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Shadow Born Legacy Chapter 17: The Hollow Blades
The air was heavy with the odor of frying flesh. Shadowborne Estate, once an invincible citadel, was now a mausoleum of cinder.Kael's fingers clenched around the hilt of his dagger as he stood among the carnage.His breath was coming in ragged gasps, his chest heaving from fatigue, but he dared not relax his guard.Beside him Dain sprawled against the stone wall, his tunic darkened with blood.His usual smirk was replaced by a clenched jaw and narrowed eyes.Selene knelt next to him, pressing a cloth against his wound.The Revenant Lords had passed like phantoms before, leaving behind only corpses and fear in their passage.But now something worse had come.Something darted at the treeline. Then another.Kael’s instincts screamed an alert, but before he could do anything, a blade zipped across the sky. He turned just in time the steel glided by his ribs instead of skewering him.A moment later, five figures appeared in the flickering firelight.They weren’t Revenants.These men were
Shadow Born Legacy Chapter 18: Chains of the Sigil
A sliver of silver moon hung low in the ink-black sky.Ash choked the air above the remains of Shadowborne Estate, embers still crackling as the figures of Kael, Selene, and Dain vanished into the trees.The wounds were still fresh and their bodies ached, but they had no time for pain.The Hollow Blades were dead, but the real hunt had only just begun.They moved quietly, soft-footed over the sodden earth, sliding like phantoms between the contorted trees. A sanctuary lay ahead, hidden in the mountains where it melded into the peak, a crumbling watchtower an era ago, back when this was a Shadowborne hangout.Kael’s mind raced. The Black Sigil.That name held weight, spoken only in hushed warnings.If they wanted the Shadowborne exterminated, then this was more than just a bounty.This was a war.Dain groaned next to him, his bloodied hand against his side.His trademark cocky smirk was gone, replaced by grim determination.“How bad?” Kael asked under his breath.Dain scoffed. “It hurt
Shadow Born Legacy Chapter 19: The Bloodbound Pact
Pain.The first sensation was pain, a burning, gnawing sense that seemed to emanate from all of the wounds, from the manacles digging into his wrists to the new cuts in his thigh and ribs.He breathed hard, each gasp pulling fire through his lungs.He hung there like slaughtered meat, his boots scraping the blood-slick floor.The Eidolons had left him dangling in a room reeking of rot, death, and worse something ancient.Faint echoes of screams resonated in the walls.His thoughts slid between fog and sudden, harsh clarity. Where were Selene and Dain? Were they still breathing? Or had the Eidolons sliced them up and left their bodies on view like the Veilborn had been left before them?A noise.Kael braced himself. A soft click-click-click, a rhythmic, deliberate sound. Boots on rock.The pace was measured, slow a predator stalking its prey, relishing the certainty of the kill.A shadow stretched along the wall.Then, a voice. Low, smooth, and laced with something that slid beneath th
Shadow Born Legacy Chapter 20: The Ties That Bind
The Ruins of ShadowborneThe wind whistled through the broken hulk of the watchtower, bringing with it the smell of blood and blackened stone.Kael's muscles protested as he forced himself upright, the drag of tiredness weighing upon his limbs.The shadows around them were abnormally thick darker than night itself, writhing as if it were alive, watching.Selene was kneeling beside him, applying pressure to her injured shoulder. Her black eyes, still burning with adrenaline, met Kael's."We have to get out of here," she stated, her tone strained with pain but authoritative.Dain cursed, turning onto his side."No debate." His face was covered in dirt and blood, and he gritted his teeth as he held his ribs.Kael willed his mind to concentrate beyond the pain.The words of the Bloodbound continued to rend his thoughts."You were never meant to be free, Kael."The Shadowborne legacy wasn't constructed on mere skill.It was constructed on something more. Something older.His fists curled.
