Page 18 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

The moment I step into the house, I know something is wrong. Not just wrong, off. Warped at the edges, unsettled in a way that has nothing to do with the ruin before me.

The house should not be this quiet.

Ambrose and Caspian are here. I should hear something, the scrape of boots against floorboards, the lazy lilt of a voice, the telltale energy that clings to them like a second skin. But there’s nothing. Just silence. Just absence.

And destruction.

The front door hangs askew on splintered hinges, a jagged wound where it was forced open, or forced outward.

The walls bear deep gouges, claw marks too precise to be human, too erratic to be anything else.

Broken furniture litters the floor, chairs overturned, a table split down the center like an axe cleaved it in two.

But it’s the scorch marks that make me still.

Blackened streaks along the floorboards, charred remnants clinging to the walls, the faint scent of something burned lingering in the air, not wood, not fabric. Flesh.

Magic was used here. Magic that did not belong to them.

Layla shifts beside me, the weight of her presence sharp against the fractured space. She hasn’t spoken since we arrived, but I feel the way she inhales, slow and measured, her breath catching at the edges.

She sees it too.

I step forward, careful, my boots crunching over the remnants of something crystalline, glass? No. Wards. Shattered sigils, their protective magic long unraveled, reduced to meaningless fragments.

Something broke through their defenses. Something stronger than it should have been.

Layla exhales, voice barely above a whisper. “This was recent.”

I nod once. The air still hums with residual energy, the kind that lingers after a spell is cast with force. The kind that doesn’t fade immediately.

Which means whoever did this might not be far.

I crouch beside the largest scorch mark, pressing my fingers to the wood. It’s cold. Not the sharp, biting chill of frost magic, not the lifeless absence of heat. A different kind of cold. A hollow cold.

I know this feeling.

Layla watches me, waiting.

I close my eyes, reaching, stretching beyond the immediate, beyond sight, beyond sound. Searching for the imprint of what was left behind.

For a moment, nothing.

Then,

Pain.

A sharp, blistering sensation, not my own, not now, but imprinted in the space, lingering in the aftermath. The memory of something dragged, something restrained. Blood on the floor, pooling, drying.

Gone.

Vanished.

Like the house itself consumed the evidence.

My eyes snap open. My fingers curl against the floorboards, my pulse a steady drum against my ribs.

Layla tilts her head. “What did you see?”

I straighten, dusting off my hands. “They fought.” A pause. “And they lost.”

Her mouth presses into a thin line. “Where are they now?”

Good question.

A better one, what took them?

I glance around once more, scanning the destruction, the patterns, the magic left behind. Not random. Not reckless. This wasn’t a struggle. This was a hunt.

And Ambrose and Caspian were the prey.

I exhale slowly. This just got complicated.

Layla steps forward, her gaze skimming over the damage, assessing, processing. Then she stops. Stares.

At first, I don’t see what caught her attention.

Then I do.

A message, scrawled into the wood, barely visible through the soot and blood. Not written in ink. Carved. With a blade. Come and see.

Layla reads it aloud, her voice steady, but beneath it, something else.

A flicker of something distant. Something wary.

I meet her gaze. “It’s an invitation.”

She swallows. “Or a warning.”

Both.

I rise to my full height, rolling my shoulders, the weight of something inevitable settling into place. This wasn’t just an attack. It was a statement. A lure.

And we’re expected to follow.

I glance toward the ruined doorway, toward the darkness stretching beyond.

“Well,” I murmur, voice calm, deliberate. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”

Layla hesitates for only a second before stepping in line beside me.

I follow the trail, not by sight alone, but by something deeper.

Something older. It lingers in the air, in the warped space where power licked against reality and left its mark.

The ground bears the story of their struggle: jagged imprints, the uneven scuff of boots, the unmistakable path where one of them was dragged.

That’s the first thing that doesn’t make sense.

Ambrose and Caspian are not weak. Not careless. Not the kind of men who fall easily, let alone get dragged like carrion while the other simply walks.

The prints are deliberate. One dragged. One walking.

I crouch, pressing my fingers against the disturbed earth, feeling for the story beneath my skin. There’s no blood. No sign of struggle beyond what’s written in the dirt itself. No hesitation in the steps that followed.

Whoever walked did so willingly.

A choice.

Or an order.

My gaze follows the trail, tracking the path until it reaches the ruined pillar ahead. It rises from the cracked foundation like a splinter of the past, weathered by time but still standing, defiant against the decay around it. The drag marks stretch right up to its base, and then stop.

Not tapering off. Not scattered by wind or disrupted by another force.

Just gone.

