Page 59 of The Sin-Binder’s Fate (The Seven Sins Academy #1)

Silas is showboating. Which is unacceptable.

“That’s fifteen!” he yells, slicing through another wraith with unnecessary flair. Completely unnecessary. His blade carves through the air like he’s in some tragic, romantic war opera. Dramatic. Over the top. Idiotic.

“Sixteen!” he grins, spinning, flipping, posing. He actually poses.

I roll my eyes. I could let him have this moment. I could be the bigger person. I could focus on the actual fight instead of making this a competition.

But fuck that.

“Lazy bastard!” he calls, darting past me as I take a step forward, dodging a wraith’s swipe by doing absolutely nothing. It moves in slow motion, and I casually lean to the side, watching its claws barely graze the air where my throat used to be.

Sloth, remember? They think I’m slow. They’re wrong.

I exhale, let my magic unfurl, and the world shifts. Everything around me slows. Not fully frozen, not stopped, just… dragged down. The wraiths struggle, their movements sluggish, like they’re wading through wet sand.

I walk. One step. Another. Casual. Unhurried. I flick my wrist, and my blade finds the first wraith’s throat. A whisper of metal, a fine spray of black ichor as its body collapses into nothing.

Seventeen.

Another lunges, and I simply step aside, letting it sail past me as if I planned it all along.

Eighteen.

Silas is still yelling. Still spinning, still flipping. Idiot.

“Twenty!” he shouts.

I sigh. Dramatically. Loud enough that he hears it over the sounds of death. Then, just to make a point, I slip my blade into another wraith’s chest, twist, and whisper a curse under my breath.

It doesn’t just die. It withers.

Its body locks up, frozen in time, trapped in an instant of agony that stretches out far longer than it should. And when I release it, it crumbles into dust.

“Twenty-one.” I say it calmly.

Silas turns, glaring.

“Fuck you,” he grumbles.

I smirk.

Another wave of wraiths swarm. I let my magic ripple outward, pulling time into my grasp, stretching it, distorting it. They don’t stand a chance. Silas lunges forward, and I watch him, his movements a blur, too fast, too wild. He’s good. He’s annoyingly good. But he’s not me .

I take another lazy step forward, my body barely moving as the world slows. The wraiths become stuck in their own momentum, helpless in the face of something they can’t even comprehend.

I cut them down without effort. Without rushing. Without needing to yell out my fucking kill count like a twelve-year-old with a new sword.

Silas growls, frustrated, taking down three in rapid succession. “Twenty-four!”

I stab one in the heart without looking. “Twenty-five.”

He whirls on me, pointing. “You’re cheating.”

I shrug, stepping through the battlefield as if I have all the time in the world. Because, for me, I do. The earth shakes, Riven’s fighting the troll now, and it’s getting ugly. Another roar echoes from somewhere in the distance, and I know this is far from over.

But for now?

I focus on the important things.

Beating Silas. Making sure he knows it. And doing it without breaking a sweat.

“Lazy fuck, move faster,” Silas barks as he leaps over a crumbling wraith, blade catching the light like he’s some kind of action hero. Overdramatic.

I sigh, stepping over a corpse, deliberately slow. “Why? They’re coming to me.”

And they are. Like flies to a corpse. The wraiths lurch toward me, moving at a pace that would be frightening if they weren’t caught in my time distortion. Slow, syrupy movements. Their claws stretch for me, but they never reach.

I lift a hand. Snap my fingers. And time lets them go. They realize too late, momentum suddenly theirs again, mid-lunge, with nothing to stop them from colliding straight into my waiting blade. I carve through the first, stepping aside as it disintegrates into dust.

Silas, of course, won’t let me have this.

“Are you even breaking a sweat?” he goads, darting past me to skewer another wraith before I can reach it. “Or do you just let time do all the work while you take a nap?”

I don’t dignify that with a response.

Mostly because something big is coming. I feel it before I see it, the shift in the air, the pressure deep in my bones, like the earth itself is holding its breath. The wraiths falter, drawing back.

And then the ground splits open. Something massive hauls itself up from the depths. Not a troll. Not a wraith. Something older. Hungrier.

A Hungerborn.

It towers above the battlefield, its body a grotesque, shifting mass of bone and shadow, teeth that go on forever, a pulsing red core visible beneath its ribcage. Its mouth unhinges, jagged and endless, letting out a sound that’s not a roar, too deep, too wrong.

Silas whistles. “That looks like a you problem.”

I exhale slowly. And then I drop. Not onto my back. Not into a defensive crouch.

Into the earth.

The ground swallows me whole, the shadows beneath my feet parting like liquid.

The Hungerborn lunges, but it’s too slow.

