Page 88 of The Sin Binders Ascent

Theo

The rain isn’t falling, it’s whispering. A thin mist that clings to my skin like a breath exhaled from something far too large to see. The kind of rain that doesn’t soak, but settles, burrowing cold fingers through the collar of my shirt and into the creases of my spine. My flannel’s back on my shoulders, still warm from her body, which should be a comfort. It’s not. She’d folded it neatly before returning it this morning, and somehow that insulted me more than if she’d tossed it in the mud.

Luna walks ahead, a step too fast for how exhausted she is. Her movements are clipped, precise, like she’s afraid that if she slows down, she’ll collapse and never get back up again. The dirt under our boots isn’t dirt at all, not really. It’s coarse and dark red, veined with black roots like petrified arteries, and it shifts underfoot just enough to keep us uneasy. Trees tower around us, trees, or something tree-shaped, trunks wide as castle towers, bark like armored scales, their leaves long and jagged like knife blades drooping under the weight of mist.

We haven’t eaten. Not even the kind of casual, maybe-we-could-scavenge hunger. No, this is the hollow kind. The kind that turns you into an animal slowly, patiently, with a smile on its face. There’s nothing edible here. Not unless you count the things that look too close to familiar but not quite. Everything is almost something. A fruit that looks like a pear until itsplits open to reveal pulsing tendrils. A bird that chirps like it remembers music but has too many eyes. The scale of it all is wrong, too. Leaves bigger than our torsos. A mushroom the size of a carriage rotting gently in the distance. This place doesn’t pretend to welcome us. It doesn’t give a damn whether we live or die.

Luna slows, finally. She’s shivering, arms wrapped around her middle like she can press the hunger and fatigue into submission. The ground here rises gently, a slope lined with roots so thick they’ve become a staircase, uneven and slick. I catch up, ignoring the sharp ache low in my back from sleeping half-sitting against a cave wall while pretending not to watch her. She didn’t sleep. Not really. Neither of us did.

“You know,” I say, voice low and dragging, “for a woman bonded to seven immortals, you’re surprisingly shit at picking vacation spots.”

She doesn’t look at me. “You want to start a fight, or you want to find something that won’t eat us alive?”

“I’d like a hot meal. Maybe a bed. Possibly an apology.”

That earns me a glance. Sharp. Unamused. She’s got mud streaked along her calves, a tear at the hem of her shirt, and her hair’s been knotted into some kind of braid that probably looked pretty this morning but now looks like war.

She exhales slowly, the way you do when you’ve thought of three cruel things to say and are trying to pick the one that won’t end in blood.

“I’m sorry,” she mutters finally, and it sounds so unnatural I almost trip. “Sorry, I didn’t summon a five-star inn out of this hell-jungle and order you breakfast in bed.”

I grin. Can’t help it. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

She turns and starts up the slope again. “I hate you.”

“Everyone does,” I murmur, mostly to myself. “That’s the appeal.”

We crest the ridge, and the trees open up into a clearing that makes me stop breathing for a second, because it’s wrong in a way that scratches at the base of my skull. Not magical. Not aware. Just massive. A field, flat and wide, carpeted in something that looks like moss until you realize it’s made of thousands of fine, velvety black threads, all moving just slightly against the breeze. Or against nothing. A single flower stands in the middle. Pale pink. Ordinary. Unnerving for being so small, so delicate in a world that’s been built on giants and teeth.

Luna stares at it, her body tight with suspicion. Her hunger has a pulse now. Low, aching, curling along my bones like smoke that wants to be flame.

“Don’t even think about it,” I say, my voice sharper than I meant it to be. “That thing’s not food. It’s bait.”

She doesn’t argue, which is worse.

We move past the field, keeping our distance, and the threads retract as we walk, like hair recoiling from heat. The forest beyond is denser. Branches hang low, heavy with moisture, and I keep brushing them aside before they smack her in the face. Not because I’m thoughtful. Because I want her to owe me something. Even if it’s just the memory of my hand parting the way for her.

“How far do you think this goes?” she asks eventually, voice roughened from hours of silence.

“I’ve stopped trying to guess. This place doesn’t have boundaries. It has layers. The deeper we go, the less it cares about pretending to be a world.”

She glances back at me, something unreadable flickering in her gaze. “You think we’re going deeper?”

“We always are.”

Her lip curls, almost a smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes.

The next patch of land shifts underfoot, sloped downward into a gully that smells like rotting sugar. The trees are sparse here,replaced by thick vines that twist through the sky like intestines, some still pulsing faintly. I catch her hand when she slips, and she jerks away like I burned her, wiping her palm on her thigh.

I say nothing. I’ve learned better.

But the truth is, I feel it too. Every time I touch her, it worsens. That itch under my skin, the one that isn’t mine, not really. Her cravings bleed into me like spilled ink into water, and I can’t tell where mine end and hers begin anymore. I don’t want to want her. Not like this. Not because some fucked-up cuff says I do. But she’s the first person I’ve ever met who doesn’t want to be wanted. And that makes me ravenous.

We reach the bottom of the gully, and there’s water here, stagnant and dark, the kind that doesn’t ripple even when you throw a stone. Something swims just below the surface, slow and sinuous, bigger than it should be. Luna doesn’t stop. Just walks the edge, her jaw tight, her shoulders rising with each step.

“We need a plan,” she says. “A real one.”

I nod. “Agreed. Step one, don’t die. Step two, don’t starve. Step three, get the hell out of this fairytale cannibal fever dream.”

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