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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The third heat-crystal trap shatters before the sound even registers, a concussive blast of localized winter that coats the stone corridor in instant, jagged frost. Liora dives under the expanding shockwave. The stone floor bites through the worn leather of her boots, slick and treacherous. She rolls, her dark skin pale with freezing sweat, and comes up in a crouch behind a fluted pillar of solid ice. Her lungs burn. Every breath in the lower vaults of Nivara’s palace feels like inhaling ground…-
22.8 K • Completed
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The concussive force of the falling glacial block throws Liora backward. She hits the slick, wet stone of the cavern floor, her shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. A tidal wave of lukewarm water surges from the subterranean pool, washing over her boots, instantly soaking her leather breeches. The deafening roar of grinding ice and shifting bedrock fills the cavern, vibrating in Liora’s teeth. She scrambles blindly through the blinding spray and dust, her fingers hooking into the heavy iron handle…
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22.8 K • Completed
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The violet projection on the cavern wall flickers, stutters, and dies. The underground spring plunges back into heavy, damp darkness, illuminated only by the sickly, pulsing light radiating from the glass cage on the stone. Liora cannot breathe. Her lungs refuse to expand. The silence in the cavern is absolute, broken only by the steady drip of condensation falling from the fractured ice ceiling into the lukewarm pool. The foundation of her entire existence—nine years of righteous hatred, of warfare,…
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22.8 K • Completed
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The surface wind hits Liora like a physical blow. She drags herself out of the secondary escape tunnel, her boots slipping on the sheer, blue-white permafrost of the mountain’s northern face. The sky above Nivara is a bruised, suffocating grey. There is no aurora here. There is only the endless, biting cold of a kingdom trapped in perpetual winter. Liora pulls the thick fur collar of her stolen coat higher around her neck. Slung across her chest, hidden beneath layers of heavy wool and leather, is a…
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22.8 K • Completed
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The first siege boulder strikes the southern gates of the Ice Palace with a deafening, concussive crack that vibrates straight up through the soles of Eirwen’s heavy boots. She stands in the center of the vast, open-air courtyard, the biting wind whipping her silver hair into a chaotic frenzy around her steel gorget. The deep-glacial ice of the perimeter walls groans under the impact, a spiderweb of brilliant white fractures blooming across the translucent blue surface. Another boulder hits. Then a…
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22.8 K • Completed
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The silence that follows the detonation of the Emotion Vault is the heaviest sound Eirwen has ever heard. It is not a true silence. The vast, open-air courtyard of the Ice Palace is entirely carpeted with the writhing, broken bodies of ten thousand men and women. General Kaelen’s vanguard, the hardened veterans of the rebellion, are curled into fetal positions on the frost-shattered stone, screaming as decades of suppressed grief and terror violently re-enter their bloodstreams. The royal guard, clad in…
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22.8 K • Completed
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The blizzard howls through the shattered dome of the courtyard, an unchained, screaming force of absolute zero. Liora remains on her knees on the frost-shattered stone. The snow accumulates on her dark hair, melting against the feverish, exhausted heat of her skin, dripping down her face like freezing tears. She does not look at the storm. She looks only at the object resting between her knees. The Snow Queen’s excised heart is dead. Stripped of the violent, retroactive aurora that had projected the…
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22.8 K • Completed
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The iron nib of the quill snapped under the pressure of my grip, splattering a single drop of black ink across the thick vellum of the marriage contract. I did not flinch. I let the broken quill drop onto the heavy oak desk and stared at the final clause. Article IV: The Duke of Bleu inherits the border territories of the Vale estate. In exchange, the Duchess of Bleu retains absolute sovereignty over her person. Consummation is neither expected nor required. A transactional union. A bloodless…-
23.7 K • Completed
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The iron dagger lay heavy and silent on the mahogany desk, catching the flickering orange light of the hearth. Adrien stood a few feet away, his broad, scarred chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged breaths. He had just confessed to orchestrating the ruin of seven women, to baiting my sister into his cursed labyrinth solely to drag me into his bed. He was the monster the kingdom whispered about. He had handed me the blade to end it. I stared at the weapon. My mind reached instinctively for the…
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23.7 K • Completed
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The concussive shockwave of red magic shattered the freezing air, throwing Adrien backward like a broken siege engine. He slammed into the stone wall of the corridor with a sickening, heavy crack. He crumpled to the floor, instantly motionless. The seven women in the hall—the temporal echoes of my own face—screamed, scrambling backward into the shadows of the open doorways. They pressed their hands over their mouths, their eyes wide with a terror that belonged to a prey animal cornered by a…
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23.7 K • Completed
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