Page 73 of The Sin Binders Ascent

The fog rolls in low and heavy, not the gentle sort that kisses the fields at sunrise. This fog comes from the treeline like it’sspilledfrom something ancient and wrong. It snakes over the grass in thick coils, dampening sound and warping distance. One moment, the woods are visible beyond the herb garden; the next, they’re swallowed whole.

Theo straightens behind me. For once, he doesn’t have something smug on his tongue. I turn my head, eyes narrowing on the way the mist churns like it’s alive, coiling around the backyard, tasting the space.

There’s a sound.

Not a rustle.

Not an animal.

Not wind.

Acrack. Splintering. Like something massive just snapped a limb off a tree and didn’t care who heard.

Theo steps closer to me, a hair too close, voice pitched low. “That wasn’t normal.”

“No shit,” I snap, already moving down the path toward the edge of the garden, eyes locked on the place where fog meets forest. I don’t bother asking if he’s coming. He doesn’t have a choice.

The cuff tightens as I pick up pace, yanking him forward when he hesitates. “Slow down,” he mutters. “If somethingout therejust declared itself with a battle cry, maybe we don’t waltz right toward it?”

“This is my fucking land. I don’t let things justcreep in.”

“Of course you don’t.” He exhales behind me, half-laugh, half-growl. “Gods forbid something be aguy problemyou can’t solve with shears and middle fingers.”

The mist thickens as we near the tree line, cool fingers curling up my legs, and the sound comes again. It’s wet. Not footsteps…drags. Something pulling weight, scraping bark, maybe bone.

I raise my hand, magic humming low along my knuckles, and glance back at him. “If this thing kills me, you’re going down with me.”

Theo flashes a grin, more wicked than amused. “Better ways to die than chained to you in fog and fury.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

The trees groan as another crack splits the quiet, louder now, closer. Something is moving in the fog. And it knows exactly where I am.

My fingers twitch, and the air answers. Power shivers up my wrist, fed by seven bonds that live in my blood like wildfire. The cuff tries to resist it. Theo flinches as the metal heats, but I don’t stop. Iwon’t. My palm opens, and the weapon builds itself out of nothing, conjured from instinct and fury and the echo of every Sin I’ve ever claimed.

It forms not like a sword or a staff. Nothing so clean. This thing,mything, is brutal. The hilt is wrapped in obsidian-black leather, stitched in gold thread that glows faintly with Lucien’s Dominion, too sharp and regal to ignore. The blade isn’t just steel, it shifts. Rippled like heat off desert stone, forged from Riven’s wrath, always on the verge of splitting open. Alive. Dangerous.Thirsting.

Red veins glow beneath the surface, subtle and volatile, Ambrose’s greed feeding the blade’s hunger totake. It vibrates with Orin’s gravity, heavy and weighted like wisdom no mortal should wield, a pulse like ancient bells tolling deep inside the earth.

The guard flares jagged, chaotic and bright, constantly morphing in style, asymmetrical and somehow still perfect, Silas’s chaotic touch, unpredictable and gleaming with mischief, etched in runes that have no beginning or end.

Elias’s sloth? That should’ve made it slow, but it doesn’t. It makes itlazy like a trap. The kind you don’t notice until your spine hits dirt. Until it's too late to scream.

And Caspian, his sin curls at the weapon’s core, the slick obsidian core that hums with dark allure. The blade doesn’t glow, itpulses. Like it wants to be worshipped. Like it already knows it’s the most beautiful weapon anyone’s ever seen, and if you look too long, you’ll drop to your knees without meaning to.

Desire hums behind me, leaking from Theo like sweat. He’s watching the weapon like it’s sex and death all wrapped up in one blood-slick promise.

I roll my wrist. The blade bends with me, fluid, deadly,mine.

“Well,” Theo says, voice suddenly rougher, “you don’t fuck around.”

“No,” I mutter, eyes scanning the fog where the dragging sound’s coming again, louder this time.Closer. “I never have.”

Whatever's in that fog should’ve picked a softer house to haunt. Because it just wandered into mine.

The fog parts as I step into it, thick and wet and clinging to my skin like hands that don’t know how to let go. The trees beyond the garden are skeletal in the gloom, branches reaching overhead like the bones of some long-dead god. I move without hesitation, the blade humming softly in my grip.

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