Page 41 of The Syndicate’s Shadow Heiress (Branche de Lune Syndicate #1)

THE THREAD RITUAL

Kali’s Emotional State: Beyond broken, she’s raw power held together by prophecy, pain, and pure defiance. This isn’t healing. It’s a rebirth. The kind that leaves scars.

T

he chamber beneath the Hollow Gate was older than history. No light. No sound. Just threads, woven into the walls, the floor, and the air. Some were physical, glistening gold and ink-black, spidering across the veyrstone like veins. Others pulsed with magic too old to name.

The air was thick, like breathing through velvet soaked in thunder. The stone beneath her feet buzzed with ancient tension, each breath echoing like it was being borrowed from something older.

Kali stood at the center, stripped to the waist, a glyph drawn in her own blood spiraling from her navel outward. Her shadows flickered, glitching. Her flare was peaking, burning through her bones like wildfire caged in glass.

She wasn’t alone.

Astraeus circled the perimeter, chanting in low, guttural ancient Zarokian words meant to tame storms and stitch broken gods. Solen knelt behind her, hands hovering just above her spine .

“This thread predates kingdoms,” he murmured. “It can’t be controlled. Only channeled.”

“Then channel me,” Kali rasped.

Irina stood guard at the door, jaw tight. “This is insane.”

“It’s prophecy,” Solen said. “And prophecy never asks permission.”

Astraeus finished the chant. The sigils ignited.

Astraeus stepped back, but his presence didn’t fade. He watched from the edge, hands flexed at his sides, whispering under his breath…ready to intervene, but bound by vow not to.

The moment the final glyph burned red, the threads struck. Not gently. Not kindly. They pierced.

Magic lanced through Kali’s back like barbed fire. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as the threads wrapped around her ribs, her heart, her spine. One wrapped around her throat.

Lev stepped forward, snarling, but Astraeus stopped him with a wall of shadow. “She asked for this.”

Kali convulsed.

Her shadows erupted, slamming against the chamber walls. The air hummed with raw power, but beneath it, Kali felt her magic shift. Not just burning, rising. Each thread wrapping around her felt like a key unlocking something deeper inside her, pulling her power out and into the open .

Solen grabbed her shoulders. “Focus, Kali. Anchor to me. Anchor to pain.”

She locked eyes with him, saw stars moving beneath his irises. His magic was like starlight bleeding into her, a tether threading through the rupture in her power.

“I’m unraveling,” she gasped.

“No,” Solen said. “You’re becoming.”

Her scream reverberated through the stone walls.

Then…..Stillness.

Every thread went taut. Then lose. Then vanished.

Kali collapsed, her breath shuddering as the world around her blurred. Smoke curled from her skin. Blood trickled from her lips. Her shadowline pulsed once, then glowed violet.

A mark flared to life on her shoulder. It burned cold, like violet frost carving itself into her skin. Not pain. A promise. An ancient sigil, circular and jagged, like a serpent devouring its own tail, etched in violet fire.

Ancient. Circular. Untranslated.

Solen went still and whispered, almost reverent, "Mine."

Astraeus didn’t speak.

Irina crouched near, voice low and ragged, like a knife slipped between ribs, but aimed at the world, not at Kali .

"If you die, I’m kicking your corpse and dragging your soul back just to beat your ass," she growled.

Kali’s eyes cracked open. Pain hit her in a tidal wave.

Her ribs screamed. Her spine lit up like molten wire. Her skin felt too tight to contain the magic writhing underneath it.

For one dangerous second, the world dimmed, and the old fear whispered: Stay down. No shame in it. Just stay down.

And then…

“Kali, get the fuck up,” Her own voice, rough, scarred, unbreakable, shoved through the agony. You're not weak. You’re rage in heels, bad choices, and an ever-growing body count of people who pissed you off… Now MOVE.

(Lev’s voice ripped across the bond, brutal and furious)

“Get the fuck up, Kali.”

(Astraeus followed, low and lethal in her mind:)

“You are not broken. You are the reckoning.”

Her hands shook. Her knees buckled. Her vision blurred at the edges.

“If you can bleed, you can fight. Now move, shadow girl.” (Lev yelled with a savage rasp)

But still, she planted her palm on the floor. Dug her fingers in and …. .

Shoved.

Only then, low and fierce under her breath, Irina muttered:

"Come on. Show those assholes what you’re made of, barbed wire, whiskey, and war cries."

Kali growled under her breath.

Her body shook. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. Her knees screamed in protest. But she slammed her palm into the floor and dug her fingers into the stone like she could rip herself back up from the ashes.

Blood slipped from her split lip, hot and iron-heavy.

She spat onto the floor, red and defiant.

She stood, bloody, burning, born wrong and right at once.

“Her knees screamed, and her hands shook.

Only after she was fully upright did Irina shift closer, close enough to catch her if she collapsed, but not offering a hand.

Because Irina understood.

Kali needed to stand on her own, so when the world looked at her, it would know:

She didn’t survive because she was saved; she survived because she refused to fall.

Her voice was hoarse, but steady .

“Then may the world tremble when I rise.”

And as the Hollow Gate throbbed behind her, responding to her rebirth, no one noticed the crack forming at its edge.

But the Gate did. It smiled at Kali.