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The clone at the wall adds, “None of them survived long after.”

Silas spins on his heel, nearly toppling over. “Until you.”

His eyes lock on Luna, sloppy and soft and reverent under all that drunken chaos.

Silas claps his hands once, the sharp crack echoing off the stone walls like he’s summoning a crowd. His grin is reckless, stretched wide across his flushed face, curls falling into his eyes, and the drunk glint there is dangerous.

He spins, finger pointing dramatically at her, then at each of us in turn. “You’re in luck, darlings. Because tonight, you’re about to get the best damn history lesson you never wanted.”

Silas begins to pace, weaving between his clones like a ringmaster too drunk to stand still, voice dropping into something low, conspiratorial, full of slurred theatrics and danger.

“See,” he starts, tossing a glance over his shoulder at Luna like she’s the only audience that matters, “back when the Binders crawled out of whatever pit birthed them, the Sins didn’t need to leave marks. It wasn’t a thing. You bound one or two, if you were lucky—or stupid. Maybe three, if you were cursed.”

The clone draped over the floor lifts a hand dramatically, miming being struck by fate, while the one at the workbench rolls his eyes.

“But five,” Silas continues, voice curling sharper now, like smoke catching flame. “Five was the threshold. Five was the line you didn’t cross.”

He stumbles slightly but recovers with flair, pointing at his clone near the workbench, who now mimes opening a dusty book and flipping pages.

“No one knew why. Some said it was a curse. Some said it was the Binders themselves—that their bodies couldn’t handle the weight. That their magic would turn on them, burn them alive from the inside out the second the fifth mark appeared.”

The clone on the floor flails dramatically, pretending to choke, limbs splayed like a tragedy painted in oil.

Silas pauses, gaze dragging back to Luna, voice dropping softer but no less sharp. “And when the fifth crest appeared… it wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t ink and consent and pretty little promises. It burned itself onto their skin—carved in like a death sentence.”

He steps closer to her now, slower, more deliberate, like every word is stitching something between them.

“Not because we gave it,” he says, voice rough. “Because the magic demanded it.”

His clones flicker, glitching briefly like static.

Silas sweeps an arm wide, spinning on his heel, voice rising again into something breathless, messy, half-sung. “And no Binder ever made it past five. They all died, darling. Some within days. Some within hours. Doesn’t matter. The fifth was the line. The end.”

The clone at the workbench mimes closing the book and dropping it to the floor.

Silas stumbles one last step forward, stopping right in front of Luna, voice slurred but soft, something real crawling under all that glittering, messy showmanship.

“But here’s the thing,” he murmurs, lifting one hand like he might touch the edge of her shirt again, the line of her ribs. He doesn’t. “You’re already past the story. You’re rewriting it.”

The clones all collapse at once, vanishing in a shimmer of light like a curtain falling. The garage is too quiet now, the smoke still hanging heavy, the weight of his words sitting sharp on all of us.

And Luna—Luna is standing there, bare-legged, barefoot, branded, and glaring at us like she’s two seconds from setting the world on fire.

And for the first time in centuries, none of us know how the story ends.

My gaze drags sideways, cuts past Silas still buzzing on the high of his own theatrics, past Elias slouched in his chair like he’s seconds from saying something that’ll get him punched, past Riven who hasn’t moved but who’s reading every single one of us like a puzzle. I look at Ambrose.

He hasn’t looked up.

The others probably think it’s because he’s pissed—because he’s angry he lost, that he’s tied now to the one person he swore he never would be. And maybe that’s part of it. But I know Ambrose Dalmar better than most. That posture, the stillness he’s holding around him like a weapon—that’s not anger. That’s grief. He looks like a man mourning his own death.

And that’s when it hits me—not in a sharp, clean burst like most of my magic, but slow and suffocating, curling inside my chest like smoke caught too deep in my lungs.

That prophecy.

The one that’s been circling us like a blade since Luna’s clone whispered it in that chamber—those three truths laid bare like a loaded gun.Ambrose has to die to get Orin and Lucien back.

We’ve been trying to unravel it, clawing at the meaning like animals starving in the dark. I thought maybe it was literal. Maybe we'd have to put him in the ground to save the others. Elias, in one of his rare sober moments, said maybe it wasn’t that simple—that maybe death wasn’t death the way we understood it.