Page 77 of The Sin Binders Ascent

This place wasn’t made to be seen.

It was made tolure.

To devour.

And Luna, gods, if she’s drawn to it, if that thing has tapped into whatever buried ache she’s not telling anyone about…She’ll walk straight into it, and I’ll be dragged in after her.

It happens so fast my body doesn’t have time to protest, just lurches upward, my feet no longer on the forest floor, the weightless rush so jarring I think for a moment I’m dying. Not metaphorically. Literally. My heart slams against my ribs, not from fear, but from the absence of gravity, the way it forgets how to function when you’re suddenly no longer tethered to anything solid. The cuff burns at my wrist, molten-hot, like it’spulling not just my body, but something deeper, bone, breath, thought.

I try to twist, to see her, to seeanything, but the fog smothers every sense. The world is a blur of grays and ghosts, no trees, no light, no horizon, just a sweeping rush of windless motion, lifting me faster and faster into a sky I can’t see. There’s no resistance, no arms beneath me, no tether I can grab. I’m justascending, weightless, dragged by some unseen force. My muscles seize with instinct, with panic, but there’s nothing to fight, nothing to brace against. I reach for something, air, magic, reality…and find nothing.

The scythe slips from my grip. I don’t even feel it leave until the cuff jerks my arm again and I realize my hand is empty, fingers twitching like they’re trying to close around the only weapon I’ve ever trusted. And still, we rise.

The air begins to thin, not gradually, but with an abruptness that feels cruel, like it’s being siphoned out of my lungs by a god with a grudge. Breathing becomes effort. Then struggle. Then pain. My chest compresses under the weight of the altitude, my mouth open wide, but the air’s too sharp, too thin, scraping the back of my throat like broken glass. My lungs feel hollow, trembling, like they’re moments from collapsing in on themselves.

And I still can’t see her.

I try to call her name, but it comes out wrong. No sound. Just a gasp, ripped apart before it reaches my lips. My head starts to pound. My vision fuzzes around the edges, darker now, not because of the fog, but because my body’squitting. Stars dance at the corners of my sight, not the beautiful kind, these are pinpricks of black edged in red, the kind that screamyou're too high up, there’s not enough oxygen, you're going to pass out mid-air and plummet.

And gods, the helplessness,that’swhat does it.

Not the altitude. Not the suffocating cold. But the knowledge that Luna is somewhere just out of reach, yanked skyward by some invisible force, and I can’t do a damn thing. I can’t protect her. I can’t reach her. I can’tseeher. I’m just dragged behind, a body trailing another, chained like an afterthought to her existence.

The fog breaks, just for a breath, and I glimpse something above us, massive and dark, not a star, not a structure, but a shape, an absence of light that pulses as if it’s breathing. Then the clouds surge again, swallowing everything whole.

I don’t know what’s at the top of this climb.

But it’snot heaven.

The altitude gnaws at the edge of my sanity. My vision blurs, the kind of blur that isn’t just physical, it’scosmic, like reality itself is starting to forget how to hold shape. Everything above me is a color I don’t have a name for. Something darker than black, deeper than void, shimmering with the kind of iridescence oil spills envy, blue one second, violet the next, and then nothing at all.

The pressure changes again, slamming into my ears, popping them with a wet, hollow crack that makes me snarl. I’m being dragged towardsomething. Not the sky. Not space. This isn’t upward in a way that fits physics. It’s upward in the way a nightmare feels, familiar and wrong all at once.

That’s when I hear it. A low, primal grunt. Not mine. Not Luna’s. And not human.

I crane my neck, every vertebra screaming, and that’s when I see it.

Below me, no, not below.Around. It’s coalescing out of the fog like it’s always been there, waiting. A form, impossibly tall, made of shadow and glinting bone. Its limbs stretch like branches stripped bare in winter, too long, bent at impossible angles, and woven with strands of night. No eyes. No mouth.But I feel it watching. Drinking in the sight of us like it’s savoring a meal it’s waited eons for.

Its chest heaves once, and fog peels back like skin torn from flesh, revealing more of it, etched symbols glowing across its ribcage like tattoos made of flame and smoke. The creature’s grunt comes again, deeper this time, like it’sstruggling. Not from pain. Fromeffort. Because whatever this thing is, it’s not just watching.

It’spullingus.

My stomach flips. Not metaphorically. I feel it, my organs shifting as if gravity has been rewritten. The cuff flares hot. Too hot. And then I hear her gasp just ahead, her voice raw, cracking, strained like she’s trying to resist and can’t.

I reach for her, fingers outstretched in the void, and that’s when the worldshatters. Not explodes. Not crumbles.Shatters. A sudden, impossible rip in everything. Space, sound, sensation, time, it all peels back like paper soaking through. The shadows split wide, revealing a tear in the world, a jagged wound framed in glowing gold and dark green, pulsing like a heartbeat.

And then it swallows us.

There’s no transition. One breath we’re in the sky wrapped in fog and horror, and the next, gravityreverses. We fall, not down, but sideways, like being flushed through a pipe built by gods who didn’t believe in mercy. The colors here are wrong. Not colors.Feelingsmasquerading as colors, hunger, grief, seduction, dread….pouring through my eyes, seeping into my skin.

Wind howls past us like it’s screaming secrets. Trees the size of towers flicker into view, their leaves glinting with sharp edges like razors dipped in starlight. The sky above this place isn’t sky. it’s a sea, upside down, with ships of light sailing silently beneath the surface.

Luna lands hard beside me in a mess of limbs, her hair tangled, her body arching instinctively. The cuff sizzles between us, glowing faintly now, like it’s trying to figure out where the hell we are. I barely register her groan as I shove myself up, breath wheezing, chest on fire.

Luna

The moment I reach for them, I know.

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