Page 82 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“You keep glancing behind us,” I say, pitching my voice low, letting it settle between us like the fog pooling at our feet. “Expecting them to follow?”

She doesn’t answer.

The dripping grows louder the deeper we move toward it, until it becomes less like water and more like something thicker. Tar,maybe. Oil. Blood. I don’t taste fear. I taste hunger. A hunger that doesn’t belong to me, and that’s what makes it worse.

The ground stops pretending to be soil. What was once moss and root thick beneath our boots is now brittle and wrong. Not the satisfying crunch of dried leaves. This is sharper. Louder. Like we’re walking across the splintered bones of something that should have stayed buried. I glance down and immediately regret it.

The earth has cracked open, veins of molten orange threading through jagged black stone that glows with a sickly heartbeat. The terrain is warped. No longer shaped by nature, but by something unhinged. The stones jut upward like broken spears. They force us onto narrow ledges and uneven ridges. The cuff between Luna and me keeps yanking, warning us when one of us tries to move too fast or stray too far. We don’t speak about it, but I can feel her annoyance every time she tugs it tighter around my wrist.

Everything around us is too large. Towering trees with bark like dragon scales and knots that look like eyes. Leaves the size of sails shift high above in a canopy we’ll never reach, their edges stained with dark ichor that drips slow as syrup.

Somewhere ahead, a cluster of mushrooms as big as tents emits a faint hum, their heads pulsing like lungs.

Then we see the lights. They flicker in the branches first, little glints of pale gold. At first, I think they’re fireflies. Until one descends.

It clicks as it moves, wings folding back to reveal a segmented body covered in obsidian plating. Its eyes are scarlet and too many to count. Long legs curl in under its body as it hovers, suspended above the path. And it is massive. The size of a large wolf, maybe bigger. Others begin to follow. Five, maybe six, all spiraling slowly in a deliberate rhythm that sends a spike of pressure up the back of my neck.

These things patrol. Not with the lazy drift of insects but with intelligence. Their golden abdomens glow softly, pulsing in time with the way their heads tilt toward us. One drops lower. Luna tenses. Her hand curls tighter around the blade I gave her. It flares faintly at her side, all shimmer and flicker, carved of the hunger that lives inside me. She doesn’t swing. Not yet. Just watches it, steps carefully to the side, pulling me with her as we move as one.

We find a path that climbs. The rocks spiral upward, leading us along the edge of what looks like a fractured mountain ridge. The drop to our left is gutting. A canyon that yawns wide and black and endless. Sounds rise from it. Low growls. Echoes. Not wind. Not anything natural.

She slips once and catches herself on a jagged rock, her palm splitting open. The blood is bright against the stone. She doesn’t cry out. Just rips a piece of cloth from her shirt and wraps the wound without a word.

"You good?" I ask, only half interested.

Her glare nearly cuts me in half.

"I’m fantastic," she snaps and keeps walking. Faster now. More pissed.

The climb doesn’t stop. It gets worse. Every path twists back on itself. Some disappear into dead ends or drop off completely. The ridges are unstable. Like this place is still forming or crumbling in on itself. The sky overhead is not even sky. Just a thick, churning mass of dark gray that pulses like breath.

Then come the sounds. Low and wet. Not words. Not music. But something is alive and aware and watching. The giant insects follow at a distance. Still circling. Still glowing. Waiting.

This world is wrong. Too large. Too heavy. But it doesn’t feel unfamiliar. Not to me.

It runs on desire.

And that means I am right at home.

Cracked obsidian juts out like broken vertebrae, some slabs wide as wagons, others needle-thin and slick with moss that glows faintly green. Luna keeps close, her eyes tracking every uneven step, every crevice like it might lurch open and swallow us whole.

Trees, if you can call them that, grow sideways here. Their trunks are twisted columns of dark wood, knotted and riddled with veins that throb like arteries. Leaves hang like flags, thick and heavy, the color of bruises. Now and then, they twitch, not with wind, because there is none, but with something else. Like breath. Like awareness.

The air is saturated now with an animal stench of wet fur, rusted metal, and sulfur. And underneath it all, a sweetness that doesn’t belong. Too ripe. Too deliberate.

We’re halfway along the ridge when I hear the buzz again. It starts like static in my teeth. Faint, then loud. Not one insect this time. Dozens. Hundreds. The glimmer of gold starts low on the horizon, and then it swells, a moving light, like someone spilled fire into the wind and let it burn with purpose.

Luna curses under her breath. I draw my blade.

They’re not just bugs. They’re things pretending to be bugs, wearing the shape of fireflies but with jaws that click open wider than they should. The first one dives. Its body shines like polished bone, segmented and sharp. Wings hum with a mechanical violence. Luna swings her blade up, and it cracks the thing midair, its body exploding into a slick smear of viscera that hisses as it hits the ground.

Then the rest come.

They drop from the canopy in sheets, a blinding mass of gold and black, spiraling like a storm. The sound is deafening, a chorus of metal and fury. Wings slice the air with scalpel precision. One grazes my arm, and it’s not a scratch. It peelsskin back like fruit. My blade flashes, cutting one clean in half. But there are too many.

Luna shouts, her voice ragged with frustration as she grabs my wrist.

She slashes upward, carving through another who was aiming for her face. Its body sprays glowing ichor that hisses when it hits the rocks. We’re pushed back toward a narrow outcrop, half shelter, half trap, and the swarm circles tighter.

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