Page 20 of The Sin Binder’s Chains (The Seven Sins Academy #2)

The Void never changes. It breathes in the space between worlds, shifting and restless, alive in ways it shouldn’t be.

The ground beneath us is not quite solid, not quite air, just something, something that holds us when it chooses to, something that lets us drift when it tires of pretending to obey the laws of nature.

And yet, despite all its horrors, we slept here.

It wasn’t restful, but it was something.

I glance over at Luna, watching as she kicks at a patch of voidmatter that reacts by curling in on itself, like a wounded thing. She doesn’t flinch when it writhes away, doesn’t recoil when the world beneath her flickers in protest.

She’s adapting.

Too fast.

Not fast enough.

Elias stretches beside her, arms behind his head, smirking up at nothing like he had the best night of sleep in his life. He did not. None of us did. But he looks infuriatingly pleased with himself anyway.

"Morning, love of my life," he drawls toward Luna. "And Lucien." He tacks my name on like an afterthought.

I sigh. "Elias."

He winks at Luna. "Did you dream about me?"

She doesn’t even react anymore. "Not once."

"Tragic." He rolls onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. "You know, we could fix that. I hear repeated exposure leads to increased subconscious infiltration. I could just... be around you all the time."

Luna meets his gaze, deadpan. "We already are around each other all the time."

Elias grins. "See? It’s working."

It is, in fact, not working.

Luna sighs, nudging his boot with the toe of hers. "Get up."

"Say it nicer."

"Get up before I shove you into the nearest Rift."

"Kinky," Elias mutters, but he does sit up, stretching his arms above his head.

The Void shifts uneasily around him, the ground beneath his palms rippling like disturbed water.

He watches it with mild interest before turning back to Luna, his expression suddenly too serious for someone who spent the last several minutes making an ass of himself.

"How’re you feeling?"

Luna hesitates.

Just barely.

"Fine."

I don’t believe her.

Neither does Elias.

He exhales, rubbing a hand down his face. "You know, you’re the worst liar I’ve ever met. And that’s saying something, because Lucien exists."

I look up from securing my weapons. "I’m an excellent liar."

"Sure you are, sweetheart." Elias gestures broadly. "Right up until you start looking all broody and ominous because you’re silently judging our life choices."

Luna raises an eyebrow. "He does do that."

"See?" Elias grins, jerking his chin toward me. "I bet he’s doing it right now."

I am.

But I don’t acknowledge it.

"We should move," I say instead, pushing to my feet. The Rift stirs around us, unnatural and restless. "Something shifted while we were asleep. The Void doesn’t like it."

Luna frowns, eyes flicking toward the shadows stretching just beyond our little makeshift campsite. "Did you feel something?"

"I don’t have to." I gesture toward the dark, where the edges of the Rift seem… thinner. Stretched. "Look at the way the ground moves. The way the space beyond it folds in on itself."

Luna studies it for a moment, her expression unreadable. "It’s breathing."

Elias whistles low. "That’s not horrifying at all."

Luna turns back to me. "What do you think caused it?"

I hesitate, just for a moment.

Because there’s only one real answer.

"Something has entered the Rift that shouldn’t be here."

The Void has never been stable, but this, this is something different.

I scan the horizon, my gaze sharpening at the way the distant dark folds inward, warping, unraveling in places before snapping back into something solid. It’s not just moving.

It’s reacting.

To what, I don’t know yet.

The horses sense it too.

They shift uneasily, their hooves scraping against the warped terrain, muscles tense, ready to bolt. Even the Void-touched breeds, ones that shouldn’t even be capable of fear, are restless, their ears flicking toward something they can hear, something we can’t.

Elias watches as one of them tosses its head violently, eyes rolling white. He hums low in his throat. "I think that one’s possessed."

Luna gives him a look. "It’s not possessed."

"No?" Elias tilts his head. "Because it looks like it sees some shit. Maybe the spirit of my past bad decisions." He pauses. "There are a lot of them. Very haunted."

Luna sighs. "Elias.. "

"Do you think if I pet it, I’ll get cursed?" He steps closer, reaching a hand toward the horse’s muzzle. "Because, full disclosure, I’m kind of into that."

The horse bares its teeth.

Luna swats his arm before he can lose a finger. "Stop being weird."

"I’ll stop being weird when you stop pretending you don’t find it endearing," Elias mutters, rubbing his arm dramatically. "That was abuse, by the way. Lucien, did you see that?"

"I’m choosing to ignore it."

"Wow. The betrayal."

I ignore him and turn back to the Rift. The shadows ahead have grown thinner, stretched into something that wants to be a doorway but hasn’t quite figured out where to lead yet.

I frown.

That isn’t natural.

The Void isn’t supposed to hesitate.

Something else is interfering with it.

Luna steps up beside me, watching the way the Rift bends and twists at the edges. "What is it?"

I don’t answer immediately.

Because I don’t know yet.

But something about the way the Rift is behaving, reacting, feels too precise. Too intentional.

Not just unstable.

Controlled.

The horse's paw the ground harder. Elias whistles low. "So… worst-case scenario, we’re about to die."

"And best case?" Luna asks.

"The horses are possessed, I get a fun curse, and Lucien stops glaring at the sky like it personally offended him."

I glance at him. "Not likely."

Elias sighs dramatically. "Yeah, I figured."

The Void reacts first.

A deep, unnatural ripple rolls through the ground, warping everything it touches. The horizon snaps, once, twice, like the world is caught between two frames of existence. It’s wrong. This whole place is wrong.

The horses panic. The void-touched ones shouldn’t. They should be immune to the warping madness of this place, but they thrash violently, their bodies flickering at the edges like they’re being rewritten. Their hooves don’t even make contact with the ground anymore.

