Page 106 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“You okay?” he asks, like he didn’t just turn a nightmare into ash.

I swallow hard.

“Yeah.”

Even if I’m not.

The beast is barely cold. Its enormous body is sprawled across the churned dirt, limbs twitching with the final flickers of death, its warped flesh still steaming where Theo’s blade carved through it. I can taste the ozone left behind by his power,metallic and sharp in the back of my throat. The field has gone eerily still. No wind. No movement. Even the grass seems to have stopped swaying, like the entire landscape is holding its breath.

Then the ground groans.

Not like before. Not the subtle shifting we’ve gotten used to, the kind that murmurs underfoot like something breathing just beneath the surface. This is deeper. Hungrier. The kind of sound that climbs up from the bones of the world and warns everything alive torun.

The first tremor rolls beneath us, strong enough to unbalance me. I stumble forward and Theo catches my arm without looking, his grip firm, not gentle. His gaze is locked ahead, eyes narrowed, blade still slick with whatever the hell that creature bled.

Another tremor. The ground pulses, the very shape of it warping under us in slow, deliberate convulsions. Somewhere in the distance, stone splits with a noise that sounds like bone snapping under pressure. Then the trees bend, not from wind but from weight.

Fromsomething coming.

It steps into view like a mountain learning how to walk. Slow, patient,massive. I don’t register it all at once, my brain can’t. My eyes catch on details and freeze. A leg, thick and gnarled like a tree trunk, wrapped in something that looks like rusted bronze and blackened vines. Toes like boulders crushing what’s left of the red grass beneath them. Then a torso, vaguely human in shape but in scale only, its skin is the color of burned copper, with markings etched deep into it, glowing with a steady blue-green light, like old runes buried too long under seawater.

Its chest rises and falls slowly, not because it’s out of breath but because it’salivein a way nothing this size should be. The face is obscured at first, shadowed by the strange curve of hornsor maybe branches that crown its skull. Not antlers. Not horns. Something between. Grown, not forged. They spiral upward, adorned with thin chains and dangling stones that chime softly as it moves.

Then it lowers its head. And I see the face.

Human-shaped, but ancient. Pale, colorless eyes without pupils, and a mouth lined with too many teeth, flat and small, made for chewing, not tearing. It doesn’t look monstrous. It lookswise.And that is somehow worse.

It raises one hand, and with a curl of long, gnarled fingers, the creature Theo killed begins to move. No spell. No words. Just a gesture. The body spasms once and then starts to reassemble. Slowly, impossibly, the limbs twitch back into place, the hole in its skull sealing as if it was never there.

Theo steps in front of me without thinking, scythe raised, body tense and coiled for another strike.

The giant watches us like we’re a mild curiosity. Then it speaks.

“I am called Brashir.”

The voice doesn’t come from its mouth, not really. It vibrates through the ground, through the air, throughme. I feel it in my teeth, in my chest, like it’s part of the landscape itself.

Brashir straightens again, massive shoulders rolling back with the sound of stone grinding against stone. His gaze settles on me.

“Luna,” he says, and I nearly stumble again, not from fear this time, but from the sound of my name coming from something so impossiblyold.

Theo’s grip on his weapon tightens.

Brashir tilts his head, eyes never leaving mine. “I was curious. I wanted to see what you would become, once left to your own instincts. No guidance. No gods. No commands whispered into your ear in the dark.”

He takes a single step forward, and the earth shudders again beneath his weight.

“You did not disappoint.”

I want to ask a hundred questions, but the words catch in my throat. My heart is still racing from the fight, and my legs feel like they might give out if I try to move again.

Brashir looks at Theo now, and something shifts in the air between us. That faint curiosity in his expression sharpens, not with hostility, but with something closer to interest.

“And you,” he says, voice curling lower, like it’s peeling back the surface of Theo’s skin. “You were not part of the plan.”

Theo doesn’t flinch. He tilts his head just slightly, his tone dry and sharp. “I rarely am.”

Brashir considers this for a moment. Then his mouth curves, not into a smile, but something older, something like a memory taking shape. “Who are you, to stand between what I built and what I’m unmaking?”

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