Page 89 of The Sin Binders Ascent

She stops walking.

“Fourth step?” she asks, looking at me. Her face is unreadable. Her voice is low.

I watch her for a second. Let the silence hang just long enough to drag something true to the surface.

“Fourth step,” I say, voice soft and without humor, “you stop pretending this doesn’t feel like destiny.”

Her breath catches. Just once. She turns away. I let her. But I follow, my hand brushing the cuff at my wrist like it might tell me how much longer I can last without losing myself.

The vines are getting impossible to ignore. They've gone from thick cords twining through trees to full-blown structures, each one coiled and knotted like something grown with intention.They're thick as the trunks back home, some wide enough to walk across if they weren’t slick with a varnish-sheen that glistens in the low light. And they aren’t just draped or dangling anymore. They’re scaffolding. Arches. Ropes strung between towers of ancient stone, partially buried in moss so dense it looks like it’s been swallowing them whole for centuries.

We move slower now. Not because we want to, but because the ground demands it. It’s not dirt anymore. It’s a lattice of old roots and pale fungus, the kind that crumbles underfoot and gives off a bitter, chemical smell that stings the inside of your nose. I try to breathe through my mouth. It doesn’t help. Everything tastes like decay and wet bark and the faintest edge of copper.

Luna’s quiet. Not the good kind. She’s calculating. Measuring how far we can go before we run out of whatever energy we’ve got left. Her eyes flick from vine to vine like she’s trying to map something only she can see. Then, out of nowhere, she mutters, “We should’ve eaten the lightning bugs.”

I blink. “What?”

Her mouth twitches, not quite a smile, but something close. “The ones we killed last night. Shiny green ones with the soft bellies. They probably weren’t poisonous. Just… ugly.”

It’s so stupid that it catches me completely off guard. A breath of laughter slips out before I can stop it. Not sarcastic. Not sharp. Just real. Low and hoarse, like it forgot how to be anything else. I watch her from the corner of my eye, and for a split second, there’s something almost human between us. Something worn-out and hungry and too tired to pretend we don’t find each other less unbearable when we’re miserable together.

“You wanted to eat the nightmare bugs?” I ask, grinning now despite myself. “The ones oozing black blood and making that clicking noise like they’re reciting curses?”

“Better than starving,” she mutters. “They looked… crunchy.”

“You’re worse than I am.”

“That’s not a real insult coming from the embodiment of ‘I’d lick it if it moaned.’”

I cough, actually cough, because that hits harder than I expect. “You’ve been waiting to say that.”

“Two days.”

I shake my head, biting back another laugh. “They tasted like tar, by the way. I tried one.”

She stops walking. “You what?”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t swallow. Just a little nibble. Research.”

Luna stares at me like she’s reevaluating every decision she’s made in the last thirty years. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Accurate.”

But the humor fades as we move into the thick of it. The vines feel older than the gods. Older than want. They’re too smooth in places, glossy and ridged, with a faint pattern like veins traced in gold. Some split open as we pass, revealing hollow insides filled with a waxy resin that glows faintly when disturbed. One bursts behind us, releasing a fine mist that smells like rusted fruit and saltwater.

Luna covers her nose. “What the hell is that?”

“Spore release,” I murmur, already guiding her away. “Probably reproductive. I don’t know. Everything here looks like it’s trying to either eat or seduce us.”

“It’s giving both.”

The vines form a sort of passage now, tall enough to walk through but just narrow enough to make me reach back and guide her by the waist when she slows. My fingers brush her hip. She doesn’t pull away this time. Her skin is warmer than mine, even after the rain, and I linger longer than I should. I feel her breath stutter, just barely, and that’s enough to make my blood spike.

I let go before she can say anything.

Up ahead, the passage opens into what looks like a tunnel. A long, curved corridor made entirely of woven vines, arcing overhead in thick braids so tight there’s almost no light coming through. The floor here is smoother, less wild. Still slick, but navigable. The walls sweat a clear fluid that trickles down into small grooves in the floor, like the place is draining itself of something it doesn’t need anymore.

Luna stares at the tunnel with open suspicion. “Do we go in?”

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