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 heavy iron door at the base of the tower grinds open, shattering the low, electric hum of the chamber. Two royal guards step over the threshold. They do not look at me. They look past me, their eyes fixing on the center of the room. Between them, they carry a heavy brass speaking-box, the enchanted metal glowing with the pale, sickly light of the crown’s communication magic. "Report, Cartographer," Chancellor Valerius’s voice crackles from the brass, sterile and hollow. I stand from…-
11.5 K • Completed
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The wind outside the basalt tower sounds like a dying animal. I stand in the mud of the lower bailey, the heavy iron door sealed shut behind me. Above, the sky has ruptured. The supercell is no longer a tethered, dormant lung. Denied its vessel, the storm has broken its leash. A wall of black, churning violence is steadily rotating outward, dragging a curtain of purple lightning toward the distant, high walls of the capital. I am completely alone in the rain. The cold water soaks through my linen shirt,…
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11.5 K • Completed
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The atmospheric pressure inside the basalt tower is a physical, crushing weight. The walls are fracturing. Dust and shards of stone rain down on us from the vaulted ceiling. Beneath my bleeding hand, Oran’s chest is a furnace on the verge of exploding. He is thrashing against the stone floor, his eyes wild with terror, fighting the magic I just forced into his veins. He is trying to push the current back into his own marrow, terrified of the absolute ice that is currently turning my blood into…
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11.5 K • Completed
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The heavy oak doors of the subterranean dissection theater splinter inward under the heel of my boot. The smell hits the back of my throat before the visuals catch up—sterile silver-alcohol cutting through the thick, copper stench of singed blood. On the central slate slab, a man thrashes against heavy iron restraints. Above him stands Dr. Edrin Vale. The transfer is mid-combustion. A curse does not die. In the Collegium of Undoing, they teach that magic is a closed thermodynamic loop. A curse can…-
10.3 K • Completed
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The sound of leather stretching over knuckles grates against my eardrums. It is a precise, deliberate noise, one that bypasses my training and hooks directly into the oldest scar on my spine. Three members of the Collegium Council step into the dissection theater. They wear the immaculate white coats of academic administrators, but the man flanking them—Adjutant Thorne—wears the polished black leather and brass of the military science division. He flexes his gloved hands, surveying the shattered…
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10.3 K • Completed
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The descent into the lower dissection wards is a sensory assault. The air pressure drops with every step down the spiraling stone stairwell, thickening until it feels like breathing underwater. The ambient hum of the Collegium’s containment wards vibrates right against the marrow of my bones, but it is the smell that truly dominates the space. It is a suffocating, concentrated reek of silver-alcohol and ozone. It coats the back of my throat. It is the smell of things being preserved, and things being…
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10.3 K • Completed
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The heavy military dossier slides across the slate dissection table with a dry, scraping hiss. I keep my hand flat on the manila cover, my fingertips resting against the crimson wax seal of the Capital Inspectorate. Across the table, Dr. Edrin Vale does not immediately look at the file. His hollow gray eyes stay locked on my face. My lower left ribcage aches—a dull, heavy drag of petrified stone sitting beneath my muscle tissue, pulling at my posture. The braided curse we share is only twenty-four…
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10.3 K • Completed
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Twelve bodies lie perfectly still on the perimeter of the grand containment circle. The air in the subterranean theater is completely starved of oxygen, replaced by the suffocating density of ozone and weaponized magic. The marrow-rot hex—the military’s latest escalation in the courtyard—had mutated. It was no longer waiting for a vessel. It was actively hunting. In the center of the slate floor, I kneel opposite Dr. Edrin Vale. "If we pull it all at once, the feedback will snap your…
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10.3 K • Completed
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I am still holding the open ledger when the perimeter alarms begin to scream. The sound is a high, mechanical shrieking that vibrates straight through the stone floor and rattles the surgical trays. Above us, the heavy, synchronized thud of dozens of military boots hits the main courtyard. The containment wards of the Collegium are not breaking; they are being manually dismantled from the outside. Dr. Edrin Vale jolts awake at the desk. He blinks, the narcotic haze of exhaustion and our shared intimacy…
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10.3 K • Completed
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The heavy iron cuffs lock around my wrists with a definitive, metallic click. The sound bypasses every defense my military training has ever built. It drops me straight back into the subterranean testing labs of the Capital. The phantom straps bite into my ankles. The air in the Collegium’s upper courtyard is freezing, thick with the threat of incoming rain, but I cannot breathe it. Adjutant Thorne holds the chain tethered to my wrists, his polished leather gloves squeaking as he pulls the slack…
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10.3 K • Completed
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