thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
Comments
0
Reading
11 d, 4 h
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Varka The border square is a scar of white marble and red clay, a neutral plaza where the shadow of the Gargoyle spires meets the open sewers of the Orc slums. Today, it smells of ozone, wet iron, and impending execution. Behind my shield-wall of scarred Orc veterans, the forty-three hybrid refugees I dragged from the collapsing catacombs are huddling like branded cattle. Their skin is a patchwork of slate-grey and copper-red; their malformed wings twitch beneath heavy wool shawls, and their stunted…-
21.3 K • Completed
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Varka The transition from sovereign to fugitive is measured in the span of three heartbeats and the scrape of iron on stone. "Form the line!" my vanguard commander, his split ear twitching with treasonous intent, does not look at me. He looks through me. The grey, deadened keloids on my forearms no longer pulse with the community’s heat. To him, I am no longer the blood-anchor of the clan; I am an old female with gold-capped teeth who has traded the purity of the night for a gargoyle’s cold…
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21.3 K • Completed
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Aurex The waking is always a slow fracture. Every sunrise, the cold, grey stasis of my stone-sleep must split from the inside out. The blue-white veins of my lapis core begin to pulse, sending the first sluggish currents of liquid fire down through my shoulders, along the heavy joints of my baroque wings, and finally into the thick, clawed toes anchored to the cathedral floor. But this morning, there is no smooth transition. The stone does not slide into life; it screeches. I choke on a breath of dry…
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21.3 K • Completed
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Varka The violet light does not fade; it burns. It sears through the back of my eyelids, a blinding, physical weight that smells of ozone, old parchment, and the dry, mineral scent of crushed basalt. My orientation ears twitch, overwhelmed by a high-pitched ringing that vibrates through my skull. The heat in my blood—the ancient, pulsing Orc fire that usually guides my instincts—is screaming, but not with rage. It is screaming with the sudden, agonizing influx of thirty-six years of unfiltered,…
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21.3 K • Completed
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Varka The cold of the stone beneath my palms is no longer an executioner’s blade. I open my eyes to a world painted in permanent, soft violet. The harsh, blinding glare of the Stone Law's day is gone; the heavy, iron-scented pressure of the Blood Law's night has dissolved into a quiet, cool mist. Around us, the Great Plaza of Ardessa is silent. The ruins of the dual throne lie in massive, jagged chunks of white marble and red jasper, already being reclaimed by wild ivy and the slow, natural…
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21.3 K • Completed
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The wind tears the breath from my lungs before I can scream. Gravity is a physical set of claws dragging me downward, away from the floating neon spires of Vespera. The night air is a freezing blur of shattered stained glass and jagged iron, debris raining alongside me from the cathedral’s crumbling underbelly. I clutch the stolen Heart-Stone against my chest. It is roughly the size of a human skull, heavy as lead, and pulsing with a dormant, subterranean heat. Its red light bleeds through my leather…-
22.0 K • Completed
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The thirteenth bell finishes its toll, and the flesh dies. My blood halts its frantic, boiling sprint through my veins, calcifying instantly into solid, unyielding magma. The leathery membrane of my wings thickens, stiffens, and turns the dull, heavy grey of deep-earth basalt. I do not freeze in a gradual sleep. I snap into monument. My claws lock into the iron ribbing of the belfry archway an instant before the brass floor entirely gives way. Three tons of gargoyle mass anchor violently into the…
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22.0 K • Completed
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The thirteenth bell strikes, a deafening, final note that shakes the dust from the rafters of the empty aerodrome. The reverberation rattles my teeth in my skull. I look at the gargoyle queen towering over me. The transition from stone to flesh is violent, sudden, and complete. The dead, cold basalt of her skin flushes into a deep, bruised charcoal. The rigid stone plates of her wings shudder, softening into thick, leathery membranes stretched over dense bone, instantly dropping under their own massive,…
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22.0 K • Completed
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I drive my flesh-and-blood claws deep into the weeping eyes of the marble seraph, snapping the pneumatic pressure-valve hidden behind its skull. The first bell of the third midnight is still vibrating in the marrow of my bones. The violent rush of transition—from cold, unyielding basalt to a flushed, heavy, charcoal-skinned predator—burns through my veins like liquid lightning. Heat radiates from my heavy, leathery wings, cooking the damp air of the cathedral corridor. The seraph’s marble face…
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22.0 K • Completed
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The glowing wax seal of the Consumptive Tithe burns its jagged crown into my retinas. It is the mark of the gargoyle queen. The monster standing right behind me. The tyrant who signed the law that turned the poorest, sickest children of Vespera into living batteries for the cathedral’s falling array. I do not turn around to look at her. I lunge for the iron grate enclosing the swinging bronze bell. "Elian!" I scream, my voice tearing in my throat. I grab the thick, rain-slicked iron bars.…
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22.0 K • Completed
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