# Chapter 10: The Nightbloom Exodus

Damien’s hands cradled her bloodied form on the cold stone floor of the Great Hall, his voice a fierce whisper cutting through the stunned silence: “Isabella—my sovereign—rise.”

The world was a fractured mosaic of velvet shadows and jagged light. Isabella blinked, her lashes heavy with the copper-sweet dew of her own exertion. Beneath her, the ancient stones of Blackthorn Keep were no longer humming with the oppressive weight of the Great Binding. That resonance, a centuries-old chokehold on her people, had been replaced by a vacuum so profound it made her ears ring. 

She tried to draw a breath, but it hitched in her throat, tasting of dust and ozone. Her palms were twin maps of raw, weeping lacerations where she had gripped the ritual’s essence and torn it asunder. She felt Damien’s warmth—a grounding, frantic heat—seeping through the silk of her ruined gown.

“Pray, Damien,” she rasped, the word cracking like dry parchment. “Do not hover. It is... a touch inconvenient to be seen as a casualty of my own triumph.”

“You are no casualty,” he murmured, though his eyes were wild, darting between the ruin of her arms and the gathering storm on the dais. “You are the breach itself.”

Isabella forced her spine to stiffen. The hemomantic scarring on her forearms, those permanent crimson records of every oath she had ever navigated, throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she traced the jagged line at her left wrist. The Song of Thorns, once a distant melody she had only heard in the fever dreams of her elders, now pulsed behind her ribs. It was no longer a song of mourning; it was a rhythmic, rising tide.

She looked past Damien. High Priest Malakor was a pathetic huddle of white robes atop the debris of the shattered ritual stones. He was clawing at the air as if trying to catch the ghosts of the laws she had just unmade. His religious authority hadn't just been challenged; it had been eviscerated.

“The stones,” Malakor whimpered, his voice thin and reedy. “The foundation... it is gone. The blood has no vessel.”

“The blood has its Sovereign,” Isabella said. She didn’t realize she was standing until she felt the agonizing pull in her thighs. Damien was a pillar at her side, his hand hovering near the small of her back, not quite touching, yet offering everything.

Across the hall, the Blackthorn guards stood like statues of salt. She saw the confusion in their eyes—the younger ones especially. They looked to Damien, then to the smoking ruins of the Binding, and then to the high dais where Lord Malphas stood. They were polarized, caught between the gravity of their old lord and the magnetic rebellion of the heir who stood in his own father's blood to protect a 'heretic.'

“Isabella Voss!” 

The roar came from the dais. Malphas Blackthorn was no longer the composed architect of annexation. He was a predator stripped of his lure. He paced the edge of the high stone platform, his face a mask of pale, calculated fury.

“You stand amidst the wreckage of a peace that has lasted three hundred years,” Malphas spat, his finger trembling as he pointed at her. “You think a parlor trick of the veins makes you a queen? You are a thief. You have stolen the blood-assets of this House. You have seduced the heir of Blackthorn into a blasphemous union that circumvents every treaty written in the Book of Laws!”

Isabella leaned into Damien, just enough to catch her balance, then she pulled away, standing on her own. She raised her chin, oblivious to the blood that stained the ivory column of her throat.

“Pray tell, Malphas,” she called out, her voice regaining its melodic, cutting edge, “how does one bind a heart with vows of crimson, only to watch it bleed defiance? You speak of treaties as if they were holy, yet you used them as a butcher uses a hook. The peace you cherish was merely a slow-motion execution of my people.”

She glanced at her arms, letting the high collar of her dress fall back to reveal the severity of the scarring. The sight of it—the sheer volume of power she had channeled to break the Binding—sent a ripple of murmurs through the hall.

“You call me an unmarked vessel,” she continued, her gaze sweeping to the terrified High Priest. “But I am marked by every lie you forced us to sign. And as for your heir...” She turned her eyes to Damien. “He did not require seduction. He required a reason to stop being your shadow.”

