Page 112 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“I keep thinking about their faces.”

I blink, keep walking, let her say it without reacting too fast. Her tone’s flat, but her hands tighten at her sides.

“Like I’ll forget if I stop picturing them. Like the second I stop seeing Riven’s eyes or the way Lucien tilts his head when he’s annoyed, they’ll… vanish. Be gone for good.”

She exhales sharply, like the words are heavier out loud than they were in her chest. Her jaw twitches, and she pushes a branch out of her path too hard, snapping it off at the stem. It doesn’t break clean. The end bleeds. Not sap. Not resin. Just blood.

I step over the puddle it leaves behind and glance at her again.

“You just said you didn’t want to talk.”

“I changed my mind,” she snaps, then sighs. “Women are weird. Deal with it.”

Fair enough.

We walk a little farther, skirting around a sunken patch of ground that pulses with heat. There’s no flame, but the soil steams at the edges, cracked in thin veins that glow like coal. A cluster of blackened thorns curls near the rim of the crater, some the size of swords, barbed and twisted inward like they’re trying to keep something in, or maybe keep us out.

“They didn’t even get to say goodbye. They were there. I could feel them. I had my power. I had them. And then I didn’t. Just gone. Like someone snapped their fingers and rewrote the story without asking if I wanted out.”

She kicks a rock hard, and it skips down the incline before catching on a root and splitting open. The inside is soft, fibrous, almost like bone marrow, and it writhes slightly as it dries in the light. Everything here moves like it regrets being seen.

“I don’t think I realized how much of myself was made of them,” she goes on, not looking at me, not needing to. “Not just bonded, not just tethered. Made. Every memory. Every decision. They were in it. Even when they weren’t there. It’s like Brashir didn’t just cut the cords. He reached inside and scooped the whole damn foundation out.”

Her hand lifts, brushing at her chest absently, like the absence still aches. I know what that feels like. The empty thrum under your ribs where something used to burn. A presence pulled out so cleanly it hurts worse than if it had been torn.

“I keep waiting to wake up and feel one of them. Just one. Orin’s voice when I get too far in my head. Ambrose’s warmth. Elias and his stupid, ” she cuts herself off, jaw tightening again. “Even Silas. Chaos and all.”

She stops talking then. Just walks. Shoulders are a little lower now. Not in defeat. Just exhaustion.

We round another bend, the ridge narrowing until it funnels into a hollow between two massive stone spines. They curve inward, crusted in moss and pale blue lichen that glows faintly when our shadows touch it. On the far side, the trees thin again, giving way to what might be a clearing, or a trap. This place doesn’t do open space. When it clears, it’s usually because something bigger needs room to move.

I slow my steps and nod toward it. “Might be shelter ahead.”

We reach the edge of the clearing and find what’s left of a structure. Not a house, not a tower, but something between. A husk. Bones of a building made from tree trunks lashed together with cords of dried muscle, walls slanted and torn where something enormous must’ve passed through. A firepit sits in the center, long, cold, but surrounded by tools, spoons carved from jawbones, a rusted cleaver, a small bowl stained dark.

Luna crouches beside it and touches the edge of the pit, brushing away a thin layer of ash.

“This place had people,” she says.

“Or something like them.”

She nods, eyes scanning the shadows between the posts. Her voice is quieter now. Less brittle.

“I need to get out of here. I don’t care what Brashir says. I don’t care what the gods planned. I’m going home.”

She looks up at me then. Really looks. And for a moment, there’s no hatred there. Just hunger. Grief. The kind of ache that doesn’t go away when you sleep. The kind that gets worse when you try to pretend it’s not there.

I nod once, slowly.

“Then we’ll find the way.”

She pushes herself to standing again, brushing ash from her palms like she’s done mourning the fire that once lived here. Her eyes scan the clearing’s perimeter, sharp and deliberate, like she’s hunting for a crack in the world to slip through. I stay where I am for a beat longer, watching her in the glow of the lichen-soaked trees. Her jaw’s still tight. Her shoulders squared like armor. But the seams are starting to show.

I know what that looks like. What it feels like.

Being cut off is its own kind of bleeding.

You don’t feel the wound at first. You just notice the absence. The wrongness in your balance. The sudden weight of decisions that used to feel effortless because someone else was alwaystethered to the other end of them. And then comes the cold. The hollow stretch of space where once you felt warmth, even when it hurt. The silence that doesn’t stay outside your head but echoes through your chest with every breath.

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