare let go, not even for a heartbeat.Above, the ruins of the Nexus were swallowed whole. Below, there was nothing but a burning void, endless and alive, like the throat of some ancient beast. “Clara, !” His voice ripped raw against the roar of collapsing earth. Her eyes snapped open. Not her eyes. Not anymore.They glowed with crimson fire, blazing so brightly they cut through the darkness. And when her mouth opened, the voice that answered was not his daughter’s. “You cannot keep her from me.”The words shook the abyss, vibrating through his bones. Clara’s small hands clawed at his chest, burning with fire that licked at his flesh.Gibson gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to cry out as his skin blistered under her t

  • CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: THE EYE OF THE STORM

    Darkness was never truly dark. Not for him. For millennia, the storm had lived between breaths, between the cracks of men’s fears, in the empty spaces where weakness bred longing.It was not born. It was not made. It had always been, waiting. And now, for the first time in centuries, it felt alive. Because it had found her.Through Clara’s eyes, the world burned beautifully. Every ember, every flicker of flame obeyed his call. Her small body thrummed with his power, fragile veins straining to carry it, bones cracking with its weight.Yet she held it, better than the others. Better than all who had come before. This one is perfect.The storm exhaled, savoring the way her father screamed her name outside. That desperation was fuel, a sweetness unlike any fire. But there was something wrong. She resisted.Most vessels collapsed beneath his weight, begging for release, begging to vanish into the fire. Clara… fought. She screamed. She clawed. She even tore cracks into his dominion. Unaccep

  • CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: THE PRISON OF FIRE

    The body was not her own. Clara realized it the moment her eyes opened and the world burned red. She could feel her limbs move, her lips curl into a smile, her fingers twitch with fire.But she wasn’t the one doing it. She was inside, trapped behind glass. And the storm was laughing. The crimson void stretched around her like an endless cathedral of fire. She pressed her palms against invisible walls, screaming, but her voice barely echoed beyond the flames. Through the glass, she saw flashes of the outside world, her father’s broken body pinned in rubble, his eyes wide with horror.Her own mouth moved, but the words weren’t hers. “At last, we are one.” The storm’s voice reverberated in her skull. She slapped her fists against the wall of fire, tears streaming down her cheeks.“No! That’s not me! Give me back my body!”The obsidian-eyed figure appeared beside her, cloaked in fire, towering and calm. “Why fight, little flame? You begged for strength. You cried to be more than weak.

  • CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: ASHES AND BREATH

    The silence was wrong. Too still. Too empty. Gibson’s first sensation was the taste of ash coating his tongue, bitter and metallic.His chest fought for air, each breath dragging fire into his lungs. For a moment, he thought he was dead. Buried. Forgotten beneath the ruin.But then, he felt the weight in his arms. Clara. His eyes snapped open. Dust and smoke blurred the world, streaks of flame licking through the wreckage.He lay half-buried beneath a collapsed wall, his body screaming with pain. But none of it mattered. Not when his daughter’s small frame rested limply against him.“Clara,” he croaked, throat raw. His hand fumbled across her face, brushing away soot, pushing damp strands of hair from her eyes. “Come on, baby girl. Wake up. Please.”Her skin burned under his touch, not with fever, not with life, but with something else. A glow hummed faintly beneath her skin, pulsing like a heartbeat. Crimson. Relentless.The fortress was gone. Where walls once loomed, only skeletal b

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