2025-08-01 03:59:05
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Chapter 128 – The Hollow Crown Wakes
Kael had seen ruined cities before.He had crawled through burned towns, shattered temples, and mountain keeps cracked wide open by siege-fire.But none of them looked like this.The Hollow Crown did not rot.It pulsed.Like something alive and long-starved was breathing beneath the stones.The gates didn’t fall open.They smiled.Archways shaped like fangs. Obelisks smeared with blood from forgotten rituals. Towers that leaned too deliberately, as if listening to every step the exiles made.Raen muttered a curse under his breath.“I don’t like how it watches us.”“It always has,” Varyn said. “The Hollow Crown was never dead. It was dreaming.”Kael stood at the front, just before the threshold. One hand rested on the hilt of his sword. The other clenched the burning feather inside his palm until it scorched his skin.Behind him, the exiles waited.Silent.Tense.The wind shifted.It carried the scent of rust and roses.And a voice.“You came early.”Kael turned.Out from a broken stat
Chapter 127 — When the First Blade Falls
The wind coming from the east smelled of copper.Kael stood at the edge of the cliff where the world broke open. Behind him, the Ghost Marches were quiet again, their broken soldiers moving like smoke through shadow, sharpening blades, binding armor, whispering names that had not been spoken in generations.He didn’t speak.He listened.To the silence between the gusts.To the breath of something older than war.The Hollow Crown sat buried beyond the ash fields. Once a capital of kings, now a throne of ruins and secrets. It was where the old empire died. Where power had been stolen, twisted, buried. And Kael had chosen it.Not as a goal.As a beginning.The exiles were ready.Varyn wrapped her chains tighter around her forearms as she approached.“They’re calling you Warchild now.”Kael gave a faint smirk. “Let them call me worse.”She tilted her head. “You don’t like titles?”“I like truth.”Varyn glanced toward the soldiers preparing to march. “Truth is, they’ll die for you now. Eve
Chapter 126 — Blood Oaths and Broken Teeth
The wind changed the moment they crossed into the Ghost Marches.It wasn’t a breeze anymore. It scraped the skin like knives dipped in ash. The grass had long since turned to black roots, and the trees leaned like prisoners awaiting their execution.Kael stepped lightly, but the ground still groaned under his boots.“We’re being watched,” Lira said.He didn’t answer. He already knew.The moment they crossed that fractured stone bridge, the eyes started appearing. Glints in the trees. Shapes in the mist. Shadows that stayed too still.Raen lifted his blade. “Should we warn them who we are?”Kael didn’t look back.“They already know.”The Marches belonged to no king.They bowed to no bloodline.But they remembered power.And Kael’s body carried enough of it to wake the dead.At the edge of a broken altar, their path twisted. Stone columns jutted like bones from the cracked earth. Runes long buried pulsed faintly beneath the moss.Kael stopped.In the silence, he could hear it again.The
Chapter 125 — The Price of the Throne
Kael didn’t rise.He couldn’t.The throne held him.Not with chains or force, but with memory. With power older than anything breathing in this world.His pulse slowed. His mind opened. And his soul split.He saw everything.The hidden cities lost beneath sand.The floating islands torn from the sky.The gods’ last war, not fought with blades, but with names.He saw the first king, the one who whispered the stars into silence. Saw the chains he forged, not to bind, but to listen. Every link a secret. Every ring a vow.The throne was no seat.It was a cage for truths that should never breathe.And now, Kael sat in it.The chains that had marked his arms slithered higher. Across his chest. Around his throat. They did not tighten. They pulsed with him. As if measuring him. Weighing every choice he had made.Behind him, Lira stepped forward.The sky above the Vale still churned, but the light had dulled. Shadows crawled faster than the sun.“Kael,” she called, her voice raw. “Say somethin
Chapter 124 — The Whispered Throne
Kael stepped into silence.Not the kind born from still air or quiet ground. This silence was alive. It pressed against his skin. It breathed through the walls. The Vale of Chains had no wind, no birds, no motion. Only fog and ash drifted through the broken arches and twisted statues that lined the stone path.Behind him, Lira halted at the edge of the boundary. “There’s something wrong with this place.”“Something ancient,” Raen muttered. “I smell blood that isn’t blood.”Kael didn’t speak. His pulse beat loud in his ears, matching the throb in his chest. Since the sigil burned into his back, he had felt this pull. The closer they came to the center of the Vale, the heavier the pull became. Not like gravity. Like fate. Like something calling him by name, but never out loud.He walked on.Varyn kept her distance. The Chain Witch’s eyes didn’t blink once. Her chains dragged behind her with a soft rattle, not from weight, but from purpose.“It knows you,” she said to Kael. “This place.
Chapter 123 — The Sigil That Should Not Exist
The sky trembled.Not from thunder, not from gods, but from something older than memory. A mark blazed overhead—neither Spiral nor Shard, neither cursed nor divine. It pulsed in harmony, glowing with strands of light Kael had never seen in any scripture, prophecy, or nightmare.It was his sigil.And the world didn’t know what to do with it.⸻Kael gasped as he woke, the burn of the Eye still seared in his bones.He lay on the floor of the molten spire, breath shallow, limbs shaking. Above him, the floating runes pulsed erratically, like fireflies caught in a storm. But the Eye of Ascension was gone. In its place hovered a shifting coil of light and shadow, spiraling in perfect balance.Lira knelt beside him, her hand pressed to his chest. “You were dead,” she whispered. “You stopped breathing.”Raen stood near the entrance, blade drawn, eyes scanning the horizon. “Not dead,” he said. “Just… changed.”Kael slowly sat up. His heartbeat no longer sounded like a war drum. It was quieter n
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