Page 36 of The Syndicate’s Shadow Heiress (Branche de Lune Syndicate #1)
THE PROPHECY BLEEDS
Kali’s Emotional State: Falling. Floating. Flayed. The flare has cracked something open, memories not hers, magic not asked for, and truths that do not want to be known.
I
t didn’t feel like sleep. It felt like being pulled through a thread the size of a needle’s eye, then unraveled. She was on a battlefield that wasn’t real. Blood-soaked. Star-choked. The sky was a wound stitched shut with silver.
And she stood there alone, until she wasn’t.
Figures emerged. Not people, versions.
Kali with fire for eyes. Kali in white robes, soaked in ash. Kali with a crown of bone. Kali, bound in chains of light. Kali screaming, hands pressed against the inside of a mirror made of stars.
One stepped forward. “You forgot,” she said. “You asked for this.”
Another voice from behind: “You sealed the Hollow to save us.”
Another: “You were the first Gatekeeper. The one who could bind the dead and bend the dark.”
Kali’s heart pounded .
“I didn’t….”
“You died to stop Azareal once,” one of the versions whispered. “And now you’ve been reborn to finish it.”
Suddenly, the battlefield shifted. A throne appeared, made of shadows and dragon bone.
A man stood beside it. Not Solen. Not Lev. Not Astraeus.
Azareal.
He smiled with teeth made of broken promises.
“You’ve done well waking the Gate,” he said. “But the price? It hasn’t been paid yet.”
Then he looked behind her. And Kali turned—
To see her Chaos Crew, Dead, burned, torn, and broken.
“No. No no no…”
Azareal’s voice was calm. Too calm.
“One must be unmade.”
And Kali screamed.
Her voice cracked the sky.
And she woke.
Kali gasped, her breath ragged and shallow.
Her shadows, still swirling around her, clung tight as if holding her in place.
She struggled, trying to breathe through the weight of what she had seen, but the horror still felt real.
Her head swam with visions of her crew, her people, torn apart by a fate she wasn’t ready to face.
The room was dark, quiet, and she didn’t recognize the weight of warmth until she felt it, Lev’s arms, steady and tight around her. The heat of his body calmed the storm inside her. His voice broke through her panic.
“You were screaming in your sleep,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “You kept saying… don’t choose me.”
Kali’s eyes widened as the truth hit her, like a stone dropped in a quiet lake, the ripples of realization spreading too fast to catch. Her chest tightened. Her body screamed with pain, but this time, it wasn’t physical.
Her shadows wrapped around her like a coffin, the weight of their touch suffocating. She could still hear Azareal’s words, see the images of her team…her family…broken. And the final whisper, the one that had pierced her soul, echoed in her mind:
“One must be unmade.”
Her eyes flickered to Lev, his face unreadable, but his grip on her was desperate. He could feel her tremble, his own fear pressing against her, despite the strength he tried to mask. And in the silence, her soul shook with the weight of what was to come.
She finally understood .
The Hollow Gate had claimed her, not as a protector, but as the one who would make the ultimate choice.
To lose. To choose one to break.
The prophecy had always whispered it, but it was only now that she felt its true meaning, felt the pull of destiny and the shattering cost it would demand.
Kali squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed, trying to keep the panic from bubbling over.
But she couldn’t fight the truth anymore.
She would have to choose.
Someone to lose.
Forever.