DEADALUS author of AETHERBORN

CHAPTER 229

Thorne’s eyes locked on Percy Vayne across the Astral Hall. 

He sat at the end of the Caledris table, surrounded by a loose knot of older students,  all of them polished, immaculate, and loud in the way only nobles could be. Except Percy. The young man looked like a shadow of the man Thorne had met in Valewind almost a year ago. He’d been a smug, sharp-featured heir then. Arrogant, with a grin always tugging at the corner of his mouth, confident in the way of someon...

CHAPTER 228

The days blurred and before he knew it the opening ceremony was about to begin. 

As Aetherhold stirred from its slumber, the castle came alive with movement. Every morning, new faces arrived, young mages-to-be with luggage enchanted to hover beside them, parents clutching tearful goodbyes, nobles announcing their presence with retinues of fluttering cloaks and quiet enchantments. The hallways grew crowded. Louder. 

And in the midst of it all, Thorne walked quietly...

VAMPIRE LORD - CHAPTER 24

Soul-Married to a Cranky Elf 

Alistair offered a hand. 

Kaelren looked at it like it might bite him. Then, with a sigh loud enough to imply moral suffering, he took it. 

His grip was strong. Practical. The kind of hand that didn’t belong to a prince or priest, it belonged to someone who’d learned to skin a rabbit before learning to write. 

Alistair hauled him up with a grunt.&n...

VAMPIRE LORD - CHAPTER 23

Soulbound 

Alistair didn’t rush. 

He stood by the corpse of the cyclops, one hand casually resting on the hilt of his sword, the other dangling like he had all the time in the world. 

He didn’t. 

[Ethereal Phase – Cooldown: 15 seconds] 

He wasn’t dumb enough to make a move without an escape plan, and the guy in the trees clearly...

CHAPTER 227

The sky above Aetherhold was a yawning expanse of starlight and silent motion, the rivers of aether gliding far above like glowing threads stitched into the heavens. Thorne stood at the edge of the courtyard, the cool night air brushing past his face like the breath of something ancient. 

The marble beneath his boots shimmered faintly, reflecting the cosmos overhead. Behind him, the towering spires of Aetherhold glowed gently in hues of silver, amethyst, and blue, soft pulse...

CHAPTER 226

They approached a wide, squat stall nestled between two curved support beams, its outer walls lined with racks of glinting metal and cured leather. The scent of oil and steel filled the air, tinged faintly with char, a forge scent that settled into the bones. 

Behind the counter stood a barrel-chested dwarf, broader and far more polished than Brennak. His thick beard was braided into bands of copper wire, and his leather apron bore the faded crest of a forge guild, though th...

CHAPTER 225

The back room was little more than a curtain and a crooked shelf that stank of mildew. But behind it, a narrow door sat tucked into the wall, half-covered by a moth-eaten tapestry depicting a crumbling tower. 

The dwarf pushed the tapestry aside and nodded toward it. “Through here.” 

Thorne eyed the door. “Where are we going?” 

The dwarf didn’t look back as he tugged it open with a grunt. “To my real business.” 

Beyond was a ste...

CHAPTER 224

The sapphire door closed behind him with a soft click, sealing out the murmurs of Evermist’s lower district like a stone thrown into deep water.

The first thing Thorne noticed was the stillness.

No, not stillness, suspension.

As if time had slowed the moment he stepped inside.

Dust hung in the air in heavy motes, dancing lazily in beams of amber light that spilled from cracked lantern-crystals overhead. The scent of musty parchment and something faintl...

CHAPTER 223

Thorne sat slouched in the small common room that linked the bedrooms of the Umbra tower’s second floor, a steaming cup of tea in one hand and a half-eaten slice of honeyed bread in the other. The scroll spread across his lap looked like it had been cursed to grow the longer he stared at it. 

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. 

The text blurred. 

Arcane Fundamentals & Spellcasting (Theory & Practice) 

2025-06-30 17:30:41 +0000 UTC View Post

BONUS CHAPTER - THE RETURN

Eliza slipped her knife free of the wolf’s throat in one smooth motion. The beast’s blood steamed against her glove in the chill night air. She didn’t bother to check if it was dead. It would be. 

