Page 138 of Bound to the Dreadlord

A new pulse surges through my chest. It is not my heart. It is something older.

“Rise. The sirens shall come back to Protheka, and you’re the first.”

The void fractures.

The world returns.

The battlefield is eerily still.

The bodies remain where they fell, blood seeping into the earth, the sky above thick with the lingering scent of death and fire.

Hazeran is gone. Sealed.

The war is won.

But the price was too high. Veylan stands at the center of it, his expression carved from stone, but his hands—his hands tremble.

I am in them. Still. Lifeless. Cold.

The blood on his fingers is mine.

The brothers stand in a loose circle, staring down at what they have done. At me.

None of them speak.

None of them move. There is nothing left to say.

I was the sacrifice. They made sure of that.

Veylan does not look at them. He does not acknowledge them. His focus is only on me.

My skin is pale, my lips parted, my body unnaturally still.

No breath. No sound. No pulse beneath his fingertips.

I am gone.

And yet there’s a whisper. A hum in the wind.

The ground trembles and the air thickens.

My body pulses with something unnatural.

My fingers twitch, the first sign of me coming back.

My lips part and I breathe, finally tasting oxygen in my lungs after what feels like forever.

The gasp that tears from my throat is raw, desperate, as if I have spent eternity drowning. My back arches, air ripping into my lungs like fire.

My vision is blurred, my senses fragmented. The world is too much.

I hear someone curse.

I hear someone else step back.

Then Veylan’s voice.

Hoarse. Broken.

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