Page 148 of Bound to the Dreadlord

And then he fled.

I did not speak. I did not move.

I did not need to.

That is the monster I have become.

A type of monster that doesn’t have to bare its fangs to make the world cower.

He’s searching for me. I feel him in the threads of my magic.

Like a whisper on the wind. Like an ache I cannot remove.

He is hunting me, just as I knew he would.

And yet, he has not found me.

He is so close. But I always leave before he can reach me.

Not because I fear him. Not because I don’t want to see him.

But because I do. Meeting him will be my choice and never his.

Every time I walk away from the echoes of his presence, from the ruins of the places where he has searched for me, I tell myself this is the last time.

The last time I will let his name linger in my thoughts. The last time I will feel the pull and the unrelenting gravity between us.

But the further I run, the more I feel it.

Something has bound us. Something that neither of us understands.

My magic is woven into his now.

His blood is in mine.

I try to fight it. But some things are not meant to be broken.

I feelthe shift before I move. A stillness in the air. A breath held by the world itself.

Then I stand.

And I walk.

There is no dramatic revelation. No whispered prophecy. Just a decision—a quiet, terrible certainty settling into my bones.

I will not run anymore.

My boots press into the soft earth, the forest bowing as I pass. Branches lean toward me, the wind curling around my limbs like it knows where I’m going. Like it approves.

The path I once avoided is no longer shrouded in mist.

It’s waiting.

I travel for days, unhurried but certain. The terrain shifts around me—mountains rising, rivers winding like silver veins across the skin of the land. My power moves with me, stirring the leaves, stilling the birdsong.

Each step closer pulls a thread tighter inside me, one I cannot cut, no matter how much I tried.

I pass through villages where the people whisper and bow their heads. Not in reverence.

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