Page 131 of Bound to the Dreadlord

She is lost.

I grip her wrist, not with force, but with something close to warning.

“Sera.”

I squeeze tighter. “Enough.”

The blade does not lower.

Her fingers tighten.

The moment stretches—too long, too silent.

Her gaze flickers. She recognizes me.

The dagger drops.

But she does not step back.

She is looking at me now. Really looking at me.

Like I am a stranger. Like I am nothing.

I feel it like a knife to my ribs.

She steps around me. Does not speak.

She walks back into the battlefield, and I let her go.

I do not recognize her anymore.

And I am starting to wonder, which one of us is the real monster?

49

SERA

The battlefield stills.

The air is stale with smoke, the ground slick with blood. The stench of burning flesh hangs in the ruins of the fortress, but none of it matters anymore.

He is here.

Hazeran.

The shadow that has loomed over everything. The monster that created monsters.

He stands on the broken steps of what was once the stronghold, draped in black, his silver eyes burning with amusement. Unbothered. Untouched.

He does not look at the carnage around him. He does not acknowledge the bodies strewn at his feet, nor the dark elves who once called him master, now dead in pools of their own blood.

He only looks at me.

And he smiles.

"Look at what you have become, little siren."

His voice isn’t raised, but it might as well be thunder. It carries across the battlefield, commanding. Absolute.

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