Page 38 of The Bound Blood
One of the robed figures falters. He pushes back his hood.
Councilor Vemir.
“Something’s wrong,” he says, stepping back. There’s real fear in his voice now. “Stop.Stop!”
But the others don’t listen. Their chant grows louder, as if they think they can contain what’s coming.
They can’t.
The sky splits open inside me. The runes etched into the floor fracture with a sound like shattering glass. Light flares. Shadows twist. And Istand.
Magic erupts from my skin in wild, arcing currents—raw, unbound,mine.It lashes through the air like lightning, painting symbols I’ve never been taught but somehowknowin the bones of my bloodline. Ink. Starlight. Veilfire. They burn themselves into the air, rewriting reality with every flick of my fingers.
One councilor stumbles back.
Another falls to their knees, shaking.
The wall behind the altar splits straight down the center with a high, keeningscreech—not stone breaking, butrealityitself coming undone.
The Veil.
A jagged tear rips through it, splitting open like a wound, and from that wound—they come.
Not illusions. Not shadow creatures like before.
Real things.Born of nightmare and forgotten truths.
They pour from the rift—crawling, slithering, dragging themselves into the chamber on limbs made of bone, smoke, and teeth. Eyes blink where there shouldn’t be eyes. Mouths split open, stretching too far. Magic warps around them.
They smell like rot. Like the end of things.
The Council stares in frozen horror—before theyrun.
Every single one.
They don’t try to save me. Don’t evenlookat me.
They flee.
And I am left in the center of the storm.
SEVENTEEN
KAEL
I feelit before it happens.
The pull hits like a blade to the chest—sharp, ancient, and absolute. Magic tears through the threads between realms, screaming through the mark that binds her to me. One second, I’m in the lower tower, arguing with a second-rate spell-wright over the containment circles, and the next, I’m on my knees, gasping like I’ve taken a dagger to the ribs.
She’s in pain.
No—not just pain. She's unraveling.
And with her, so is the Veil.
I teleport without thinking. A single step through the in-between, ripping open a pocket of shadow with my claws and stepping into the council chamber. I land hard, boots crunching over shattered runes and ancient stone.
The room is in chaos.
