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 current dies. It does not slow, and it does not fade. It simply ceases to exist, creating a localized vacuum of pressure that rips the oxygen straight from my dual lungs. My webbed hands slam down on the edge of the pearl-bone podium. My turquoise skin flashes with a violent, involuntary bioluminescence—a pure autonomic panic response firing across my shoulders and down my spine. The water tastes suddenly like copper and ancient salt. Around me, the Great Coral Cathedral of Nacreum, usually humming…-
21.0 K • Completed
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The frost-line moves faster than a thrown spear. It shears across the execution square, a visible, jagged wall of absolute zero turning the heavy salt water into a matrix of lethal ice. Where it touches the choral ring, the ambient hum of the ocean simply vanishes. There is no cracking sound. There is only the violent cessation of kinetic energy. I watch a Coralborn guard, heavily armored in leviathan bone, turn to flee. The frost overtakes him mid-stroke. His webbed fingers stiffen, the turquoise…
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21.0 K • Completed
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The impact shatters the bio-membrane. We hit the floor of the abyssal trench with the force of a collapsing star. The pressurized, oxygen-rich sanctuary of the leviathan lung-sac bursts outward in a violent cascade of bioluminescent fluid. The sheer concussive force throws me backward. My spine slams against a jagged edge of fossilized coral, driving the breath from my secondary lungs in a silent, agonizing rush. The heavy, freezing water of the deep reef instantly crushes in to fill the void. It is not…
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21.0 K • Completed
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The crest carved into the obsidian floor of the courtyard does not merely challenge the history of our two nations. It annihilates it. I stare down at the glowing lines hidden beneath the centuries of deep-sea sediment, my pearl eyes tracking the impossible anatomy. The creature depicted is an amalgamation of everything the Singing Throne and the Nacrefolk enclaves have spent three hundred ice-seasons trying to slaughter in each other. It possesses the sweeping, golden fin-hair of the Coralborn nobility,…
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21.0 K • Completed
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The shock of the connection is absolute. The moment my naked, black nacre gills press flush against the raw, turquoise slits of Oryn’s neck, the boundary between our bodies ceases to exist. I do not merely give him air; I bypass the heavy, caustic saline of the preservation chamber and pump the purified, oxygen-rich current directly into his bloodstream. Oryn convulses against me. It is not a rejection. It is the violent, involuntary shudder of a dying organism suddenly flooded with life. His hands,…
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21.0 K • Completed
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The heavy, hyper-saline water of the preservation chamber rushes out through the massive stone doors, dragging us with it into the Archive of Testimonies. I hit the obsidian floor of the courtyard on my hands and knees, my kelp-silk trousers clinging to my wet, shivering skin. I am stripped of my leviathan-bone torque. I am stripped of my silence. The raw, unprotected slits of my left gills are still pulsing with the ghost of Khael’s oxygen, my body humming with the catastrophic, world-ending aftershock…
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21.0 K • Completed
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The edge of my bone-handled blade rests perfectly against the turquoise pulse point of the Reef Prince. My hand is absolute. It does not tremble. I am the weapon the Nacrefolk enclaves forged in the lightless trenches, and I have finally cornered the monster who signed our death warrant. But the heavy, hyper-saline water of the archive is thick with a chaos that my training cannot process. Beneath my grip, Oryn is dying. He is not dying from my blade. The abyssal venom I slipped into his bloodstream…
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21.0 K • Completed
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The ice roof of the Great Coral Cathedral does not just fall; it detonates. Millions of tons of deep-sea bedrock, centuries of petrified coral, and the absolute, freezing vacuum of the Devouring Hush collapse inward. The water above us turns into a solid, crushing hammer of white frost and jagged stone, plummeting directly toward our tiny, vulnerable pocket in the abyssal trench. I brace myself against the obsidian wall, my arms locking tight around Oryn’s waist. I have already sacrificed my…
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21.0 K • Completed
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The King's voice vanishes, swallowed by the unnatural, stuttering wind, leaving only the gravel-rough baritone of the man sitting across from me. “The bloodless coup is the only way… I will open the western gates for your assassins.” The smoke dissipates. The cabin of the hovering skiff plunges into a suffocating, absolute silence. I stare at the empty brass burning plate. The silver ash is gone. The truth is not. I look up. Tovan is frozen on the wooden deck, the color drained from his face, his…-
19.6 K • Completed
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The crimson light pulsing from my upper right wing is blinding. It is not just a color; it is a scream. The blood magic of the usurper’s throne has awakened, locking onto the royal crest that fused into my silk during the firestorm. Outside the shattered cabin doors of the skiff, the bruised-purple sky turns a violent, electric red. The Queen’s armada drops directly out of the slipstream, their massive electrostatic cannons whining as they power up. They are not scanning for rebel ships. They are…
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19.6 K • Completed
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