Page 23 of The Syndicate’s Shadow Heiress (Branche de Lune Syndicate #1)

THE SPIRAL brEAK-IN

Kali’s Emotional State: Refined chaos—burning clean. The bond heat hasn’t cooled. It’s crystallized into a lethal purpose. She’s not raw—she’s reborn. And the Spiral? Already bleeding

“M

ove like smoke. Hit like ruin.” The crew didn’t just move. They became violent, set to music only the broken could hear.

Kali’s voice hummed through her chaos crew’s veins via telepathy. Smooth. Unapologetic. Absolute.

The Spiral Mouth’s hidden lab was tucked beneath a collapsed depot in Brooklyn, surrounded by traps only the most suicidal dared challenge.

Didn’t matter.

Silas needed saving. And Kali? She’d already written the ending.

Irina leapt first, twin daggers glowing with moon-blood glyphs. Lars followed, his body runed and ready. Quinn stalked in next, war staff dragging like a guillotine. Lev? Already flanking Kali, his eyes on her like a man ready to set gods on fire.

“You ready?” he asked silently .

“I was born ready. And reborn furious.”

The vault shimmered. Bone. Stone. Sigils. Screams.

Kali dropped the first spell…Vexura Umbra.

The wall exploded. Shadows detonated into the corridor like a wrath storm. Her fingers burned from the cast, but she didn’t let it show. Pain made her aim truer.

Creatures charged. Malformed. Multi-headed. Mouths full of teeth and tragedy.

Quinn cracked necks. Irina danced and gutted. Lars disarmed traps mid-stride.

And Kali? She hunted.

One Spiral Caster launched a spell, Kali devoured it mid-air, punched him to the floor, and whispered Zarokian into his spine.

The lab’s core appeared.

Floating spiral.

Reverse conduit, alive. Breathing. Watching.

“This thing wants my soul,” Kali muttered.

“It wants ownership,” Irina said.

Lev grabbed Kali’s arm. “You touch that, it’ll brand you.”

“Then let it fucking try.”

She didn’t fear being burned. She feared what would happen if she didn’t burn back.

He yanked her back. Pressed her to the wall. Breathless.

“If it kills you— ”

“Then kiss me like a eulogy,” she hissed.

He did. Brutal. Hungry. Necessary.

She shoved him off. Smirking.

“Later. We’ve got a soul bomb to steal.”

She stepped toward the artifact. Her magic faltered, just once. A flicker of Silas’s pale face flashed behind her eyes. She clenched her fists. Not now.

She touched it.

It screamed, raw, wrong, hungry.

So did she.

Her magic flared, then cracked.

Her breath caught on a sob she refused to let fall.

Don’t break. Don’t break.

Silas’s laugh echoed somewhere behind her ribs. Lev’s kiss still burned on her mouth.

She wasn’t just burning. She was bleeding memory.

Power scorched through her like molten purpose. Her blood bled backward. Her magic shattered. For a second, she thought it might take more than power, it might take memory, identity, or the last thing of hers no one had touched.

And still, she held.

The conduit snapped into her palm. Bonded. Claimed. Burned.

Kali turned to the crew. “I’ve got it. Let’s bounce. ”

But something stirred beneath the Spiral pit. Something old. Something awake.

Lev swore. “We need to move. Now.”

Kali didn’t run. Didn’t blink. Didn’t bow.

But her breath hitched.

“You’ll survive anything,” Silas once said. “Even the shit that’s not meant to be survived.”

She just smiled. Held the conduit like a loaded god.

And whispered:

“Come chase me, bitches. I bite back.”

Thorne’s POV

The moment she touched the glyph, he felt it.

Not across distance. Not across magic. Through the thread.

It burned beneath his skin, sharp, insistent, intimate. Her magic had pushed back. Recoiled. Fought him.

And still, it reached.

Thorne opened his eyes in the dark. Not darkness like night. Darkness like the void between names, between choices, between worlds.

The Spiral roared low behind his ribs. Hungry.

“She woke the Vault.”

He didn’t speak aloud. Didn’t need to. The Spiral wasn’t a thing he summoned. It was a wound he bled with .

He moved through the quiet of his sanctum, barefoot, unarmored, unwelcome even in his own mind. The sigil on his palm had stopped pulsing, but his bones still ached like memory had teeth.

“Kali.” He whispered her name like it could cut something open. Like it already had.

He hadn’t meant to leave the mark, but the thread had chosen.

And Thorne Soren Draeven had never known how to disobey a prophecy. Only reshape it.

The air in his chamber trembled. Somewhere, too close, reality frayed again.

“She’s changing,” he murmured. “Good.”

Because if she was becoming what he feared, then maybe she was the only one who could stop what he’d already begun or finish it.

Either way, the Spiral Mouth didn’t want her destroyed.

It wanted her crowned.

And God's help them all—If she said yes.