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Chapter 99: The Echo Of A Lie
Chapter 99: The Echo of a Lie The square was abuzz with life, a morbid fascination drawing the people in like moths to fire. Banners bearing the serpent and shattered crown emblem hung from every lamppost, fluttering in the cold wind. A wooden platform stood erected before the palace, draped in red velvet. This was to be another public address by the usurper king, another carefully orchestrated spectacle to consolidate his power. Sheila and Tate, cloaked and hooded, merged with the crowd, senses alert, hearts grim. The air was thick with a mixture of fear and coerced respect. They had gotten this address through their network of sympathizer contacts, knowing that every word from the imposter's lips would be a calculated move. There was a hush over the crowd as "Prince Kairo" mounted the stage, his new set of royal guards behind him, their armor gleaming. His robes were opulent, his mannerisms graceful and princely. He carried himself with an air of absolute authority, a terrifyin
Chapter 98: The Man In The Mirror
Chapter 98: The Man in the Mirror Tate and Sheila spent the next two weeks walking the city's shadows, not as fugitives, but as hunters. They were no longer just surviving; they were gathering intelligence, piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of the man who now sat upon the throne. They overheard half-heard conversations in taverns, pieced together rumors from the city's underbelly, and read between the lines of the King's public declarations. Tate, using his old connections in the royal archives, searched for any detail, no matter how insignificant, that might give them an advantage. He was not looking for state secrets, but something far more personal—he was looking for the ghost of the man now king. He found it in the personal diaries of Prince Malrick, Queen Aly's brother and Prince Kairo's uncle. The diaries were not political treatises, but the mundane details of his life. He flipped through the pages, his heart pounding in anticipation. There, in a small, barely noticeable
Chapter 97: The Ghost Of Memory
Chapter 97: The Ghost of Memory The warehouse, a sanctuary of sorts, was a tomb. Heavy with the metallic scent of blood and the suffocating weight of despair, it hung over Tate like a shroud. Tate had taken the severed hand, wrapped it in a piece of oil-saturated cloth, and placed it in an open crate as if hiding the horror would somehow make it not be. But the image seared itself into their minds—the pale skin, the savage mark, the silent accusation of a friend betrayed. Sheila sat against a stack of crates, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. Her face was a map of shattered control. The carefully constructed barriers she had built to shield herself from the memories of her past—the attack on her family, the ruin of her life—were starting to disintegrate. The appearance of Dorian's hand had opened a door she had long kept closed. A small whimper escaped her lips, a hiss of raw, unadulterated pain. Tate fell to his knees before her, his hands held out, not knowing what to co
Chapter 96: The Prince's Gift
Chapter 96: The Prince's GiftThe warehouses were a tomb of discarded things: dusty boxes of stale materials, frayed ropes, and the remains of a broken carriage. They stalked decay and stagnant air, an odor that had become as ingrained in Sheila and Tate's reality as the odor of terror itself. This was their new reality, a reality of perpetual flight and grasping silence.They had already heard the rumors from the city, carried on the wind and whispered by sympathetic strangers who still dared to stand against the new King. The public executions had been savagely swift.Tate's men men whom he had taught, whom he had battled beside, and to whom he had entrusted his life now looked upon the ink of their signatures on the king's orders, a devotion that had become treason that would bring about death. They were deemed traitors, their past wiped out, their names blown to dust.Tate's face was a stiff mask of rage, jaw locked so tightly it ached. "He's not bypassing the guard," he snarled.
Chapter 95: The Haunting Of The Past
Chapter 95: The Haunting of the PastThe black ebony notebook and the yellowed painting lay on the floor of their sanctuary, a grim proof of the reality which was now irretrievably no longer in question. The imposter was not just an unwitting usurper but an unseen architect of their destruction, a great deceiver in making lies whose entire lifetime had been spent in reaching this extent. His revenge was not just a reaction; it was a lifetime's endeavour.Tate, his face a mask of cold fury, gazed at the portrait, his eyes tracing the face of the dead nobleman."He was here all along," he grunted, his voice low, anguished, and hard."He was a spectre in the palace, a murmur in the shadows. We were so blind. So committed to the crown, to the system, to the man we trusted. We were so afraid to listen to the truth, that we closed our eyes. We closed out Sheila and her fears. We closed out the servants' murmurs. We closed out the knot in our gut."Sheila, her eyes full of a great and terrib
Chapter 94: Deception
Chapter 94: DeceptionThe theory of a secret agent of the Chalice family lurking in the background of the palace was a chilling but logical one. It explained the imposter's knowledge of the royal family, the secret passages, and the locket. It didn't explain the most important part of the charade: the surgical transformation. The face, the form, the voice—they were a perfect, sickening copy of Kairo. The impersonation was not a disguise; it was an act of magical and surgical perfection.They walked back to their sanctuary, the photograph of the slain nobleman a heavy weight in their hands. From the ground, they laid it next to the black ebony diary, the gruesome manifesto of a monster. The diary then, with its coded scribbles and philosophical musings, now made a ghoulish kind of sense. It was not a manifesto; it was a blueprint. A blueprint of a painstaking multi-year plan."The journal," Sheila spoke, her voice a gentle, raspy whisper. "We've been reading it all wrong. We've been a
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