Malphas’s eyes narrowed into predatory slits. “A heresy trial will be convened before the moon sets. You will not leave this Keep with a single drop of Blackthorn legacy. Damien—step away from the girl, or I shall strike your name from the lineage before her heart stops beating.”

Damien didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, his boots crunching on the obsidian shards of the ritual circle. “The lineage is dead, Father. You killed it when you valued the stones more than the blood that flows through them. I am no longer your enforcer. I am her blade.”

Isabella felt the shift then—the Nightbloom survivors, dozens of them huddled in the alcoves and shadows of the Great Hall, began to move. They weren’t creeping; they were flowing. The Song of Thorns in her chest amplified, a collective heartbeat that synchronized with her own. 

“My people,” Isabella whispered, the poetic flourish of her composed self returning. “The thorns have grown long enough to pierce the hand that prunes them. We are leaving. Is it not time?”

One of the elder Nightbloom sisters, her face etched with the weariness of decades of servitude, stepped into the light. She bowed her head not to the dais, but to Isabella. “The Song is loud, Sovereign. We follow the Song.”

“Damien,” Isabella said, her voice dropping to a command. “Ensure our passage. Use whatever force is required. I will hold the center.”

“With your life,” Damien promised.

The exodus began as a slow, deliberate march. The Nightbloom refugees gathered behind Isabella and Damien, a ragged but defiant phalanx of velvet and steel. They moved toward the massive oak doors of the Great Hall, which stood closed and guarded by a dozen Blackthorn elites.

Malphas’s voice turned to silk—a sound more dangerous than his roar. “You think it is that simple? To walk out of the strongest fortress in the West? Guards! Seize the Voss girl. Kill the others if they resist. My son is to be restrained, not broken... yet.”

The Blackthorn guards hesitated. A young soldier at the front, his hand white on the hilt of his sword, looked at Damien. 

“Commander?” the boy asked, his voice cracking.

“Stand aside, Leo,” Damien said, his voice a low snarl of protective instinct. “Or you will find out exactly why I was the one who trained you.”

For a heartbeat, the Hall was a vacuum of tension. Then, the older guards, those loyal to Malphas's purse and his cruelty, drew their steel. The sound of twenty blades clearing scabbards rang out like a death knell.

Isabella felt the cold wash of exhaustion threaten to pull her under. The palm lacerations began to bleed anew as she curled her fists, trying to find one last spark of hemomancy. She needed to channel, but her vessel was dry. 

*Blood blood everywhere,* her mind panicked, the keywords of her trauma repeating in a frantic loop. *Blood for the vow, blood for the way out.*

She caught Damien’s eye. He saw the flicker of weakness. Without a word, he took her hand, his own palm still bleeding from a minor feedback cut. As their blood mingled, a jolt of raw, unearned power surged through her. This was the secret they carried—the circumvention of the treaty protections. Their union was a closed circuit of power that Malphas’s laws couldn't touch.

Isabella’s eyes flashed a brilliant, terrifying crimson. She didn’t use a whip this time. She simply spoke.

“Pray, move.”

The air in front of the doors distorted. A wave of ethereal red force, smelling of iron and ancient roses, slammed into the guards. It wasn't a killing blow—she didn't have the strength for that—but it was a Sovereign’s command. The guards were thrown back, the massive doors creaking on their hinges as the Nightbloom collective pushed forward.

The skirmish was short and brutal. Damien moved like a shadow, his blade a blur, disarming his former brothers-in-arms with a surgical, mourning efficiency. He didn't kill—not yet—but he left a trail of broken pride and shattered steel in his wake.

Isabella walked in the center of the storm, tracing the scars on her wrist. Each step was a titration of agony. Each breath was a debt repaid. She looked up at the High Dais one last time. 

Malphas wasn't moving. He stood amidst the ruins of his ambition, watching them. He wasn't screaming anymore. He was calculating. He looked at the way Isabella and Damien moved in perfect, bloody synchronicity, and his lips curled into a thin, hateful smile.

