Page 63 of The Sin Binder's Chains

Just gone.

I stand slowly, my eyes narrowing as I scan the space. There should be more. A sign of struggle leading away, someindication of where they were taken. There isn’t. It’s as if the earth simply swallowed them whole.

I move closer, pressing a palm to the stone. It’s cold, untouched by whatever force ripped them from this place. But something lingers. A whisper of magic that hums just beneath the surface, faint but old.

Older than the Academy. Older than the Rift.

I exhale, tilting my head.

“You were used, weren’t you?” I murmur to the pillar. Not expecting an answer. Just thinking aloud.

Layla approaches from behind, her footsteps careful, deliberate. “What do you mean?”

I glance at her, noting the way her gaze sharpens as she takes in the marks at our feet. The way her brows pull together, suspicion flickering in her expression. She doesn’t see it yet.

I tap a finger against the stone. “It’s not just a landmark. It’s a boundary. A tether. And someone used it.”

Her lips part slightly before she catches herself, pulling back into that guarded neutrality she wears like armor. “To do what?”

I tilt my head, looking past the structure, past the space where reality should make sense, but doesn’t. “To disappear.”

She goes still. “That’s not possible.”

I take another step back, sweeping my gaze over the ruins once more. Searching. Calculating. This wasn’t just an ambush. It wasn’t an attack in the way one might expect, a struggle, a fight, a capture. No.

It was deliberate. Methodical.

Ambrose and Caspian weren’t taken by force.

They were claimed.

The weight of that realization settles deep in my chest, threading through my ribs like something ancient waking from a long slumber. This isn’t about power or violence. This isn’t about winning a battle.

This is about ownership.

And whoever did this, whoever could overpower them so completely, believes they already belong to them.

Layla shifts beside me, her voice quieter now. “If there’s no trail leading away, then where are they?”

I close my eyes, feeling for the remnants of what lingers. The faint pull of something unraveling just beneath reality’s surface.

Not just magic.

A rift.

Not like the one that tore through the Academy, reckless and violent. This one is different, controlled, precise. A cut so clean, so sharp, that even the world itself didn’t have time to bleed.

I open my eyes. “Not here.”

Layla watches me carefully. “Then where?”

I meet her gaze.

“Somewhere worse.”

The scent lingers.

A whisper of something long buried, something that should not, could not exist here.

---