Page 123 of The Sin Binders Ascent

She laughs, really laughs, and the sound cracks through the forest like it doesn’t belong. Something scuttles away in the brush, unseen. Distant, distant, something howls once and is cut short like the sound choked itself.

The forest doesn’t like us happy. I make a note of that.

But Luna leans back again, this time settling her shoulder near mine. Not touching. Just close enough that I feel the ghost of her heat. She smells like blood and damp fabric and something sweeter underneath it all, like old spice and broken spells. I want to ask her what perfume she wore when she still believed she’d go home.

Instead, I just stay beside her, staring at the place where the trees start to bend, waiting for whatever this world thinks it’ll throw next.

She’s not looking at me anymore, but I feel her eyes drift back now and then. Curious. Careful. Like maybe, just maybe, I’ve surprised her one too many times to fit in the box she built for me.

Good.

I plan to keep doing that.

Her head tilts just enough for me to see the slope of her cheekbone in the fractured moonlight, a bruise blooming just below it. Faint, shallow, already fading, but still there. A mark this place gave her. One of many.

She’s quiet again. Watching the trees. Counting exits that don’t exist. She thinks there’s a way out of here. And I can’t bring myself to tell her the truth.

Not because I’m a coward. Not because I don’t think she could handle it. But because right now, that hope in her eyes is the only thing that hasn’t turned to ash. It’s not naïve. It’s not even misplaced. Luna has survived things most gods wouldn’t gamble against. She’s torn down monsters. She’s stitched worlds back together with her bare hands. She’s led, bled, burned, and come out the other side stronger.

But this place isn’t made to be escaped. And if there was a way out… Brashir wouldn’t be letting us walk around like this.

The thought twists something in my gut. I glance out at the trees again, the ones that look like they were carved from stone and wrapped in flesh. The branches are too still now, and the chime sound has faded. Even the shadows seem to be waiting.

He’s watching. I don’t know how, but I feel it. That ancient, dead god that yanked her from everything, tore her away from the Seven, from her home, from her magic. He left me cuffed to her like a joke, like a leash, like a fucking reminder of what she could have but not all she lost. And now that the cuff’s gone, he hasn’t come back.

Because he doesn’t have to.

This whole place is the cage.

If there was a door out of here, Brashir would have already sealed it shut. He wouldn’t leave it to chance. He wouldn’t leaveherto chance. He wants Luna here. Kept. Remade. Reduced until there’s nothing left of what she was.

I don’t know what the gods think they’re preserving by doing this. I don’t know why they see her bond to the Seven as some kind of divine fracture that needs mending. But I know this much, this place isn't just a prison.

It’s a process.

Luna breathes out slowly beside me, and for a moment, I pretend the sound isn’t heavy. That it isn’t stitched with the ache of waiting for rescue that isn’t coming.

“What if we head toward the mountains tomorrow?” she says suddenly. Her voice is steady, like she’s offering a strategy instead of desperation. “The ground seems less unstable that way. Might find higher ground, better visibility.”

I nod.

She takes that as agreement. Doesn’t press. But I’m not thinking about mountains. I’m thinking about Brashir again. About the fact that we’ve been moving for days and haven’t hit a wall. Haven’t found a threshold. No illusions. No magical barriers. No sharp shifts in air that signal passage between realms.

That’s not freedom.

That’s confidence.

He knows we’ll never get far enough.

He doesn’t need to trap us in a circle or cut off the path behind us. Heisthe path. Every tree, every shadow, every breath of wind that stinks of bone and ash. We’re walking throughhim. Inside him. Part of him.

And if she ever did stumble across the true way out? It would eat her whole before she reached it.

So I nod again. Let her talk about plans. Let her feel like there’s something she can do, something she can claw toward while the world folds around her like a smile full of teeth.

But the truth is simple. There’s no way out of here. Not one he hasn’t already accounted for. And if she ever finds it, it’ll be because hewantsher to.

Luna