Because the ground isn’t there.

A windless force surges through the air, sharp as a blade, grating against reality itself, a soundless rupture, a distortion I feel in my bones before it fully takes shape.

I already know we won’t like what steps through.

I turn to Luna first. "Stay close."

Elias hums lazily, but there’s a current beneath it, something rare, awareness. "So… whatever’s coming," he muses, rolling his shoulders, "are we hoping it kills us quick, or should we at least try to put up a fight?"

The question is rhetorical.

Because we both know we’re fighting.

The Rift tears.

Not fully, just enough. Enough to let something slip through.

A clawed hand emerges first, stretching wide, impossibly long fingers curling against the warping air.

Then another. The body follows, sleek and skinned, its shape wrong, shifting.

No eyes, just the suggestion of a face that stretches too long, too hungry.

It tastes the air as it steps fully into this world, the edges of it still glitching, like it doesn’t belong, like it’s caught between what it was and what it’s becoming.

It locks onto Luna first.

Of course it does.

"Okay, so," Elias mutters, stepping beside me. "How do we kill it?"

I study the thing. "You assume it can die."

"Oh, good." He sighs, cracking his neck. "That’s what I wanted to hear today."

The creature moves.

Too fast.

One moment, it’s steps away. The next it’s on top of us.

I shift first, Pride, sharpened into a blade. The weight of my magic flares as I throw up a barrier between us and it, the golden energy solidifying into a force that does not yield. The creature slams into it, its body folding unnaturally before it scrambles back, twitching, resetting.

It grins. No mouth. No lips. But it grins.

"Lucien," Elias drawls, cracking his knuckles, "I think it likes you."

"Then let’s disappoint it."

Luna moves first.

Not surprising.

But when she reaches for her power, it doesn’t unfurl the way it should.

I see the exact moment she feels it.

A flicker of something passes through her eyes, brief, sharp, before she corrects, shifting into Wrath instead, fire licking at her fingertips, black and red, the anger of a Sin that should not be hers.

Elias exhales, flexing his hands as the battle unfolds around him. "You know," he mutters, mostly to himself, "this is precisely the kind of situation that makes me regret my entire skill set."

And then he stops moving.

Just like that.

His body relaxes, head tipping back, limbs going limp. Sloth, in its purest form, but not inaction. It’s precision. It’s efficiency.

The creature lunges.

Elias dodges.

He doesn’t move like a fighter. Not like I do. Not like Luna. He moves like something that doesn’t care enough to be hit. Like his body isn’t bound by the same instincts of self-preservation as the rest of us.

Like he’s waiting for the exact moment it’ll matter.

I strike next. Pride ignites, golden energy cutting through the dark, forming a spear of raw power as I lunge forward. The creature doesn’t dodge in time. It screeches as the spear pierces through it, its form glitching, stuttering between existence and something less.

It starts to shift.

To change.

Luna snarls, fire roaring as she slams her power into its warped body, Wrath twisting through the wound I left behind, corrupting it.

The creature howls. Not in pain. In recognition.

And that’s when I realize, it knows what she is. And it isn’t afraid.

The Rift shudders, not just around us, but because of us. Because of her.

The creature doesn't react to my spear lodged in its body. Doesn't waver beneath the Wrath-fueled fire Luna carved through its chest. It only looks at her, its mouthless grin stretching wider.

And then it moves, straight for her.

I don’t think.

I command.

The world bends to me as I step forward, my power snapping into place like a second skin. Pride does not beg. It does not hesitate. It does not allow.

And right now, I do not allow this thing to touch her.

"Kneel."

The word is sharp. Absolute.

The Rift buckles beneath it. The creature slams into the ground, its limbs folding, its body twitching violently, warping as it resists, but it cannot.

Because I have spoken.

Because I am Pride.

And all things lesser than me obey.

It twitches, its head jerking toward me, slow, glitching, hateful, and I know what it’s thinking. It doesn’t need a mouth to say it.

You are not the one I was sent for.

I tighten my grip, fingers curling as golden light flares bright and brutal along my arms, scorching the air around me. The Rift reacts, pushing against the weight of my magic like a living thing trying to escape.

"Look at me when I speak to you."

The thing wrenches its head up, forced by the weight of my voice, its body straining against the sheer power I’ve laced into my command. The ground beneath it cracks, the Rift trying to swallow it, as if even this place cannot withstand the pressure of my will.

"You are not welcome here."

The Rift shudders again, the air around us vibrating, resisting. Because I am forcing it to reject something that should belong to it.

And it does not like that. The creature fights, its limbs convulsing, its form flickering between shapes, faces, things that don’t belong to it. It is trying to break free of me.

Trying to resist what cannot be resisted.

"You will not stand."

Its body locks.

"You will not move."

Its limbs fold inward, unnatural, twitching, its shape glitching further, wrong and shifting.

"You will not touch her."

Luna is silent behind me. I don’t have to look to know she’s watching. And I don’t need her to see what I am.

I just need her alive.

The Rift rebels against my hold. It pulses outward, an unnatural force pressing in from all sides, like this place itself is demanding that I let go, demanding that I release what does not belong to me.

I exhale sharply, adjusting my stance. My body burns from the pressure, from the sheer weight of keeping this thing pinned beneath me.

"You are done."

The command slams into it like a blow.

The Rift howls, not the creature, but the Rift itself.

Because I have just undone something woven into its very fabric.

The thing jerks once.

Twice.

It shatters. Not explodes. Not dies. Just… ceases. Like it was never here at all. Like it was never supposed to be.

The ground steadies beneath us. The Rift’s pulse slows. The warping edges pull back, correcting themselves.

I don’t move.

I just breathe.

Because Severin knows. And if he sent this…Then whatever comes next will be worse.