2025-08-30 15:27:03
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Eighteen
The ridge wind carried ash like snow, drifting over their cloaks and armor until they seemed carved from the same gray stone as the cliffs themselves. Morning had come without light. The storm-choked sky dulled every edge of the horizon, and the valley below still writhed faintly, as if last night’s battle had stirred something too deep to settle.Dren adjusted the strap across his chest, the weight of his sword biting into his shoulder. He hadn’t slept. Neither had Veyna, not truly, though she pretended better. She moved ahead of him, steady, eyes scanning the barren expanse, but he caught the stiffness in her shoulders, the way her hand kept brushing her hilt as if to remind herself it was still there.The silence between them wasn’t hostile, not anymore. But it was brittle. Every word they hadn’t said last night hung between them like smoke.They followed the ridge north. The ground sloped in long waves of black stone and frost-bitten ash, the kind of landscape where nothing should
Seventeen
The nest was gone, but the ash lingered.It clung to their clothes, their hair, their mouths. No matter how many times Dren spat into the earth, the taste of it stayed, bitter and metallic. The hollow where the nest had writhed was now just a crater of cooling stone, faintly smoking. Veins of black ichor hardened into brittle glass across the ground. The air hung heavy, too quiet, as if the world itself was holding its breath.Veyna broke the silence first. She tore a strip from her cloak and wiped her blade clean, her motions sharp and controlled. “It’s done,” she said.Dren didn’t answer. He stood with his sword still driven into the earth, his knuckles white on the hilt.Her gaze flicked to him. “Dren.”He blinked and finally pulled the blade free. The metal sang faintly, as if reluctant to leave the wound it had made. He sheathed it, though his hands shook.“Say it,” Veyna pressed, stepping closer. Her voice wasn’t unkind, but it carried the edge of command. “We destroyed it.”“We
Sixteen
The air itself seemed to rot as the nest revealed its core.Shadows peeled back like flesh from bone, revealing a cavernous hollow beneath the ruins. The stone walls pulsed faintly, threaded with veins of living black. The ceiling was a cage of twisted beams and roots, dripping with the residue of mimic-births. Every inch of it whispered, thousands of overlapping voices, each a fragment stolen from the Archive’s prey. Some were incoherent. Others clear.And too many of them were Dren’s.He froze on the threshold. The whispers crawled under his skin like parasites, finding old wounds and prying them open. He could hear himself begging for mercy. Laughing like a butcher. Screaming as steel tore through him. Whispering to Myra in the dark, words he should not still remember.Veyna’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “It’s feeding on us,” she said low. Her eyes scanned the chamber, hard as flint, but her jaw clenched. She heard it too. Her own voice tangled in the swarm. “We end it here.”D
Fifteen
The Watcher’s corpse sagged in on itself, collapsing into a ruin of smoking sinew and withered limbs. Its last cry lingered in the air like a poisoned hymn, too long, too loud, until the sound warped and folded back into silence.The silence was worse.Dren stood in the ruin’s courtyard, sword still locked in both hands, the blade dripping black fire. His chest heaved. Every nerve screamed, not only from the gash across his ribs but from what he’d pulled through himself to end it. The Archive wasn’t gone. It curled there, in his marrow, purring.More, it whispered, smooth and eager. More blood. More ruin. We are stronger together. You know it.Dren tightened his grip on the sword until his knuckles whitened. His body wanted to obey. His veins burned with that sick, honeyed power.A hand gripped his arm.“Dren.”Veyna. Her voice cut the whisper clean for a heartbeat. She was at his side, sharp-eyed and steady despite the smear of ash across her cheek. Her blade was sheathed now, her ot
Fourteen
The silence stretched until even the ashfall seemed to hang in the air, suspended like the pause before a blade strike. Dren’s throat felt raw, as if every word he wanted to speak scraped on its way up, jagged and unshaped.Veyna’s stare didn’t waver. She was trembling just faintly, just enough for him to see it in the tension around her jaw, the way her fingers flexed like she wanted to keep a sword in them. But her voice didn’t break.“Tell me what this thing is doing to you. Tell me what it wants. No more fragments. No more silence.”Dren forced himself to look away, toward the embers collapsing in their pit. The glow reflected in the black veins carved into the ridge stone, veins left behind by the Archive’s earlier breach. They pulsed faintly like they weren’t just scars, but arteries.“It wants out,” he said at last, his voice low. “Every whisper, every ghost, every face I cut down it’s all leading to that. The Archive isn’t just memory, Veyna. It’s every failure. Every life tha
Thirteen
The fire had long since collapsed to embers, but Dren’s eyes stayed open, tracing the orange veins through ash and coal. Sleep never lasted not when the Archive pressed at the edges of his skull like an infection. He had drifted once, briefly, only to jolt awake choking on a scream that hadn’t belonged to him. Myra’s voice. Or Veyna’s. Or both.Across the camp, Veyna slept with her back against stone, sword propped within reach. Her breathing was steady, but even in rest she looked unyielding jaw tight, one hand curled near her hilt as if she expected him to turn against her.Dren pressed the heel of his palm against his eyes. She trusts me enough to follow, but not enough to sleep easy beside me. The thought twisted sharper than the Archive’s whisper.A rustle cut through the ridge’s silence. Not Veyna. Something beyond.Dren’s hand went instantly to his sword. The ash-drenched valley below churned faintly, rivers of soot shifting as though stirred from beneath. He rose without a sou
You may also like
Zombies Territory: A place of no return
Favyhm231.7K viewsCatalyst
Zerequiel1.7K viewsThe Max Level Hero: Strike Black
John Smith6.8K viewsAnonymous: dawn of the unknown
Jedidiah TBD1.5K viewsSUBJECT 47: AWAKENING
Tim197 viewsThe Multiversal War
Anita592 viewsEden Mills. Lost pieces of the past.
Mari Angel Pain768 viewsInvidia
Laura Holmes2.1K views