Page 71 of The Sin Binder's Chains

Luna raises an eyebrow. "He does do that."

"See?" Elias grins, jerking his chin toward me. "I bet he’s doing it right now."

I am.

But I don’t acknowledge it.

"We should move," I say instead, pushing to my feet. The Rift stirs around us, unnatural and restless. "Something shifted while we were asleep. The Void doesn’t like it."

Luna frowns, eyes flicking toward the shadows stretching just beyond our little makeshift campsite. "Did you feel something?"

"I don’t have to." I gesture toward the dark, where the edges of the Rift seem… thinner. Stretched. "Look at the way the ground moves. The way the space beyond it folds in on itself."

Luna studies it for a moment, her expression unreadable. "It’s breathing."

Elias whistles low. "That’s not horrifying at all."

Luna turns back to me. "What do you think caused it?"

I hesitate, just for a moment.

Because there’s only one real answer.

"Something has entered the Rift that shouldn’t be here."

The Void has never been stable, but this, this is something different.

I scan the horizon, my gaze sharpening at the way the distant dark folds inward, warping, unraveling in places before snapping back into something solid. It’s not just moving.

It’s reacting.

To what, I don’t know yet.

The horses sense it too.

They shift uneasily, their hooves scraping against the warped terrain, muscles tense, ready to bolt. Even the Void-touched breeds, ones that shouldn’t even be capable of fear, are restless, their ears flicking toward something they can hear, something we can’t.

Elias watches as one of them tosses its head violently, eyes rolling white. He hums low in his throat. "I think that one’s possessed."

Luna gives him a look. "It’s not possessed."

"No?" Elias tilts his head. "Because it looks like it sees some shit. Maybe the spirit of my past bad decisions." He pauses. "There are a lot of them. Very haunted."

Luna sighs. "Elias.. "

"Do you think if I pet it, I’ll get cursed?" He steps closer, reaching a hand toward the horse’s muzzle. "Because, full disclosure, I’m kind of into that."

The horse bares its teeth.

Luna swats his arm before he can lose a finger. "Stop being weird."

"I’ll stop being weird when you stop pretending you don’t find it endearing," Elias mutters, rubbing his arm dramatically. "That was abuse, by the way. Lucien, did you see that?"

"I’m choosing to ignore it."

"Wow. The betrayal."

I ignore him and turn back to the Rift. The shadows ahead have grown thinner, stretched into something that wants to be a doorway but hasn’t quite figured out where to lead yet.

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