Page 33 of The Syndicate’s Shadow Heiress (Branche de Lune Syndicate #1)

A VOW WRITTEN IN WAR

Kali’s Emotional State: Kali is weaponized devotion—controlled fury sharpened into precision. She’s not reacting anymore. She’s orchestrating vengeance. And if war is the cost of love, then she’ll make the world pay, with interest, blood, and bone.

T

Inside, her Chaos Crew was already assembling.

Lev stood with twin daggers strapped to his thighs, that cocky tilt to his mouth betraying the storm in his blood. Astraeus loomed in half-shadow, tail flicking across the veil, shadows already vibrating against the concrete.

Irina had the black steel tablet tucked under one arm, lips moving in low, lethal orders into a comm piece.

And Solen, quiet, celestial, unnervingly still, watched her with that look again. The one that said he saw her more clearly than the gods ever dared. The bond between them hadn’t formed yet.

But the Thread knew.

The Thread always knew .

“Target location confirmed,” Irina reported crisply. “Spiral’s fallback lab sits three levels beneath the Port Vale ruins. Blood-threaded sigils, cursed entry wards, time-slowing fractures. They’re paranoid.”

Kali smiled, slowly and razored. “They should be.”

Lev stepped forward, the bond between them tugging tight, not with possession, but with something raw and bone-deep. Protection sharpened into rage.

“Give the word,” Lev said, voice low, deadly.

Kali’s eyes burned black. “Break everything,” she said. "But bring me the Whisperer alive.”

They moved like shadows.

Port Vale Ruins – Spiral Mouth Underground Lab

The moment the crew breached the first layer of sigils, the air howled.

Not wind.

Magic.

The hallway twisted like it had a pulse, warping gravity and time itself. Irina hurled a ward bomb forward, light detonating in a savage pulse. Screams cracked from deeper within.

Spiral guards spilled out, jagged weapons flashing, black-threaded veins writhing under their skin.

Kali moved first, not like a soldier .

Like a queen who had already written their deaths into history.

Her shadows lashed out with precision violence—wrapping throats, severing limbs, dragging bodies into darkness without a sound. Every step she took rewrote the battlefield.

At her side, Lev fought like a man who had been stitched to her with blood and fire. His daggers sang death songs, slicing with brutal, intimate grace. Every breath he took felt synced to hers, every blow driven by a single truth: Protect her. Or die trying.

Above them, Astraeus roared once. Not a sound, a weapon.

His shadow-dragon form slammed into the third hallway, collapsing the tunnel entirely. Stone vaporized. Sigils shattered. The very air bled.

He wasn’t just roaring.

He was detonating.

Because Astraeus had felt it too…the way the Thread curled tighter around Kali's soul. A claim, no dragon, no mate, no god had been fast enough to stop.

And far back, in the Hollow Gate’s echo, Solen watched. His hand tightened at his side, but he didn’t move. Didn’t interfere. Just bore witness like it mattered more than surviving the war itself, silent and still.

Sigils flickering faintly under his pulse.

Waiting.

Not to fight.

But to catch her when she finally burned.

They reached the central chamber.

There, on an altar of petrified bone and cursed crystal, sat the Whisperer, a woman cloaked in threads of memory magic, her skin crackling with stolen power.

“Too late,” the Whisperer breathed as they entered.

Kali’s shadows coiled tighter.

“No,” Kali said, voice velvet and vicious. “Right on time.”

She saw it then, a flicker in the woman’s eyes. Not triumph. Not power. Regret.

But Kali was beyond mercy.

She strode forward.

“The cure,” Kali said. “Now.”

The Whisperer smiled through bloodstained teeth.

"You don't want a cure. You want revenge."

Kali didn’t blink. “I can want both? and then she struck.

The spell she wove didn’t explode.

It devoured.

Shadows unfolded like a living storm, snapping open beneath the Whisperer’s feet, yanking her into a crushing vortex of broken memory and Zarokian wrath.

The Whisperer screamed, blood bursting from her ears, her mind cracking under the weight.

Finally, the truth clawed free:

"The Spiral conduit was... a decoy," the Whisperer gasped. "The real anchor is still buried... under the Ashen Spire. Azareal is already there."

Kali’s smile could’ve shattered glass.

Good.

She took one step closer, shadows snapping at her heels, and whispered a vow so low only the blood itself could hear:

"I wasn’t born to beg for mercy. I was born to end the wars others were too afraid to finish."

Then, aloud, her voice dropped into something lethal:

“Let’s go f*ck up the Spire.”