Page 5

The connection is weak, stretched thin, a whisper in the back of my skull instead of a presence, but it’s real. It’s waiting. And the realization hits so hard I gasp.
And suddenly, I exist again. I stumble as the ground reappears beneath me, my boots scuffing against something uneven, my legs nearly buckling under the sudden weight of being. The air is sharp, too thick, filling my lungs in a rush that makes my vision swim.
I hear Elias curse beside me, a low, raspy sound. Lucien is ahead, already regaining his composure, his shoulders stiff as he scans the space before us.
I lift my head and finally see. The sky overhead is wrong. Not a sky at all, but a vast expanse of shifting darkness, broken by slivers of dim, unfamiliar light. The land is jagged, fractured, as if something tore through it long ago and never bothered to put it back together properly. Towering black spires stretch toward the void above, twisted structures that look like they were carved from shadows and bone.
This place doesn’t want us here.
Lucien speaks first, his voice even but edged with something cold. “Move.”
No hesitation. No time wasted. He starts forward, his steps deliberate, his posture unyielding.
Elias lingers, rubbing the back of his neck, his usual smirk absent. “Well, that was unpleasant.” He exhales, glancing at me. “You good, little star?”
I nod, but it’s not quite a lie. “It’s weaker than it should be. But they’re here.”
Elias hums, stretching out his arms. “Makes sense. The Rift doesn’t like bonds. Likes to sever things.”
That thought makes my stomach knot. The connection between us was already fragile, if we don’t reach them soon…I shake the thought away and keep moving. Because no matter what it takes, I’m getting them back.
The landscape unfolds before us in jagged stretches of blackened stone, veins of something too dark to be shadow pulsing faintly beneath the cracked surface. It’s not lifeless, not dead, but it doesn’t belong to anything living either. There’s a wrongness to it, like a painting smeared with something poisonous, a distortion at the edges of reality that my mind keeps trying, and failing, to reconcile.
I scan the horizon, noting the way the structures ahead twist upward like broken spines, curling into the empty sky. Or what should be a sky. Instead, the expanse above is a roiling, endless dark, not quite clouds, not quite void, just a shifting nothingness, fractured by streaks of faint, unnatural light.
I force a slow breath into my lungs. “What is this place?”
Lucien doesn’t hesitate. “The Hollow.” His voice is clipped, his gaze sweeping the distance. “It exists between realms. A scar between the living world and everything that should have been left behind.”
Elias exhales, tipping his head back, studying the flickering half-light above us. “A lovely fucking scar,” he mutters. “Charming vacation spot.”
Lucien ignores him, his attention fixed ahead. “It was never meant to be traveled. Not by creatures like us.”
That catches my attention. I glance at him, his profile sharp in the dim glow. “Creatures like us?”
Lucien’s mouth presses into a thin line. “The Hollow doesn’t favor intruders. It was carved out of the void itself, stabilized only by the things strong enough to hold it together. Everything else? It either swallows or spits back out.” His gaze flickers toward me. “We should hope for the latter.”
Something cold curls at the base of my spine. “And the things that hold it together?” I ask, slower now.
Elias grins, but it’s not his usual smirk. It’s something sharper. “Oh, you’ll meet them soon enough.”
I don’t like the way he says that.
Lucien exhales, his patience thinning. “We’re wasting time. If the Rift stretched the bond this much, they’re farther than we thought. We need to move.”
His eyes settle on me, expectant. Waiting.
I blink. “What?”
Lucien tilts his head slightly. “You’re the one who felt them. You tell us which way.”
Right. Because that’s my role in this. The Sin-Binder. The one who can track them, even across the places between.
I push out another slow breath, willing the bond to surface, willing my mind to stretch toward that fragile thread still connecting me to them.
It’s faint. A whisper against my ribs. Silas is sharpest. His presence flickers in and out like a radio caught between stations, static layered with something distant, something raw. The kind of pain that isn’t fresh, but sustained.
Riven is quieter. Not absent, not gone, but muted. Not himself.