Page 136 of Bound to the Dreadlord

The magic takes it greedily.

I fall.

My knees hit the cold stone. My body trembles, heat pouring out of me in thick, pulsing waves. The ground beneath me shudders.

The ritual begins.

The chanting starts, a language I do not understand, ancient, deadly, binding.

Suddenly, Hazeran screams.

“What did you do?” he screams, shaking and trying to break free. “Fools! All of you! How dare you deceive me?”

The wind howls.

Lightning splits the sky.

The altar glows, the runes carved into its surface pulsing with an eerie, hungry light. It is drinking me in.

Stealing what I am.

Taking what little I have left. Slowly, my life drains from me.

Veylan is still there. I can feel him.

I force my eyes open, my vision blurred, the edges of the world unraveling.

His face is twisted, but he does not stop. He cannot. He was never mine.

Not truly. Not in the ways that mattered.

I hold onto the stone as my pulse weakens.

The magic inside me writhes and it finally breaks the binding magic, and despite the pain in my throat, I push through and pours all my emotions, my hopelessness, and my broken dreams.

I do the only thing I have ever known how to do.

I sing for the broken me. My last song for a life that is cut short.

It is not for them.

Not for vengeance. Not for mercy.

A song of rage. Of ruin. Of grief.

The sound splinters the air.

The world shudders.

The altar cracks beneath me, a spiderweb of breaking stone.

The magic twists.

The ritual falters then it binds Hazeran faster, stronger.

Hazeran’s eyes widen.

The brothers stumble back and Veylan’s grip trembles.

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