Page 113 of The Sin Binders Ascent

I remember that silence too well.

The first day they pulled me out of the mirror realm, my power had curdled inside me. Like it hadn’t had a body in so long, it forgot how to fit. I was unhinged. Sick with it. Desire doesn’t fade when you’re severed. It just turns on itself. Starts to gnaw through your thoughts, twist your need into something sharp and starving. I walked through days without sunlight, through weeks where I forgot my name and only answered to the things people whispered when they thought I couldn’t hear them. And still, no one came. No one reached back.

They cast me out, and that was the end of it. No questions. No warning. Just exile and rot.

So when I look at her now, standing in the ruins of a place that might’ve once been sanctuary, I know exactly what’s settling behind her eyes. That gut-deep rejection. That furious helplessness that doesn’t let you cry because it’s too busy convincing you this is your fault somehow.

She starts walking again, toward the opposite edge of the clearing where a narrow trail winds between two arching stone formations crusted with glowing moss and something darker, mold, maybe, or dried blood, it’s hard to tell anymore. The path looks promising, at least in the sense that it doesn’t immediately scream death. The roots don’t coil toward it. The branches above don’t hang like nooses. It’s the closest thing to an invitation we’ve had.

I catch up to her just as the path begins to slope downward, the air thickening with a damp, fungal musk. Somewhere below us, I can hear water. Not rushing. Just moving. Steady and wide.

“You’re handling this,” I say, careful with the words, “better than I expected.”

She snorts without looking at me.

“I’m repressing everything,” she says flatly. “It’s called maturity.”

I smile. Not because it’s funny. But because it’s so her. Sharp-edged and sideways and just brittle enough to mean the opposite.

Here, the trees bend inward like they’ve been taught to keep secrets. Long strips of moss dangle from the branches, trailing low enough to brush our shoulders, and the dirt underfoot gives just enough to make you feel like you’re walking on something that used to breathe.

“Let me know when you want to stop,” I say. “You’re pushing pretty hard.”

She lifts an eyebrow at me, still walking. “Are you offering to carry me?”

“Only if you ask real nice.”

“I’d rather crawl through glass barefoot.”

“Romantic.”

She doesn't smile, but the corner of her mouth twitches like she’s fighting one. It's not affection. Not even amusement. Just something alive cracking through the concrete she’s poured over herself since Brashir twisted the knife.

“Do you always talk this much?” she mutters.

“Only when I think silence might kill us faster.”

She glances at me then, just for a moment, and there’s something in her eyes I can’t place. Not softness. She’s not capable of being soft right now. But recognition, maybe. A reluctant understanding.

The ground flattens ahead, and the trees open just enough to reveal the river we heard. It cuts through the basin like a scar, wide and slow, dark as ink. The banks are littered with bones.Not white and clean, but yellowed and half-sunken, their shapes warped by whatever passes for time in this place. Some of them are human. Most aren’t. None of them looks fresh.

The water itself is clear, almost too clear. It reflects the red of the sky like a wound stitched across the land. And above it, high in the twisted trees that arch over the banks, are nests.

Not twigs. Not branches. These are built from wire. Bone. The occasional glint of something sharp and metal. I don’t see the creatures that made them, but I feel them watching. The air is too still. The branches don’t sway.

Luna stops at the edge and stares at the water, her arms crossed, her coat shifting in the breeze that has just started to exist again. She doesn’t say anything for a while.

Finally, she speaks quietly.

“I hate it here.”

I step closer, close enough that our shoulders almost touch.

“I know.”

She looks at me again, and this time, she doesn’t look away so fast. There’s something in her eyes I’ve never been able to ignore. Not power. Not pain. Just the raw, unbearable truth of her. She never masks it. Not really. She just throws teeth around it and dares the world to bite back.

I motion toward the river, toward the way the path seems to pick up again on the far side.

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