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You can’t erase one of us. You can’t cut a thread from the weave and expect the fabric to hold.

We were here before kingdoms rose and fell. Before gods bled out their own people to build empires. Before Binders walked this earth and made us kneel. We were the story before anyone dared to write it down.

So how the fuck could we become six?

The thought stabs something sharp and aching beneath my ribs, and I drag in a breath, grounding myself against the weight of it. Maybe I’m reaching. Maybe I want to believe it because the alternative tastes too much like loss, like grief I can’t afford.

But gods, if there’s even a sliver of hope…

If this—the bond, the fifth crest, the shift in her power—isn’t death, but something else…

Something like change.

Then maybe that prophecy wasn’t a curse. Maybe it was a door. One none of us wanted to walk through, but one Ambrose cracked open anyway.

Maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the end of us.

It can’t be.

We are the Seven. And you don’t rewrite creation without all of us.

Elias

Luna’s weight is stretched across my chest like gravity itself decided to anchor me here. Her hair’s a mess against my throat, one leg tangled lazily over mine, her breathing slow and heavy like she’s already halfway to sleep. I’m still buzzed, the edges of the joint from earlier humming faintly in my veins, softening everything I should be overthinking.

And I should be overthinking.

Because everything’s unraveling around us—the binding, the marks on her skin, Ambrose’s implosion, Caspian spiraling, the entire damn prophecy breathing down our necks like a blade. But right now, with her sprawled on me like this, her heartbeat slowing under my fingertips, none of that matters.

My fingers drag lazy circles over her bare shoulder, tracing the slope of it like I’m sketching something permanent. I let my magic bleed out with each pass, a slow, steady drip of Sloth slipping between us—enough to make her heavy-limbed and soft, her body relaxing further against mine like she’s melting.

It’s selfish.

But gods, I don’t care.

For once, I want her like this—wrecked and bound and ruined, but safe. Soft enough to forget the weight of the world for a second.

Her breath ghosts warm against my collarbone when she speaks, her voice small and blunt like it slips past her defenses without permission.

“I don’t want to die.”

My hand stills, the lazy circle breaking apart like glass.

I keep my face neutral, my heartbeat even, but the words land sharp in my chest, slicing through the smoke and liquor and magic. The fifth binding. The way no Binder has ever made it past it. The prophecy clawing at her throat.

I swallow, dragging my hand slowly back over her spine instead, smoothing the shiver I feel ripple through her.

“You’re not going to die, Moon.”

She huffs against my skin, but it’s not annoyed. It’s bitter. “That’s not how the stories go.”

I shift beneath her, one arm curling tighter around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer until there’s no space left between us, until she’s buried against me like I can shield her from the Hollow, from the prophecy, from the weight of carrying all of us.

“The stories are shit,” I mutter. “All of them.”

She doesn’t say anything, but I feel the way her fingers tighten against my ribs, the way her breath catches and shudders like she wants to believe me but can’t.

And because I can’t stop myself, because I’m still me even when the world’s burning, I drop my chin against her hair and murmur, voice low and soft and a little too honest, “Besides… if you die, who’s gonna put up with me?”