I stand slowly, my eyes narrowing as I scan the space. There should be more. A sign of struggle leading away, some indication of where they were taken. There isn’t. It’s as if the earth simply swallowed them whole.

I move closer, pressing a palm to the stone. It’s cold, untouched by whatever force ripped them from this place. But something lingers. A whisper of magic that hums just beneath the surface, faint but old.

Older than the Academy. Older than the Rift.

I exhale, tilting my head.

“You were used, weren’t you?” I murmur to the pillar. Not expecting an answer. Just thinking aloud.

Layla approaches from behind, her footsteps careful, deliberate. “What do you mean?”

I glance at her, noting the way her gaze sharpens as she takes in the marks at our feet. The way her brows pull together, suspicion flickering in her expression. She doesn’t see it yet.

I tap a finger against the stone. “It’s not just a landmark. It’s a boundary. A tether. And someone used it.”

Her lips part slightly before she catches herself, pulling back into that guarded neutrality she wears like armor. “To do what?”

I tilt my head, looking past the structure, past the space where reality should make sense, but doesn’t. “To disappear.”

She goes still. “That’s not possible.”

I take another step back, sweeping my gaze over the ruins once more. Searching. Calculating. This wasn’t just an ambush. It wasn’t an attack in the way one might expect, a struggle, a fight, a capture. No.

It was deliberate. Methodical.

Ambrose and Caspian weren’t taken by force.

They were claimed.

The weight of that realization settles deep in my chest, threading through my ribs like something ancient waking from a long slumber. This isn’t about power or violence. This isn’t about winning a battle.

This is about ownership.

And whoever did this, whoever could overpower them so completely, believes they already belong to them.

Layla shifts beside me, her voice quieter now. “If there’s no trail leading away, then where are they?”

I close my eyes, feeling for the remnants of what lingers. The faint pull of something unraveling just beneath reality’s surface.

Not just magic.

A rift.

Not like the one that tore through the Academy, reckless and violent. This one is different, controlled, precise. A cut so clean, so sharp, that even the world itself didn’t have time to bleed.

I open my eyes. “Not here.”

Layla watches me carefully. “Then where?”

I meet her gaze.

“Somewhere worse.”

The scent lingers.

A whisper of something long buried, something that should not, could not exist here.

I stand at the edge of the pillar, my fingers dragging over the stone as if the answer might be carved into its surface. As if time itself might offer up its secrets just to prove me wrong.

But the air does not lie.

Neither does memory.

Layla shifts behind me, waiting. She knows better than to ask what I’ve found, or what I think I have. Because I cannot speak it. Not yet. Not until I hear Lucien tell me I’m wrong.

Because I have to be wrong.

The alternative is… impossible.

I inhale slowly, steadying myself, forcing my mind into colder calculations. The facts. The logic. The things that make sense.

Caspian, taken. Ambrose, dragged, then vanished. No trace of where. No natural exit point. No remnants of transportation magic strong enough to conceal two bodies so completely.

Which means the answer is simpler than I want it to be.

It was not a normal passage.

And that scent, that godsforsaken scent, it clings to the air like rot buried beneath perfume. Something sweet, decayed. Something I have not smelled in centuries, not since…

No.

I push the thought back, swallow it whole.

She is dead. She has been dead for so long that even the world itself should have forgotten her.

Lucien will remind me of that.

Lucien, whose mind is sharper than mine when the past clouds my judgment. Lucien, who will tell me this is a trick, an echo, a deception.

Because if I am right, if she has them, then I cannot approach her.

Not if I want to survive.

Not if I want them back.

The weight of the decision settles before I let it fully unravel. I don’t have time to stand here, staring at the impossible. I need to move.

Layla watches me, her arms folded, her golden eyes gleaming in the fractured light. “Whatever it is,” she says, voice measured, “you’re going to have to say it eventually.”

She’s wrong.

I don’t have to say it.

I just have to act.

I shift toward her. “We’re leaving.”

She blinks. “What?”

“I’m taking you to the Void.” I step away from the ruins, already calculating the best path back. “Lucien, Elias, and Luna should be close enough now. We’ll regroup there.”

Layla frowns. “What about Caspian and Ambrose?”

I don’t stop walking. “They are not our priority.”

She follows, keeping pace despite the rough terrain, despite the way I know she wants to argue. “Not our priority?” she repeats, voice sharp. “Or not your priority?”

I glance at her. “If I make the wrong decision here, they are dead.”

Her jaw tightens, but she doesn’t press the point.

Because she already understands.

She just doesn’t know the reason why.

We step beyond the ruins, leaving the shattered pillar behind, leaving the space where something wrong happened.

I will return.

But first, I need Lucien to look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong.