The wilds beyond the tower were unlike anything Kael had seen.
Trees bent away from the path, as if repelled by the presence of bonded blood. Pools of liquid ember simmered along the roots. The land hissed when they stepped too heavily angry, somehow aware.
"This forest is cursed," Seris muttered.
Elira shook her head. "Not cursed. Warded."
"Against what?" Kael asked.
Elira glanced up toward the horizon, where the faint outline of a jagged peak Tir Duraleth loomed. "Us."
As they pressed forward, the air thickened. With every mile, their bond grew hotter more volatile. It was like a string drawn too tight. Kael could feel Elira's heartbeat through it. Her fear. Her doubt. Her temptation.
And she felt his.
They set up camp at the edge of a shattered bridge, once spanning a lava-cracked gorge. The gap now yawned like a wound, and beneath it pulsed a river of fire.
As Ryn and Seris slept, Kael and Elira sat in silence, backs against a crumbling statue of a forgotten god.
"Elira," Kael said at last. "When we reach Tir Duraleth… what if they ask us to undo the bond?"
She didn't look at him. "Then we do what we must."
"What if that means one of us dies?"
She turned slowly, eyes shining like the dying embers in the gorge below. "Then we fight it."
He took her hand.
The bond flared between them sharp, intimate, raw. Their thoughts, once distant, merged. He saw her memories: her childhood beneath the Temple of Sand, the death of her sister, the first time she bled magic. And she saw his: the war, the fire that took his parents, the face of the soldier he never forgave.
And in that shared storm of memory—desire sparked.
Kael leaned closer.
Elira didn't pull away.
Their lips met, slow at first an ache, a whisper, then a storm breaking loose. Her hands tangled in his shirt. His fingers ran along her spine as they collapsed back into the moss beside the statue.
Breathless.
Needing.
But just as skin met skin just as heat turned from emotional to elemental—the bond screamed.
A vision flooded Kael's mind Elira dead, her body torn apart by flame, his own hands aflame with guilt.
He recoiled.
She gasped, shaking, as if jolted from a nightmare.
They lay there, stunned.
"The bond didn't want this," she whispered, voice broken.
Kael turned away. "Or it warned us what it would cost."
They said nothing else.
Above them, the wind shifted, carryin
g the scent of ash and something older.
Watching.
Waiting.
The morning after the bond's warning came with no sun—only a dim, copper haze and the scent of scorched stone.
Kael hadn't slept.
Neither had Elira.
They kept distance now. Not from anger, but from fear. Fear that touching again would break something deeper than magic. The bond still pulsed between them—but faintly, as if shivering.
Ryn noticed.
"You two are… quieter," he said cautiously as they broke camp.
Kael only nodded. "The bond gave us a vision. Of death."
Ryn's gaze darkened. "It does that. Sometimes truth arrives as fire."
Seris pointed north. "The path grows worse ahead. I feel something a weight. Like the world's breathing through teeth."
They continued across the ash-swept flats until they reached a broken plain filled with obsidian statues. Hundreds of them, each shaped like a man or woman mid-scream, frozen in agony.
Elira stepped cautiously between them.
"These aren't statues," she murmured. "They were bonded. Once."
Kael's stomach turned. "What could do this?"
That's when the singing started.
Soft. Childlike.
High and echoing across the glass-field.
Kael drew his blade.
Ryn spun around. "Above us!"
A shadow dropped from the rocks tall, cloaked in flames that didn't burn. Its face was a mask of shifting expressions joy, sorrow, fury all blinking in and out like candlelight in wind.
Elira whispered: "That's a Harbinger."
Seris froze. "They're myth"
"It's real now," Kael snapped.
The Harbinger's voice was a harmony of voices, male and female, old and young.
> "Bonds formed in fire.
Bonds tested in loss.
All end here."
It raised a clawed hand.
The obsidian statues around them shattered—releasing ghostly echoes that swirled into the Harbinger's form, enlarging it.
Kael charged. "MOVE!"
He struck, steel meeting ember.
The Harbinger shrieked not in pain, but in song. Kael was thrown back by an unseen force.
Elira stepped forward, fire spiraling in her palms. "You want to test our bond? Then feel it burn."
She loosed a torrent of white flame the purest emberlight directly into the creature's chest.
The Harbinger reeled flickered and dissolved into dust.
But not before it whispered to Elira alone:
> "The pact is a prison.
To free one, you must cage the other."
Then it was gone.
Ash fell in its place.
Elira collapsed to her knees.
Kael caught her, trembling.
The bond between them pulsed again but now, it burned with both power… and sorrow.
They made camp beyond the plain of shattered souls, near a dried-up stream that once pulsed with emberlight.
No one spoke for a long while.
Elira sat apart from the group, eyes fixed on the scorched sky. The Harbinger's final words twisted inside her like a blade. The pact is a prison. To free one, you must cage the other.
Kael approached, careful not to close the space too suddenly.
"Elira," he said softly. "What did it say to you?"
She shook her head. "A lie. Or a warning. Or both."
He sat beside her. Their shoulders brushed. The bond throbbed quietly now. Not hot. Not cold. Just watching.
Kael stared into the distance. "The Harbinger… it was made of failed bonds. Shattered ones."
"Not just failed," she said. "Sacrificed."
Kael's breath caught. "You mean…"
She nodded. "I'm starting to believe the Ember Pact was never meant to unite. It was meant to enslave. Two souls bound by flame one always meant to dominate, the other to serve. The rituals we endure, the 'visions' we suffer—maybe they aren't just trials."
"They're conditioning," Kael finished grimly.
From behind them, Ryn spoke: "Then why do we still fight for it?"
Kael turned. "Because it's in us now. And we don't know who we are without it."
Seris joined them, crouching. "But what if we could break it without dying?"
Elira looked up. "Is that even possible?"
Seris pulled a folded piece of parchment from her pack.
"It's a heretic's map. Taken from the Vaults of Cindhar. It shows the Split Path a way to untangle the bond without shattering the soul. But it's hidden in Tir Duraleth's lowest chamber."
Kael took the parchment, studying its jagged lines.
"If we go there, if we find this chamber… do we even know who we'll be on the other side?"
"No," Seris said. "But at least we'll be free."
Elira stood slowly.
"Then we finish this. One way or another."
Above them, the stars reappeared just a few. Pale. Unsteady. But real.
The bond pulsed softly between Kael and Elira. No longer just power.
Now: question.
The night wind stirred the ash.
Kael stood watch at the edge of the dying woods. Across from him, Elira paced, fingers twitching with the residue of her embercraft. The weight of the Harbinger's words pressed on them both.
Seris and Ryn had gone to rest. The fire crackled between them, casting long shadows—two souls tethered by something neither fully understood.
Kael finally broke the silence.
"You don't believe in the bond anymore, do you?"
Elira didn't turn. "I don't know what to believe. I only know it's changing us."
"Is that a bad thing?
She spun, eyes flashing. "It's not about good or bad. It's about control. Every time we get closer every time we touch it pushes back. Like it doesn't want us to choose."
Kael stepped closer. "Then maybe we don't give it the choice."
Her breath hitched.
This time when they touched, the bond didn't scream. It hummedslo ow, mournful. A warning or a blessing, neither could tell. Their lips met again slow, hesitant but this time without surrender.
They held each other in the cold dark, not with hunger, but with intention.
Kael kissed her neck, and she closed her eyes. The bond pulsed in rhythm with their breath, not flaring, not resisting—listening.
They undressed slowly, baring skin beneath moonlight filtered through ash. Every touch, every whisper, was deliberate—an act of defiance against the force that would cage them.
And then the world bent.
Their bodies met, fire and breath entwined. Not rushed. Not desperate. But deep, and slow, and true. Their bond responded—not with resistance, but with revelation.
Visions came: a memory that wasn't theirs—of two lovers centuries ago, also bound by fire, also choosing love over control. A secret buried beneath Tir Duraleth. A name whispered by flame: Solara.
Elira cried out—not in pain, but in knowing.
Kael held her, and the bond surged—not violently, but radiantly.
They were not burning.
They were becoming.
After, they lay wrapped in one cloak beneath a fallen tree, silence settling between them like an oath.
"No more running," Elira said.
Kael nodded. "No more letting the bond choose for us."
In the distance, Tir Duraleth rose closer now. Not just a fortress.
A reckoning.