Too caught in the drag of my time magic to stop me from devouring the space between us.

I move through the soil like water, slipping beneath it, pulling the battlefield with me.

The earth shifts, warping, dragging itself into my wake.

Then I rise.

And the Hungerborn falters. Because the ground beneath it is gone. The monster lets out another twisted, screeching growl as it plummets into the sudden abyss.

Silas watches it fall, unimpressed. “You’re a drama queen.”

I don’t respond. Mostly because I’m not done. The Hungerborn claws at the crumbling earth, trying to drag itself back up.

I lift my hand, fingers curling, and the ground obeys. The earth slams shut.

Like a mouth.

Like a grave.

Silence.

Then, a rumble from deep below. A shudder in the earth. And then nothing.

Silas eyes the freshly sealed ground. “Think it’s dead?”

I shake the dust from my coat, already exhausted. “Doubt it.”

Silas grins. “Cool. My turn.”

He bounces, literally bouncing, off the fallen bodies, kicking off a wraith’s head like it's a stepping stone, flipping midair like this is some performance.

"Watch this!" he shouts, grin all teeth and madness.

I sigh, dragging my blade through another slow-moving wraith, not even looking. "If you say ‘next trick’ one more time, I'm feeding you to the next big thing that crawls out of the abyss."

Silas cackles. "You’d miss me."

I wouldn’t. But I’d miss watching him do shit like this.

He lands in front of me, throwing his arms out wide, and suddenly, the battlefield shifts. Or, seems to. The world fractures. Multiple versions of him flicker across the field, running, dodging, weaving. An illusion web so tightly woven that even I almost lose track of the real one.

Wraiths snarl and snap at the duplicates, claws tearing through nothing.

"That’s cheating," I mutter.

Silas, all of him, everywhere, gasps. "Excuse you. That’s strategy."

A wraith lunges, straight into one of his copies. It vanishes into mist. The thing stumbles, confused. Silas appears behind it, real this time, his daggers already buried in its spine.

The wraith collapses.

Silas grins. "Ta-da!"

I watch him pull his blades free, flicking the blood off in one flourished, unnecessarily dramatic movement. "Congratulations. You won the award for most obnoxious kill."

Another wraith charges me. I flick my fingers, and the thing slows. It takes three lifetimes to reach me.

I take my time, turning to Silas, who’s watching expectantly. "You gonna give me style points for this one?"

He tilts his head, mock consideration. "Mm. If you do a little spin."

I don’t. I drive my sword through the wraith’s chest, letting time snap back all at once. The thing explodes .

Silas claps. "That’s a ten. But mostly because you finally stopped being a lazy fuck."

I watch him flicker, his real self shifting among his illusions, never standing still. A blur of smoke and blade and sharp-edged laughter.

"Not my fault you waste energy like a rabid squirrel."

He throws a dagger at my feet. I don’t flinch. "Not my fault you fight like a grumpy grandpa."

A massive shadow looms behind him. Something big. Something pissed.

I lift a hand, and stop time. Silas freezes mid-step. I stroll forward, stepping around him. Past the wraiths locked in stasis.

I tap his forehead. "That was your next trick, right?"

Then I let go. Time snaps forward, and Silas blinks, confused as the wraith he was about to fight is suddenly a pile of ash behind him.

I smirk. "Ta-da."

Silas scowls. "Okay, that was kinda hot."

I roll my eyes. "You're insufferable."

"Yet, you keep up with me."

The ground rumbles beneath us. The next wave is coming.

Silas grins. "Ready for round two, Grandpa?"

I lift my sword. "Try not to die, squirrel."

“Look at her,” he says, between slashes of his twin daggers, his illusions fracturing reality around us. “She’s watching.”

She’s near Riven, gripping that newborn wrath-forged sword like it might turn on her. And because I’m not an idiot, I know exactly what Silas is trying to do .

I slice through a wraith, letting time shudder around me, momentarily bending the battlefield into a crawl. “You’re pathetic,” I say, stepping around the sluggish, dripping-jawed thing still mid-lunge.

Silas snorts, vanishing in a blur, reappearing next to me like a bad habit. “You think she’s impressed with you standing there looking miserable?”

I exhale. “She’s not looking at me, dipshit.”

Silas grins, sharkish. “Not yet.”

Then, in a move so stupidly unnecessary it physically pains me, he does a fucking barrel roll. A full-bodied, dramatic-ass spin through the air, over a wraith’s reaching claws, his daggers flashing, before landing in a low crouch like he’s in some fucking stage production.

He flips his hair.

“That’s how you do it,” he says.

I stare.

The wraith behind him crumbles. Slowly. Like even it is embarrassed for him.