Page 38 of The Syndicate’s Shadow Heiress (Branche de Lune Syndicate #1)

STORM OF THE FIRST SIGIL

Kali's Emotional State: Hollowed but defiant. She's unraveling from within but refuses to show the seams. The flare is eating her alive, the prophecy is whispering louder, and Solen's presence pulls truths she isn't ready to face.

T

he Compound's War Room pulsed with tension.

Not just political, or just magical, but primal.

Kali stood at the edge of the blood-forged map, her fingers barely brushing the sigils carved into the shadow stone.

Every breath burned. Her ribs rattled like glass about to split.

Every step felt like dragging mountains.

But she stood.

Irina watched her from the shadows, her lips tight and her eyes harder. Shadows twitched. Lev didn’t stop pacing. One blade was already halfway drawn. And Solen—gods, Solen—just watched her like he was waiting for the world to end or begin again.

"There are more markers," Irina said, voice clipped. "Belladonna's spies aren't just scouting—they're triangulating. They're mapping your magic, Kali."

"Let them map it," Kali said, her voice low. "Let them try to trace it. They'll find death at the end. "

A pulse behind her eyes. A flare spike. She swayed.

No one moved. Not even Astraeus.

Kali forced herself upright.

Solen spoke then, voice calm but laced with heat. "You're not stabilizing. If we don't thread you soon, the bond magic will collapse into your marrow. You'll bleed shadow until there's nothing left but wrath."

"That might be enough," she rasped.

Lev snapped, shadows lashing. "Stop talking like you're expendable."

"She's not," Solen said. "She's inevitable."

Irina stepped forward, eyes locked on Kali. "Then we move. Before she can't."

Kali nodded once.

They set the raid for midnight. Ashen Spire's true core. The First Sigil Vault.

But as the war room cleared, Solen didn’t move.

Kali didn’t speak at first. She just stood over the map as the blood sigils pulsed like veins beneath her palm.

Everyone else filtered out. Irina was muttering orders, and Lev was stalking toward the exit with rage in his spine. Astraeus vanished into shadow, too furious to comfort, too loyal to leave .

Only Solen remained. And the air between them buzzed like it remembered something they didn’t.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kali said without turning around.

“And yet, here I am,” Solen answered, his voice velvet and smoke. “Right where your magic put me.”

She closed her eyes. “That doesn’t mean I want you.”

“No,” he said softly, stepping closer. “But it means you need me.”

Kali turned. Solen stood just close enough for his gravity to press against hers. Not touching, not claiming. Just a question she wasn’t ready to answer.

She hated how still he was. How calm.

“How can you be so sure?” she whispered.

His gaze didn’t waver. “I’ve seen the threads, Kali. Walked them, and…fuck…it doesn’t matter how they twist, how they burn… they all end in you.”

Before she could answer, soft paws padded across the war room’s stone floor.

One by one, the dogs arrived.

Tiger stalked in first, a low, guttural growl spilling from his chest as he circled Solen, hackles raised, body tense. He stopped just short of Solen’s boot and bared his teeth .

Kali stiffened. Tiger had only growled like that once before, when her life had been in danger.

Kota followed, sniffing the air once before letting out a warning huff, his body half-blocking Kali as if to say, 'Prove yourself, stardust.'

Her throat tightened. Kota’s protection had always been absolute.

Nickel hesitated. Her brows furrowed and tail stiff, she sniffed Solen’s aura, then looked at Kali and whimpered, confused but not aggressive, sensing both danger and fate.

Confusion. Kali felt it in her bones…a warning... or a choice.

Spike…tiny, furious, trembling… charged straight at Solen’s feet and yapped like he was going to banish him back to whatever realm he came from single-handedly.

A spark of humor stabbed her chest…but it burned too.

Only Megan didn’t growl. She padded to Kali’s side and sat quietly, her soft eyes tracking Solen not with fear, but curiosity like she saw through the shimmer of him and into something older. Something true.

Kali’s breath caught. Megan only ever looked like that when she knew the future was already moving.

Solen’s jaw flexed. Not in fear. But in deep respect.

“They know what I am,” he said softly, gaze never leaving Kali’s .

Kali’s voice was a rasp. “And they know what I’m not ready for.”

He nodded once and stepped back, not defeated, but waiting. always waiting.

Then Kali placed her palm over the final rune.

Her voice sharpened like a blade drawn clean: “Tonight,” she said, “we don’t just hunt Spiral.”

Her shadows rose like a cloak of teeth.

“We reclaim what they tried to bleed out of me.”

The Hollow Gate groaned. And far beneath the Spire, something ancient stirred awake.