“The price of this freedom is a debt you cannot afford, Isabella,” Malphas called out, his voice echoing through the vaulted ceiling as the refugees breached the threshold of the Hall. “You have broken the treaty, but you have not broken the Council. You are a fraud playing at godhood.”

They moved into the corridors, a river of Nightbloom survivors flowing toward the outer gates. The Keep was in chaos. Bells were ringing in the distance—the alarm for a prison break, or a holy war. 

Isabella felt the night air hit her face as they emerged into the courtyard. It was cold, biting, and the most beautiful thing she had ever felt. She stumbled, her legs finally giving out, but Damien caught her before she hit the gravel.

“We’re out,” he whispered, his face streaked with soot and her blood. “Isabella, we’re out.”

She looked back at the looming silhouette of Blackthorn Keep. It looked like a jagged tooth biting into the moon. She could feel the Song of Thorns settling into a low, steady hum within her—a living archive of her people’s suffering and their new hope. 

“We are out,” she repeated, the reflection seeking its affirmation. “But the hunt is only beginning, is it not?”

As the last of the exodus breached the outer gates and disappeared into the treeline of the Blackwood, a final, amplified voice thundered from the highest rampart of the Keep. It was Malphas, utilizing a ritual megaphone that carried for miles.

“HEAR ME!” the voice boomed, chilling the very marrow of those fleeing. “By the authority of the High Seats and the blood of the founders, I hereby decree a Great Heresy! The Blood-Sovereign is a FRAUD! A bounty of ten thousand marks for the head of Isabella Voss, and the return of the Blackthorn Traitor!”

Isabella watched his silhouette on the battlements, a dark shape against the moon, before he vanished into the shadows. There was a hunter’s promise in his eyes, a vow that no ritual could ever break. 

She turned her back on the Keep and followed her people into the dark.

**SCENE A: The Interiority of the Sovereign**

Inside the crushing darkness of the Blackwood, the silence of the forest was a different kind of weight than the stone of the Keep. Isabella felt the Song of Thorns vibrating in her marrow, no longer an external directive but a permanent internal architecture. It was exhausting. It felt as if her bones were made of glass and her blood was molten lead. Each time her boot struck the uneven earth, a fresh spike of pain radiated from her palms into her shoulders. 

Damien remained a constant, shifting shadow at her flank. She could hear his breathing—ragged, yet synchronized with her pace. She found herself reaching for his emotional state through the residual hum of their shared blood. He was a furnace of protective rage, but beneath that, she sensed a cold, hollow terror. He had burned his world to the ground for her. The heir of the Blackthorns was now a ghost in his own lands.

She traced the scars on her wrists through the shredded lace of her sleeves. They were hot to the touch, swollen with the spiritual backlash of the ritual's destruction. She had always viewed these marks as a tally of her failures, a record of every time her coven’s needs had overridden her own desires. Now, they felt like the bars of a cage she had finally bent wide enough to step through. Yet, as she looked at the Nightbloom elders walking ahead of her, their backs curved under the weight of bundles and age, she realized the cage had simply expanded to encompass them all.

*Blood blood everywhere,* she thought again as she tripped over a root. *Blood on the stones, blood on his hands, blood in the song.* 

Her mother’s face flickered in her mind—the way she had looked just before the coven's judgment. There had been a peacefulness in Elara Voss's eyes that Isabella had never understood until this moment. It was the peace of a choice made, regardless of the cost. Isabella had spent her life trying to avoid her mother’s fate, yet here she was, leading an entire people into the same heresy. She wasn't just a bride or a victim anymore; she was the living vessel of their rebellion. It was a terrifying, exhilarating realization that made her heart hammer against her ribs.

**SCENE B: The Burden of Leadership**

The exodus halted near a natural spring, the water a silver ribbon under the moonlight. Isabella leaned against a mossy trunk, her breath coming in shallow hitches. Damien was immediately there, his hands steadying her.

“You need to rest, Isabella. The bleeding hasn’t stopped.”

She looked at her palms. They were indeed weeping. “Pray, Damien, do not state the obvious. It is... a touch inconvenient to be reminded of my mortality while we are being hunted by your father’s hounds.”

