Page 91 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“You were being reckless.”

I walk closer. The light from the pool shifts over my skin, casting gold along my forearms and shadows across my jaw. Icrouch beside her, close enough that my thigh brushes hers. She doesn’t move away. I stare down at the water. It’s not water. It’s too dense, like melted glass that forgot how to cool. It glows faintly from within, not bright enough to blind, just enough to seduce. There's something inside it, shapes that drift like smoke or ash or maybe memories. Hard to tell. It’s like staring into a secret that isn’t yours.

I dip two fingers in.

It’s cold. Not biting, not numbing, just sharply, startlingly cold. Like touching a stone in the middle of winter. The surface breaks without resistance, but the deeper I go, the more it pulls. Not in a physical way. The chill runs through me like it’s choosing which part of me it wants to keep.

Luna watches me carefully.

I lift my hand out. The liquid clings to my fingers, too slow to be water. It rolls down my skin like mercury, leaving no wetness behind. My pulse stutters. Not from pain. From something else. A shift.

“Feel anything?” she asks.

“Besides the sudden realization I’m very stupid?”

She smirks. “Always comforting to confirm a theory.”

I glance at her. She’s beautiful here, in this strange, glowing dark, her hair frizzed slightly from the mist, cheeks flushed from the walk. Her eyes are steady, but not cold. Tired, yes. Sharpened by hunger. But there’s something softer underneath. A curiosity she can’t quite choke down.

“Your turn,” I say.

“I’ll wait and see if you start bleeding from the eyes.”

“Generous.”

We sit there for a moment, crouched beside a pool that doesn’t belong in any reality we know, under a tree that looks like it was forged by gods who forgot what nature is supposed to feel like.The vines above creak as something massive shifts far overhead. We’re small here. So much smaller than I like.

“You know what this reminds me of?” she says suddenly.

“What?”

“Elias used to take me to this garden outside the northern shrine. All twisted rock and poisonous flowers. Said it was romantic. Almost died the first time he made me sit in the grass.”

I laugh. “That sounds exactly like him.”

“He picked a flower that turned out to be sentient and tried to eat his hand.”

“I would pay to see that.”

“You’d pay to see him fall in a pit.”

“Also true.”

She smiles a little at that. Not the dangerous kind. Not seductive. Just tired. Human. The kind of smile you let yourself have when you forget for a moment how fucked everything is.

I shift beside her, and the moss gives slightly under my boot. It’s too soft. Too perfect. Like it’s meant to lull you into thinking this place is safe. But nothing here is safe. Nothing herewantsto be.

Something slithers along the edge of the chamber, a shadow without a source, too low and slow to be a threat, but present enough to keep my back tensed.

“We can’t stay here long,” I say. “Even if this place doesn’t try to kill us, it’ll... change us.”

“You mean it’ll changeyou.I’m already a mess.”

“You’re more than that.”

“I’m tired,” she says, softer now.

And for once, I don’t respond with a joke.