Page 27

Orin
The human world has changed. Gone are the mud huts, the fire pits, the crude weapons carved from bone and stone. The world I once knew was nothing more than survival, raw, brutal, and simple. But now?
Now, it glows.
Lights spill from the streets, blurring the sky with an artificial haze. Metal beasts hum along paved roads, their breath thick with smoke. Glass towers loom overhead, scraping at the heavens like sharpened teeth. The air hums with life, with movement, with progress.
And yet, beneath it all, the rot remains.
Humans have only refined their destruction. Hidden it behind glass and steel, behind flashing lights and whispered prayers to technology instead of gods.
I walk among them now, unnoticed, a shadow slipping through the cracks. They don’t see me. They never do. Their world is built for the living, and I have never been that.
The address Lucien gave me sits on the outskirts of a quiet neighborhood, too clean, too curated, the kind of place where nothing truly dangerous is supposed to happen.
They always think that. Until it does.
Layla Evernight. Younger than Luna by a year, still living with the parents who never even told her what she is.
The last potential Sin-Binder for the Sub-Sins.
I step onto the pavement outside the house, my gaze sliding over the structure, two stories, brick and wood, a front porch with a single rocking chair swaying slightly in the breeze. The lights inside are dim, but there’s movement, a shadow passing by the window, the faint murmur of voices.
I inhale. There it is. Faint, but undeniable.
Power.
Not like Luna’s. Not the raw, thrumming presence that demands attention, that pulls at the Sins whether we want it to or not.
This is softer. Dormant.
Unawakened.
She doesn’t know. The thought settles into my chest, heavy and inevitable. She has no idea what she is. Lucien sent me here with a purpose. Find her. Bring her into the Void. See if she can do what no one has done in a thousand years, bind the Sub-Sins before Severin drags the world into ruin.
But she is untrained. Unprepared. And if she is truly meant to be what Lucien believes she is,
Then she is already running out of time.
I step forward, slow and measured, my fingers closing into a fist at my side.
It has been centuries since I last spoke to a mortal. Since I last stood at a human’s doorstep.
Since I last looked into the eyes of something so fragile and asked them to follow me into hell.
But I knock anyway.
The door swings open.
Layla Evernight stands in the dim glow of the porch light, blinking up at me with wide, wary eyes.
And gods, it’s like staring into a fractured reflection. She looks so much like Luna, but where Luna carries sharp edges, Layla is softer, untouched by the weight of what she is. The same darkhair, but without the wildness to it, falling in neat, disciplined waves over her shoulders. The same mouth, but without the quiet, knowing curve of mischief, her lips instead pressed into something careful.
Then her eyes. Not as bright as Luna’s, not yet filled with that ancient, storm-touched hunger I’ve come to crave like a sickness. But the shape is the same, the weight of them, and the pull.
And like Luna, she knows something is wrong the second she sees me.
Her grip tightens on the doorframe, subtle but telling. She doesn’t step back, but she doesn’t step forward either.