She straightened, rolling her stiff shoulders, and looked past the dark tangle of pines. The trees pressed so close together it felt like they were all crammed into a coffin. A coffin reeking of rot and aether, thick with fog that never quite went away. 

Somewhere ...

VAMPIRE LORD - CHAPTER 22

Burping Light and Borrowed Fate 

Alistair didn’t move. 

Not a breath. Not a blink. Just stillness, buried under a thick bush of jagged leaves and twisting roots, body pressed flat to the forest floor like a corpse with manners. 

Above him, feet crunched through soil. 

Not one pair. 

Many. 

A dozen shapes moved in slow formation through the trees, champions, all armed, all alert, all hungry. He c...

VAMPIRE LORD - CHAPTER 21

The Cleansing, End of Day One 

He stepped through the light. 

And landed in the past. 

Same night sky. Same jagged ridge. Same black earth underfoot. 

Alistair blinked. 

The Arena hadn’t moved him far, not forward, not up, not into a reward chamber full of pillows and mana wine. No. It had dumped him right back where he’d bled for survival: the cliff ridge where he’d...

CHAPTER 222

The world did not fall apart. 

It peeled, like a painting scraped from the wall of reality. Sound vanished first, then weight. Then direction. What remained was light and sensation, too vast to grasp and too intimate to ignore. 

Thorne blinked, but his eyes didn’t close. 

There was no longer a “room,” or a “floor.” There was only a surface, endlessly deep and perfectly still, like standing atop a sea of glass that stretched into the stars. He ...

CHAPTER 221

Thorne stepped into the Mid-Tier Convergence, and the massive wheel at its center turned with a soft, ancient creak. 

It spun slowly, impossibly, as if each rotation rewove the threads of every fate in the castle. Carved into the aged wood were thousands of runes and overlapping sigils, many too old to identify, others faintly glowing as threads of visible aether spiraled from the wheel like silver spider silk into the air. 

As Thorne’s boots clicked softly on t...

CHAPTER 220

The storm had faded, but the room still bore its scars. 

Ashthorn sat warm in Thorne’s hand, calm now, but only just. Not quiet. Not tame. The wand wasn’t still because it had been conquered. It was still because it was watching. 

Thorne tested a flick of his wrist. A pulse of silver light shimmered from the wand’s tip, sharp and neat, no larger than a flickering flame, but it carried weight, like a dagger sheathed in silence. 

Another motion, ano...

CHAPTER 219

Argessa set the two velvet-lined boxes down on the table between them with a soft thump, then dusted her hands like she’d just finished gardening instead of unearthing two ancient magical artifacts. 

She didn’t open them right away. 

Instead, she leaned back in her floral conjured sofa, crossed one ankle over the other, and gave Thorne a look that might have been amusement or appraisal, probably both. 

“These aren’t display pieces,” s...

CHAPTER 218

The room was silent now. Still. 

Thorne stood in the center, hands in his coat pockets, facing the resonance crystal. From a distance, it looked like a simple artifact, an inert slab of translucent quartz inset into the wall, faintly faceted and unremarkable. 

But in his aether vision, it was alive. 

A web of radiant threads coiled within it, pulsing slowly like a slumbering heart. Hidden within those threads were micro-runes, runes nested with...

VAMPIRE LORD - CHAPTER 20

Gods with Dice, and Blood on the Board 

The portal swallowed him whole. 

No flash. No wind. No system chime. 

Just silence. 

Then darkness. 

He fell for what felt like a breath or an eternity. Then there was nothing. No ground. No sky. Just black. Cold. Weightless. 

[Zone: Unknown] 
Status: Disconnected from Arena Network <...

VAMPIRE LORD - CHAPTER 19

Loot, Glorious Loot 

Darkness spat him out like he’d offended it personally. 

Alistair hit the stone floor shoulder-first, skidded once, then face-planted with all the grace of a dying pigeon. 

He groaned. 

“Ten out of ten,” he muttered into the ground. “Stuck the landing.” 

[Arena Update: Zone – Central Platform] 
Status: Sta...