Page 160 of Bound to the Dreadlord

The night is deceptively quiet.

The fortress is rebuilt, its walls standing strong, its torches burning high. The smell of charred stone has long since faded, replaced by the crisp bite of cold air sweeping through the halls. It should bring comfort. Safety.

But it does not.

I stand at the boundary of the balcony, looking over the vast, dark expanse of the kingdom below. The mountains loom in the distance, their peaks hidden beneath the thick veil of clouds. A storm is coming. I can feel it.

Not the kind that breaks the sky with rain and thunder. The kind that breaks the world.

My hands tighten around the stone railing. The wind howls through the empty corridors behind me.

Something is watching me.

I turn, expecting Veylan.

But I am alone. Or at least—I should be.

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere.

A song, low and chilling. Ancient and wrong.

"Little siren, you thought you had won?"

I go rigid.

The torches flicker. The shadows stretch too far.

I swallow down the sudden, suffocating weight in my chest. My lips part, but my voice does not come.

"Did you really believe your story would end here?"

The voice slithers through my mind, curling around my bones like ice. Not mine. Not my own magic. Something else.

Something older.

The wind shifts, and suddenly, she is there.

A siren.

Not flesh. Not human.

A creature made of mist and shadow, her form shifting in and out of the darkness. Her face is both beautiful and terrible, eyes hollow pools of deep black, mouth curved in something too sharp, too knowing.

I should not fear her. But I do.

"Do you hear it?" she whispers.

The sound is not a sound. It is a feeling.

A hum beneath my skin.

A warning.

"You are not real," I breathe, forcing the words out through clenched teeth. "You're a vision. A trick."

The siren only smiles.

"Then why do you tremble?"

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