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Home / Fantasy / Bones of the Betrayed: Rise of the Last Bonekeeper / CHAPTER 74 — “THE THRONE OF MARROW”
CHAPTER 74 — “THE THRONE OF MARROW”
Author: Milky-Grip
last update2025-12-16 22:14:19

The throne room was silent. Not empty silent. Elias felt it the moment he crossed the threshold. The Echo inside him recoiled, humming low and uneasy, like bone scraping bone.

Seren whispered, “This place is wrong.”

“I know,” Elias murmured. The chamber stretched wide and tall, carved entirely from interlocked ribs and polished marrow-stone.

Pillars shaped like spinal columns rose toward the vaulted ceiling, where faint blue light seeped through fractures in the bone.

At the far end. A throne. Not gold. Not stone. Bone. Layer upon layer of fused skeletons, arranged deliberately, reverently. Skulls formed the backrest. Vertebrae the armrests.

At its center pulsed a slow, sickly glow. Caedia stopped walking. Her blind eyes turned toward the throne. “The marrow-heart,” she whispered.

Seren’s grip tightened on Elias’s sleeve. “That’s… that’s what the Alchemists built?”

“Yes,” Caedia said. “And what they’ve been feeding.”

Elias took a step forward. The Echo screamed. He staggered, catching
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  • CHAPTER 80 — “THE BONE THAT REMEMBERS”

    The prison chamber breathed. That was the first thing Elias noticed. The walls expanded and contracted like ribs around a living chest, each pulse timed to the slow, labored breathing of someone or something deep beneath the floor.Seren stopped walking. “…Tell me I’m imagining that.”“You’re not,” Caedia said quietly. “This place is awake.”Elias clenched his jaw. His bones were humming again low, uneasy, like they recognized the rhythm. Sylare swallowed hard. “This chamber wasn’t here before. I swear it wasn’t.”“That’s because it only manifests when the Echo approaches,” Caedia replied. “It’s a memory-prison.”Elias frowned. “A what?”Caedia turned her blind eyes toward him. “A construct designed to trap not bodies but truths.”Seren shot Elias a look. “That sounds… deeply unpleasant.” A voice drifted through the chamber then soft, familiar, and devastating.“Elias?”He froze. His heart slammed so hard it hurt. Seren’s breath caught. “No… that’s not.”“Elias,” the voice called agai

  • CHAPTER 79 — “THE PRICE OF BLOOD”

    The underground river thundered beside them, black water smashing against bone-carved banks as Elias led the group forward. The tunnel ceiling dipped low, forcing them to crouch, the air thick with rot and old magic.Seren broke the silence first. “We’re not supposed to be this close already.”Caedia’s staff scraped the stone as she walked. “We’re not supposed to be alive, either.”Sylare hugged herself, voice barely audible over the water. “They’ll feel him soon.”Elias didn’t slow. “Let them.”Seren shot him a look. “That confidence scares me.”“It should,” Caedia said calmly. “Because it is no longer confidence. It is certainty.”Elias exhaled through his nose. “I’m not walking away this time.”Seren grabbed his arm and forced him to stop. “Elias look at me.”He did. Her eyes were wet. Angry. Afraid. “You’re not just a weapon. You’re not just the Echo. You’re still you.” He swallowed. “I know.”“Then promise me something.”“What?”“That when this is over… you’re still here.” Elias

  • CHAPTER 78— “THE PALACE BENEATH THE PALACE”

    The tunnel sloped upward now. Elias felt it immediately not just the incline, but the shift in resonance. The bones around them were newer, reinforced, threaded with dampening sigils meant to suppress magic.“The palace,” Seren whispered. “We’re under it.”Caedia nodded. “The Undercorridors. Built after the Bonekeeper purge. Designed to imprison what the nobles fear.”Elias clenched his jaw. “They should’ve torn it down.”“They tried,” Caedia replied quietly. “The bones refused.”Seren glanced around nervously. “That’s… comforting. I think.”They moved slower now, careful. Every step echoed faintly, swallowed by thick stone walls veined with pale bone. Sylare whispered, “They patrol this level.”Elias looked back. “How do you know?”She swallowed. “Because I hid here. For three days.”Seren’s eyes widened. “Alone?”Sylare nodded. “I listened. Learned their steps. Learned when they dragged prisoners past.”Elias’s chest tightened. “Lyra?”Sylare hesitated. Then nodded. “She’s still ali

  • CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN — “THE CITY THAT BLEEDS”

    The city loomed above them like a wounded giant. From the ridge overlooking the capital’s underlevels, Elias could see the damage clearly now collapsed spires, cracked walls veined with glowing corruption, smoke rising in thin, constant columns.The once-proud bone-buttresses that supported the upper districts were fractured, some stitched together with crude Alchemist reinforcements that pulsed an unhealthy blue.Seren swallowed hard. “It’s worse than the rumors.” Caedia stood beside her, head tilted, listening to vibrations no one else could hear. “The city is screaming.”Elias didn’t answer immediately. His bones were already singing in response low, furious, restrained only by discipline earned through pain, loss, and relentless training.“They’re bleeding it dry,” he said finally. “Harvesting marrow straight from the foundations.”Seren looked at him sharply. “They’re using the city itself?”“Yes,” Elias replied. “That’s how they’re powering the ritual lattice.”Sylare hugged her

  • CHAPTER 76 — “THE THRONE OF BONES”

    The throne room did not smell like power. It smelled like rot. Elias stopped just inside the shattered doors, his bones humming sharply beneath his skin.Seren halted beside him, breath shallow, while Caedia remained a step behind silent, listening, already tense. “Something’s wrong,” Seren whispered.Elias nodded. “This place should be louder.”The palace’s inner sanctum had once been layered with noble resonance centuries of bloodlines echoing through bone-carved walls. Now, the sound was… thin. Hollow. Like marrow sucked clean.Caedia spoke quietly. “The Alchemists have been here a long time.”Seren swallowed. “Where’s the court? The guards? Anyone?”Elias took another step forward. A voice echoed from the far end of the chamber. “You’re standing in it.” They froze.From the shadows beyond the throne, a figure emerged robes stitched with bone-thread, hands stained blue to the wrist. His face was gaunt, eyes bright with fevered intelligence.Arch-Alchemist Veyr. Elias felt the Echo

  • CHAPTER 75 — “THE PRICE OF BEING HEARD”

    The palace undercorridor shook as something detonated far above them. Stone dust rained from the ceiling. Seren flinched. “That wasn’t us.”Elias stopped mid-step, bones humming violently beneath his skin. “No,” he said quietly. “That was a signal.”Caedia tilted her head, blind eyes glowing faintly. “They’ve begun the ritual.”Seren’s breath hitched. “Already?”“Yes,” Caedia replied grimly. “They know you’re close.”Elias clenched his fists. The Echo surged, sharp and furious, vibrating through his ribs like a living thing demanding action.“How much time?” he asked.Caedia hesitated. “Minutes,” she said. “Not hours.”Seren grabbed Elias’s sleeve. “Then we move now.”They broke into a run. The undercorridors twisted upward, narrowing into steep bone-lined passages reinforced with alchemical steel. Sigils burned into the walls containment runes, anti-resonance wards.Seren grimaced. “I hate these symbols.”“They’re meant to weaken Elias,” Caedia said. “And attract him.”Elias scoffed,

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