“It’s not just my father,” Damien whispered, kneeling to tear a strip from his own cloak to bind her wounds. “The Coven Council will respond. Shattering a Great Binding—it’s never been done. Not without a war following.”

“A war is exactly what Malphas wants,” she replied, her voice gaining a sharp, crystalline edge. “He wants to be the savior who brings the 'heretic' to justice. He will use our exodus as proof that the Nightbloom are a blight that must be purged.”

One of the younger refugees, a girl no older than fifteen named Kaelith, approached them. Her eyes were wide with a mixture of fear and awe. “Sovereign? Is it true? The stones are gone?”

Isabella turned her gaze to the girl. For a moment, her regal composure wavered, replaced by a raw, ancient tiredness. Then, she straightened her shoulders, hiding the scars beneath the ruins of her collar.

“The stones are gone, Kaelith,” Isabella said, her voice soft yet carrying through the clearing. “The foundation of our chains has been pulverized. But do not mistake the absence of stones for the absence of struggle. We are free, but we are also alone. Is it not a heavy gift?”

Kaelith nodded, her hand trembling as she touched the hem of Isabella’s gown. “We have the Song. We can hear you now. Even without the Matriarch.”

“I am no Matriarch,” Isabella said firmly, looking at Damien. “I am a Sovereign. And a Sovereign does not rule by the grace of old treaties. We rule by the blood we are willing to shed for one another.”

Damien finished binding her hand, his fingers lingering on her wrist. “The Council will come, Isabella. But they will have to go through me first.”

She offered him a ghostly, pained smile. “Pray, ensure you do not make me a widow before the sun rises, Damien. It would be quite intolerable to have gone through all this effort for a funeral.”

**SCENE C: The First Twenty-Four Hours**

As the first grey light of dawn began to bleed through the canopy of the Blackwood, the reality of their situation settled over the group like a shroud. They were approximately twelve miles from the Keep, moving toward the neutral territories of the High Fells. The night had been a blur of adrenaline and agonizing movement, but the morning brought the cold clarity of survival.

Isabella watched as the refugees organized themselves with a grim efficiency. The elders were tending to the wounded, using what little herbal knowledge they had to supplement the drained hemomantic reserves. There were no songs today—only the sound of damp boots on mud and the distant cry of a hawk. 

She felt the "Song of Thorns" settling into a low, thrumming baseline. It was no longer the screaming crescendo of the Great Hall; it was a steady, watchful presence. She could feel the location of every Nightbloom member in the forest, a map of souls etched into her consciousness. It was a burden she hadn't anticipated—feeling their hunger, their exhaustion, and their flickering hope as if it were her own.

Damien stood on a rocky outcropping, looking back toward the east. The smoke from the Keep’s signal fires was visible on the horizon, a thin black line against the pale sky. 

“They’re mobilizing,” he said as she joined him. “They won’t wait for the Council’s formal decree. Malphas will have his outriders in the woods by noon.”

Isabella traced the fresh bandages on her palms. The pain was more manageable now, a dull roar instead of a sharp scream. She looked at her people, then at the man who had abandoned everything to stand by her side. 

“We cannot stay on the main paths,” she said, her voice regaining its poetic, commanding cadence. “We will take the Ravine of Whispers. It is dangerous, but the Blackthorn horses cannot follow. And we must send word to the Western Covens. If Malphas wants a heresy trial, we shall give him one. But we will not be the only ones standing in the light of the Council’s judgment.”

“You’re going to challenge him legally?” Damien asked, incredulous.

“I am going to challenge him with the truth of the Sovereign Breach,” she said, her eyes flashing with a lingering crimson fire. “He speaks of theft, yet I spoke of liberation. We will move through the dark, but we will not hide. Is it not better to be a queen in exile than a slave in a palace?”

She turned her back on the smoke of her former life, her steps steadier now. The hunt had begun, but for the first time in three centuries, the Nightbloom were the ones choosing the ground.