Shadow Born Legacy Chapter 21: The Price of Shadows
Kael's heart pounded in his ears as he gazed at the masked woman."Are you prepared to pay the price, Shadowborne?"Her voice was serene, nearly soft, but it held the weight of something old.The words hung in the silence, bearing down on him, requiring a response.The air within the underground chamber was choking.The sigils inscribed on the walls pulsed with an unnatural light, their forms twisting as if alive, speaking secrets older than mortal mouths.The aura of the Forgotten Ones hung close to him, their bony forms twisting on the edge of his perception, their vacant eyes watching.Kael gulped, his muscles still sore from fighting the Black Sigil.His mind was crying out for him to turn the offer down, to flee. But in his very marrow, he knew there was no fleeing from this.To end the Shadowborne curse, he had to know where it had come from.And if it cost a price, he was willing to pay it.His words were low, but unyielding."Tell me what needs to be done."The masked woman re
Shadow Born Legacy Chapter 22: Ashes of the First Altar
The night sky bled crimson.Kael stood at the edge of a jagged cliff, overlooking the ruins below. The First Altar lay hidden within the valley, an ancient place lost to time. But now, its location was no longer a secret.Because it was burning.Flames licked the remains of stone pillars, casting shadows against the mountainside. Figures moved within the firelight not just one enemy but two.The Black Sigil had come first. Their troops had encircled the altar in an iron curtain, swords flashing under the flames. But they were not the only ones.The Bloodbound had come too.Selene swore. "That's not good."Dain took a harsh breath. "Understatement of the damn century."Kael curled his fists. His veins continued to vibrate with the strength he had roused in the cavern. He had only just begun to comprehend it, and now he could not help but employ it.The woman beside him wore a mask of ivory, its glow in the light of the flames. "They intend to ruin the altar before you can arrive," she
Shadow Born Legacy Chapter 23: Under the Veil of Gods
The initial indication of peril was the quiet.No breeze. No far-off reverberations of life.Only quiet.Kael shifted his hold on his sword, his knuckles tense.The way forward was bordered by worn pillars, their facades carved with glyphs older than the Shadowborne themselves.Every step ahead seemed like a trespass, as if the ruins themselves were vigilant.Selene limped alongside him, her burns roughly bandaged, her daggers still clutched in her hands despite her wounds. Dain stood on the opposite side, his typical smirk missing, eyes narrowed and searching for danger.The masked woman, their enigmatic guide, led them further into the ruins, her ivory mask shining in the chill moonlight.The Second Altar is beyond these doors," she said, halting in front of a cracked obsidian archway. "But be warned, this one has remained undisturbed for centuries."Kael sighed. "What's in it?"Her reply was brief."The dead."Dain huffed out a harsh breath. "Wonderful."Selene glared at Kael. "Thi
Shadow Born Legacy Chapter 24: The Hollow Throne
The gates to Shadowborne Estate loomed before them, black iron, encircled with sigils of binding and blood.Kael stood in the doorway, his pulse racing. And this place he had once called home lay dead, awaiting burial.Mist curled at their feet, slithering between the black teeth of the jagged stones like something alive.The estate’s towers loomed against a sky pregnant with storm, their silhouettes raking the heavens.Dain repositioned his hold on his sword.“It’s quiet. Too quiet.”Selene’s gaze darted toward the battlements.“They know we’re here.”Kael nodded. “They’ve been waiting.”Then.The doors creaked open by themselves.A silent invitation.Kael exhaled sharply. No turning back.They stepped inside.The great hall stretched before them, a monument of black stone and forgotten reverberations.Torches flared with blue flame, dancing light across looming columns.At the back of the chamber, an obsidian throne loomed on a dais. Empty. Waiting.And then.A shape stepped out of t
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Chapter 75: Rewriting Fate
