Page 73 of The Sin Binder's Chains

"Okay, so," Elias mutters, stepping beside me. "How do we kill it?"

I study the thing. "You assume it can die."

"Oh, good." He sighs, cracking his neck. "That’s what I wanted to hear today."

The creature moves.

Too fast.

One moment, it’s steps away. The next it’s on top of us.

I shift first, Pride, sharpened into a blade. The weight of my magic flares as I throw up a barrier between us and it, the golden energy solidifying into a force that does not yield. The creature slams into it, its body folding unnaturally before it scrambles back, twitching, resetting.

It grins. No mouth. No lips. But it grins.

"Lucien," Elias drawls, cracking his knuckles, "I think it likes you."

"Then let’s disappoint it."

Luna moves first.

Not surprising.

But when she reaches for her power, it doesn’t unfurl the way it should.

I see the exact moment she feels it.

A flicker of something passes through her eyes, brief, sharp, before she corrects, shifting into Wrath instead, fire licking at her fingertips, black and red, the anger of a Sin that should not be hers.

Elias exhales, flexing his hands as the battle unfolds around him. "You know," he mutters, mostly to himself, "this isprecisely the kind of situation that makes me regret my entire skill set."

And then he stops moving.

Just like that.

His body relaxes, head tipping back, limbs going limp. Sloth, in its purest form, but not inaction. It’s precision. It’s efficiency.

The creature lunges.

Elias dodges.

He doesn’t move like a fighter. Not like I do. Not like Luna. He moves like something that doesn’t care enough to be hit. Like his body isn’t bound by the same instincts of self-preservation as the rest of us.

Like he’s waiting for the exact moment it’ll matter.

I strike next. Pride ignites, golden energy cutting through the dark, forming a spear of raw power as I lunge forward. The creature doesn’t dodge in time. It screeches as the spear pierces through it, its form glitching, stuttering between existence and something less.

It starts to shift.

To change.

Luna snarls, fire roaring as she slams her power into its warped body, Wrath twisting through the wound I left behind, corrupting it.

The creature howls. Not in pain. In recognition.

And that’s when I realize, it knows what she is. And it isn’t afraid.

The Rift shudders, not just around us, but because of us. Because of her.

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