thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
Comments
0
Reading
11 d, 4 h
-
The heavy vellum of the proxy contract lies on the freezing stone floor, glowing faintly under the sickly violet light of the Soul Gallery. I do not look at it again. I do not look at Ilyra. I turn my back on the woman bleeding on the ground, locking the iron doors of my mind shut. The Duchess of the High Court does not weep over a hired assassin. She does not mourn a transaction. I pull my velvet skirts out of the pooling shadows at Ilyra’s feet and step toward the blackened silver frame tucked into…-
23.9 K • Completed
-
-
The roar of Widowmere Abbey tearing itself apart is not a sound; it is a physical pressure that crushes the air from my lungs. Massive chunks of black marble plummet from the vaulted ceiling of the Soul Gallery, shattering the gilded frames into thousands of jagged splinters. The sickly crimson light strobes wildly as the parasitic magic of the house begins to violently implode. I drag myself to my feet, my right arm wrapping like a vise around Seraphine’s waist. She is heavy against my side. The…
-
23.9 K • Completed
-
-
The world ends in a deafening roar of grinding masonry and shattering glass, and then, there is only the absolute, ringing silence of the dust. The massive slab of the vaulted ceiling does not crush us. It slams into the pristine marble floor exactly two feet behind my boots, the sheer force of the impact throwing Cassian and me forward. We crash through the shattered threshold of the grand front doors, tumbling out of the suffocating, blood-red atmosphere of the Vesper and onto the hard, cold…-
22.8 K • Completed
-
-
11:47 P.M. — Outside Hotel Vesper The hotel appears thirteen minutes before midnight, unfolding between two condemned buildings that have shared a wall for a decade. Elara Sloane watches from across the rain-black street as a red awning pushes through solid brick. Brass letters ignite above it one at a time. HOTEL VESPER. The final R lights backward. In her right hand, the silver key from her invitation grows cold enough to hurt. Ten years ago, her sister carried an identical key into this hotel…
-
22.8 K • Completed
-
-
The marble floor opens like a starved throat. A man in a velvet dinner jacket screams, his manicured fingers scrambling for purchase on the smooth, polished stone. The tile beneath him does not break. It liquefies. It turns into a viscous, churning maw that drags him down by the knees, then the waist. Elara stands exactly three feet away. The heavy silver key in her hand bites a sharp crescent moon into her palm. Blood, hot and shockingly bright, spatters across the high cheekbone of her face and the…
-
22.8 K • Completed
-
-
The heavy oak door of Suite Thirteen slams shut, severing the scream of grinding metal and collapsing masonry like a guillotine blade. The silence that replaces it is absolute. I stand a few feet from the threshold, my breath tearing out of my throat in ragged, violent hitches. The silver key is still clamped in my fist so tightly my knuckles are white, the crescent-moon cut on my palm weeping fresh heat against the freezing metal. Behind me, the door does not rattle. It does not bulge. Whatever hungry,…
-
22.8 K • Completed
-
-
Seraphina. The silver light bleeds from the deep grooves carved into Cassian’s chest, casting harsh, geometric shadows across the heavy musculature of his torso. The heat of the aftermath vanishes. The forensic shield I abandoned only minutes ago slams back down over my mind, an ice-cold guillotine. I scramble backward across the crimson velvet duvet, dragging the torn edges of my blouse over my chest. My breath comes fast and shallow, no longer driven by pleasure, but by the sharp, metallic tang of…
-
22.8 K • Completed
-
-
The image in the polished black marble fades, swallowed by the ambient cold of the room. The silence in Suite Thirteen rings in my ears, a high, thin frequency that drowns out the beating of my own heart. I am staring at the heavy shard of memory-stone resting on the crimson velvet duvet. The projection is gone, but the afterimage is burned into my retinas with the violence of a magnesium flash. Nineteen years old. My hands slick with blood. And Cassian, his massive stone fingers wrapped around my…
-
22.8 K • Completed
-
-
We leave the weeping statues on the roof and descend the iron spiral staircase in absolute, suffocating silence. The wind dies the moment we cross back into the fifth-floor gallery, replaced by the heavy, rhythmic heartbeat of the Vesper. The architecture knows we are moving. The floorboards groan beneath Cassian’s heavy boots, and the crimson gas sconces flare, casting elongated, violent shadows across his broad shoulders. I watch the slight hitch in his stride. Beneath the dark fabric of his coat,…
-
22.8 K • Completed
-
-
The silver key clatters against the obsidian floor, a sharp, ringing note that drowns in the heavy, suffocating heartbeat of the Vesper. I stare at the woman sitting on the edge of the dais. Ten years of grief, ten years of mapping ley lines and bleeding over forensic curse schematics, all of it built on the singular, agonizing premise that my sister was a victim of this slaughterhouse. Seraphina smooths a crease from the lapel of her tailored crimson suit. Her dark hair is woven into the same immaculate…
-
22.8 K • Completed
-
- Previous 1 … 34 35 36 … 152 Next