Mina's footsteps rang out in the darkness, the sand grinding beneath her boots as she stepped further into the center of the Ashglass Desert. It seemed as if the desert itself was observing her, the wind carrying whispers she was not yet prepared to hear. The moon, bloated and ghostly, hung like a lantern in the sky, casting long shadows across the desolate landscape.She had no way of knowing how long she'd walked. Time had lost all meaning. The world around her was a twist endless night and horizonless sands that moved forever. But she could not stop.Kaiza was inside somewhere.Somewhere inside the Sanctum Orbis, a secret crypt that had remained hidden for centuries. Myths talked about it as the birth of all tales, the very spot where ink and paper had first crossed paths, where the Author had penned the world into being. It was claimed that within its decaying walls, the Tear in the Story lay a tear in the fabric of reality where one could remake anything. And at present, that was
The Ink of Sacrifice
The Vault had fallen silent.Ashes of lost memories swirled like snowflakes around them. Where there was once the Redacted King — wrathful and enraged — lay now a blackened seal burned into the stone floor. It glowed weakly, like a flickering pulse of life.Kaiza floated inches from the ground, his form no longer fully his.Lines of writing moved under his skin, rewriting and shifting with each breath. Each second he was alive now was a draft, wavering between what he was and what he might be. His eyes no longer contained irises, only ink, dark and old, stacked with unnamed languages.Mina crawled towards him, her voice shaking."Kaiza, it's me. Come back.He gazed at her, and for an instant, she saw him. Really saw him.Not the damned boy who lived through death and mermaids.But the man who'd traded fate for liberty."Mina," his voice was like static. "You must go. The Vault will not hold."The walls shook once more, ink seeping from the crevices. The Redacted King had not been kill
Chapter 73: The Tide That Never Sleeps
The salt stuck to them well after they departed from the sea.Kaiza rested under the decaying arch of a ruined lighthouse, his clothing still wet, hair stuck to his brow in dripping ringlets. His left hand ached — not from the Pen of Recursion any longer, but from something within him, something ancient. Something's stirring.Mina knelt beside the fading fire Soryn had constructed out of driftwood and anger. She didn't say anything. Not since they emerged. Not since the sea whispered something in her ear before releasing her.Soryn finally spoke."The god we bound…" Her voice was rough. "It wasn't the only one, was it?"Kaiza's eyes never left the black sky. "No. That was only the beginning memory. There are others waiting to be recalled.""Or revised," Mina spoke low, her voice barely audible. "Because that's what we do now. Writers of the lost."A gull screamed overhead, cold and isolated.Elsewhere…Away from the sea, across parched deserts where no water had kissed earth in decade
Chapter 72: The Salt in Her Blood
The salt seared her lips.Mina lurched ahead, boots crunching on the salt-crusted rocks of the flooded temple. Water trickled from the ceiling like blood from an open wound. Above her, sunlight filtered through the shattered ribs of the dome, a broken recollection of the sea.She had been following the call.Not Kaiza's, although her heart wept with his loss.No, this one came from something deeper. Older.From them.The mermaids.Not the ones who raised her.The ones who waited.The ones who still breathed her name in the marrow of the world.She approached the altar at the center of the room. It glowed dimly with blue light, vibrating with the beat of a faraway heartbeat. Mina looked down at the reflection in the shallow water gathered on the surface of the stone.Not her face.Not quite.Her eyes were darker, deeper. Her skin glimmered faintly, as if moonlight had passed through water. Gills haunted the shape of her neck.Something within her was waking."Do you recall your purpose
Chapter 71 The Echo Between Pages
The stars were disappearing.Not all at once. Not like a light switch being flipped off but dwindling, softly, one by one, as if something was slowly scrubbing the sky away.Kaiza stood at the ridge's edge, the blood-stained page held hard in his fist. Soryn's breathing next to him was harsh and strained. They had lived through gods, rewrites, and the end of time itself. But this… this was different.This wasn't chaos.It was precision."'This world belongs to the forgotten now,'" Kaiza quoted, her eyes narrowing. "What does it even mean?"Soryn remained silent. She returned her gaze to Velhallow, where sparks of fire danced across the skyline, lanterns being lit by citizens attempting to be normal in a world that no longer knew what normal was.But then she saw it.Perched atop the central tower, the Tower of Testament, an ember of black flame.It did not glow. It consumed.And on all sides, the sky quivered.Soryn clamped Kaiza's wrist. "We need to leave immediately."Velhallow—Tower
