Page 186
Story: The Sin Binder's Descent
My limbs shake when I push up onto my elbows, and gods, everything inside me feels wrong, off-kilter. The poison is still clinging to me, thick and heavy, like oil coating my veins. It's not fatal. I made sure of that—I know the limits of how much my body can hold before it folds in on itself—but it's enough to make me weak. Enough to drag me under if I let it.
I can feel it threading through my system, and I know what I have to do.
I close my eyes, steadying my breath, and start pulling. Siphoning the black rot out of my bloodstream the same way I used to leech sickness from mortals long before any of them learned to fear me. I draw the poison into the hollow of my palm, spinning it tight until it feels like a blade pressed against my skin.
I draw it out slower now—deliberate. Because there’s more at stake than my body buckling beneath this weight. I have to make sure I can stand when this is over. That when we walk out of this cathedral, I’ll be the one steady enough to carry the others if I have to.
The last coil of poison seeps out of my fingers like ink in water, and I let it fade into the stone floor beneath us.
Only then do I glance at her again.
Her eyes are wide, too knowing, too soft.
I can’t let her see me like this.
So I smirk, lazy and hollow, like I haven’t just gutted myself. “Don’t look at me like that, Little Light. You’re going to make me think you care.”
Her brow pulls tight, her mouth parting like she’s going to say something that’ll split me open.
But footsteps echo in the distance.
The others. The aftermath.
“We should go,” I say, voice quieter now, roughened around the edges. “It’s done.” But nothing about this feels done. Not when her magic still lingers on my skin like a brand.
Lucien rolls his neck like he’s shaking off a long nap instead of weeks chained under a witch’s leash. His eyes—clearer now, haunted but sharp—flick over all of us like he’s counting pieces on a board. Then he says it. Like it’s simple. Like the weight of it isn’t gouging all of us from the inside out.
“It’s time to go home.”
The words hang there, heavy, hollow, like something cracked in the marrow of this cathedral.
I scrub a hand over my face, swallowing the iron taste still coating the back of my tongue. There’s nothing left of Branwen but ash, and yet somehow the shadows in this place feel heavier without her.
Lucien acts like slipping back into leadership is effortless, like he didn’t just have his will stripped and hollowed out for weeks. But that’s always been his way—wrap grief in authority and call it duty. He looks at us like we’re soldiers who followed him here, not the ones who dragged him back.
And I know why. It’s easier to lead than to feel.
Caspian’s still hovering near the ashes, the hilt of his dagger twitching in his hand like he’s fighting the urge to cut the memory of her out of his skin.
Elias and Silas are bickering over something in the background, their voices sharp and grating, which means they’re shaken but still breathing.
But Lucien’s words settle wrong in my gut.
Because he’s right.
We need to go home.
But there’s nowhere to go.
“The pillar’s gone,” I say quietly, voice rasped from everything I’ve drained tonight. “Luna shattered it.”
Lucien’s gaze cuts to me, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Then we find another way.”
I huff a bitter laugh, scraping my hands through my hair. “There isn’t another way.”
The cathedral groans around us, stone cracked and bleeding with old magic, echoes of something darker still crawling through the rafters like something unfinished. This place was built on blood and bargain—it doesn’t let people walk out clean.
Luna’s hammer strike was more than destruction; it was severance. The portal wasn’t just a door—it was the anchor that let this place bleed into our world. And she crushed it beneath her feet without looking back.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 186 (Reading here)
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 191
- Page 192