thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
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Reading
11 d, 4 h
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The red boundary contracts with every beat of the moon. We have minutes before it crushes the villages into the observatory hill. Old law feeds it: every stone marker placed by a laird, every tax line drawn without the people who lived inside it, every grave used as proof that the dead consented. I cannot erase the boundary. Erasure created this wound. So I ask it a question no map has asked before. “Who wants this line?” My voice enters the Deed through the place where my name used to be. The…-
11.2 K • Completed
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The dead keep their names in the backs of their teeth. That was what my mother taught me before the Ashen Court erased hers. A vampire’s face can be glamoured, voice copied, memories purchased or stolen, but a true name settles into the jaw at death. If you know where to press, the final syllable rises like blood from a cut. I had stolen twenty-three names by the night the eclipse train arrived. The twenty-fourth belonged to a princess. She was waiting for me in a shuttered chapel beyond the eastern…-
16.5 K • Completed
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The metallic tang of fresh blood cuts through the stale scent of dried lavender and velvet. My eyes snap open. Absolute darkness. The mattress beneath me absorbs the vibration of the iron tracks, a relentless, heavy rhythm driving us forward into the neutral zone. I am enclosed. The velvet-lined lid of the bridal sleeper berth sits mere inches from my nose, trapping the stale air. My silk skirts rustle, heavy with pearls and stiff embroidery, a suffocating cage of white lace. I shift my weight, trying to…
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16.5 K • Completed
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"Four," Ronan Vale whispers. The syllable vibrates against my collarbone. The silver blade bites a fraction deeper, tracing a blistering line of agony across my throat. The scent of my own searing flesh—sweet, metallic, and horrifyingly fragile—mixes with the crushed pine and ozone radiating from his leather armor. My lungs scream for air, but the pressure of his forearm against my chest is an iron wall. "I didn't kill her," I choke out. I force my hands to flatten against the…
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16.5 K • Completed
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My fingers close around the hilt of the silver dagger. The metal does not just burn; it screams against my nerve endings, a localized, white-hot inferno that threatens to boil the blood in my veins. My jaw locks. I refuse to gasp, refuse to let the werewolf alpha see the tremor shivering up my arm. I grip the searing metal tighter, forcing the blistering flesh of my palm to hold steady, and press the impossibly sharp edge against Ronan Vale’s outstretched hand. I pull. The blade slices cleanly through…
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16.5 K • Completed
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The heavy iron bulkhead door to Car Three seals shut behind us with a mechanical, bone-rattling thud, cutting off the endless, silent ocean of floating werewolf corpses suspended in the eclipse's void. I collapse against the brass-riveted wall, my lungs burning as they drag in air that smells sharply of gun oil and polished copper. Beside me, Ronan Vale slides down the metal paneling, his massive frame hitting the grated floorboards. He doesn't make a sound, but his face is a mask of ash-gray agony. He…
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16.5 K • Completed
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We leave the frozen attendant mid-pour, slipping past the suspended waterfall of tea and lunging for the heavy lead doors at the far end of the parlor car. The temporal friction is tearing the woodwork apart behind us, splintering the mahogany paneling into hovering shards. Ronan hits the bulkhead with his right shoulder, his broken left arm cradled tight against his ribs. I slam my bloodied palm onto the biometric needle-pad. The brass hisses. The deadbolts retract. We spill through the threshold,…
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16.5 K • Completed
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The deep, bone-rattling toll of the iron bell from the forward cars shatters the vacuum. The zero-gravity snaps. We drop like stones. My boots hit the grated floorboards hard, the sudden return of my own weight driving me to my knees. The heavy, pearl-encrusted silk skirts collapse around me. Beside me, Ronan hits the iron deck with a heavy, jarring thud, a sharp hiss escaping his teeth as the impact jars his shattered left arm. The crystalline silence of the Stasis Car is dead. The deafening,…
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16.5 K • Completed
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The silver tip of the longsword is perfectly, terrifyingly steady, aimed directly at the center of my chest. The holographic blue mist of the time-echo has vanished, but its brutal implication still hangs in the suffocating crimson light of the Stasis Car. I am looking at the man who will murder me tomorrow. Present Ronan Vale stands three feet away, his broad shoulders squared, his jaw locked in the exact, merciless lines of the Butcher of the Silver Woods. His golden eyes are no longer the eyes of the…
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16.5 K • Completed
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The heat radiating from the magnetic cradle is not merely physical; it is a localized, screaming star, a contained inferno of solar magic that warps the very air into a shimmering mirage. My heavy, pearl-encrusted silk skirts begin to scorch before I am even within arm's reach of the pedestal. The delicate lace of the Ashen Princess’s wedding gown crisps into black ash, floating upward in the thermal updraft. The toll for the sun is a life willingly burned. I stare into the spinning, jagged gear of…
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16.5 K • Completed
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