Chapter 70: The Unwritten Rebellion
The Pen of Possibility floated in the air, quivering with unseen power. It shone with a soft, ethereal light like it knew Kaiza's determination but was afraid of the decision he was preparing to make.Soryn was at his side, silent but watchful. Lioran breathed shallowly, his gaze darting between the ink-filled room and Kaiza's motionless body. The silence was palpable too heavy like the world itself was holding its breath.Kaiza at last extended his hand to grasp the pen.The chamber throbbed, responding to his touch. The parchment walls blazed not in flame, but in billowing glyphs and runes that twirled in spirals, with glimpses of his history. The coward of the Second Rewrite, the dictator of the Fourth, the martyr of the Fifth… and the dreamer of the First.They were all looking at him now.But he did not quake.Kaiza fell on his knee, took a deep breath, and started writing.Let there be one truth. Let the Sixth Rewrite be not a correction… but a culmination. Let pain have meaning
Chapter 69: The Sixth Rewrite
The winds had shifted.Kaiza sensed it even before the temple bells tolled in Hollow City—the grinding slowness of fate twisting once more. For weeks, there had been peace. The sky above no longer ripped apart with the creaking of shattered timelines. The streets of Hollow City teemed with individuals rediscovering how to live.But deep within, Kaiza knew peace was borrowed time.He stood upon the topmost balcony of the Hall of Echoes, the ruin now refashioned into white stone and twilight sigils. The Pen of Undoing was lost, broken at the close of the Fifth Rewrite. But his mind was still a razor's edge—carved into him as a second self.Below, the city pulsed with life again.Children giggled. The Tethered had assumed new names, new meaning. They cultivated gardens on top of ancient ruins. Lioran's name was a silent prayer among them—whispered at dawn, when the light was gentle and the air was full of memory.Soryn sat down beside him with two mugs of spiced tea, her hair tied back,
Chapter 68: The Echo of the Unwritten
The dreams grew darker now.Not distorted by fear or sorrow but by the shadow of something forgotten. Kaiza stood in a forest that glimmered like paper trapped between worlds. Trees leaned backward. The earth breathed. And above, a blank sky throbbed like the pages of an unread book.In this dream, he wasn't alone.Standing in the clearing was a copy of himself—same voice, same height, but empty. Eyeless. Pale skin like parchment. Its mouth moved open and shut silently, its fingers smeared in ink that refused to dry."Give me the ending," it mouthed, again and again.Kaiza awoke to Soryn yelling his name.He panted, soaked with sweat, and surveyed the apartment they had occupied in the midst of Hollow City's reconstruction quarter. The dawn was not yet come, yet the horizon flushed pale blue toward morning.Soryn positioned herself by the window, the hand emitting the faint afterglow of remaining sigil energy an instinctual guard in the event he sprang at her during sleep.Kaiza drew
Chapter 67: In the Inkstorm
The black tower yawned in front of them, towering, written into a million lines of evil literature, each with words that wheezed nastiness. And this was the core of the Fifth Rewrite, the last citadel of Kairen the impostor writer, the treacherous brother.Kaiza and Soryn stood on the precipice of madness.Wind composed of shredded parchment whipped around them. Ink fell from the air like rain, soaking into the earth and becoming distorted forms of memories, skeletons of decisions they had never taken. A Kaiza who had murdered Soryn. A Soryn who had become the Shadowborne queen. All their nightmares were here. All their terrors had a voice.Nevertheless, they moved on.This world isn't just being rewritten," Soryn grumbled, dropping her hood low. "It's rewriting us."Kaiza's jaw clamped. "Then we don't let it."They stepped into the Inkstorm.It wasn't just weather; it was alive. Words hurled at them like daggers, embedding in their flesh, whispering lies into their bones.Kaiza stumb
