Page 61 of The Sin Binder's Chains

Orin

The moment I step into the house, I know something is wrong. Not just wrong, off. Warped at the edges, unsettled in a way that has nothing to do with the ruin before me.

The house should not be this quiet.

Ambrose and Caspian are here. I should hear something, the scrape of boots against floorboards, the lazy lilt of a voice, the telltale energy that clings to them like a second skin. But there’s nothing. Just silence. Just absence.

And destruction.

The front door hangs askew on splintered hinges, a jagged wound where it was forced open, or forced outward. The walls bear deep gouges, claw marks too precise to be human, too erratic to be anything else. Broken furniture litters the floor, chairs overturned, a table split down the center like an axe cleaved it in two.

But it’s the scorch marks that make me still.

Blackened streaks along the floorboards, charred remnants clinging to the walls, the faint scent of something burned lingering in the air, not wood, not fabric. Flesh.

Magic was used here. Magic that did not belong to them.

Layla shifts beside me, the weight of her presence sharp against the fractured space. She hasn’t spoken since we arrived, but I feel the way she inhales, slow and measured, her breath catching at the edges.

She sees it too.

I step forward, careful, my boots crunching over the remnants of something crystalline, glass? No. Wards. Shattered sigils, their protective magic long unraveled, reduced to meaningless fragments.

Something broke through their defenses. Something stronger than it should have been.

Layla exhales, voice barely above a whisper. “This was recent.”

I nod once. The air still hums with residual energy, the kind that lingers after a spell is cast with force. The kind that doesn’t fade immediately.

Which means whoever did this might not be far.

I crouch beside the largest scorch mark, pressing my fingers to the wood. It’s cold. Not the sharp, biting chill of frost magic, not the lifeless absence of heat. A different kind of cold. A hollow cold.

I know this feeling.

Layla watches me, waiting.

I close my eyes, reaching, stretching beyond the immediate, beyond sight, beyond sound. Searching for the imprint of what was left behind.

For a moment, nothing.

Then,

Pain.

A sharp, blistering sensation, not my own, not now, but imprinted in the space, lingering in the aftermath. The memory of something dragged, something restrained. Blood on the floor, pooling, drying.

Gone.

Vanished.

Like the house itself consumed the evidence.

My eyes snap open. My fingers curl against the floorboards, my pulse a steady drum against my ribs.

Layla tilts her head. “What did you see?”

I straighten, dusting off my hands. “They fought.” A pause. “And they lost.”

---