The fire in the old chapel had burned low by the time the rites began.
Outside, the mist still clung to the hills like a second skin, and the stars—those that had dared to pierce the clouds—flickered as if unsure of their place in the sky. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of burned myrrh and elderwood. The altar had been stripped of its rot and dust, scrubbed clean, repurposed not for prayer but for blood. Not for salvation, but for truth.
Aurelian stood at its edge, palms open, sleeves rolled to the elbow. The ink of his House tattoo spiraled down his forearm like a chain, and for once, he didn't try to hide it.
Yvaine moved through the shadows like a wraith, her voice low, reciting words that hadn't been spoken aloud in Rhime for nearly a generation. Words from the old tongues, meant for covenants deeper than law. Older than borders. Sacred even before the gods had names.
Sera stood opposite Aurelian. Pale. Still. But unflinching.
She wore no armor. Only a plain tunic and a thin ribbon of gold twine wrapped around her wrist. Her eyes never left his, though he could see the storm building behind them.
"You can still walk away," Aurelian said, voice a whisper.
Sera smiled, faint and brittle. "You should know by now—I don't walk away."
Yvaine lifted a silver bowl, filled with water drawn from the crypt-spring beneath the estate. Salted. Blessed. Stirred with ash from the Rhime sigil, burned at first light.
"Hands," Yvaine said.
They extended them. She drew a small dagger—bone-handled, curved slightly at the edge—and sliced shallow lines into their palms.
The blood mingled as it fell into the bowl.
Aurelian inhaled sharply. The magic wasn't loud, but it was deep. It pulsed, low and steady, like a second heartbeat. Sera's breath caught too, but she didn't flinch. If anything, she looked more grounded than before—more certain.
The rite wasn't just symbolic.
This was the Bond of Veins, known in only a handful of Houses, outlawed in others. It tethered two souls—not romantically, not always willingly—but permanently. A protection spell at its core, forged in desperation during the early wars when soldiers knew they'd never see their comrades again. But more than that, it was a warning.
Breach the bond, and one would suffer.
Break it, and both would die.
Yvaine stepped back.
"It's done," she said.
The air shifted. Something invisible and cold passed through the chapel like a windless tremor. The candles flickered once. Then held steady.
Sera looked down at her palm. The wound was already closing.
"So," she said softly. "Now if one of us dies…"
"The other follows," Aurelian finished.
She looked up at him. "Good. Then I'll never be alone."
He didn't have words for that. Not then.
Not even as she stepped away.
She was gone by first light.
The bond should have told him. Should have burned. But it didn't. It remained quiet. Steady. Like her heartbeat was simply… somewhere else.
Sera had always known how to move without sound. It was something she'd learned in the backstreets of Altaryn, where she'd grown up hiding from tax guards and slavers alike. But this—this was something different.
She didn't take a horse. She didn't take her armor.
Only her daggers. A waterskin. A folded map.
And a letter.
Yvaine found it first, pinned to the wall of the strategy room with one of Sera's throwing knives.
It wasn't long. Sera never wasted ink.
"You can't follow me. The bond prevents you from dying—but it doesn't stop me from bleeding.
This is mine to risk. Ezra isn't alone out there. I think he knows it now.
Keep Rhime standing. That's all I ask."
Aurelian read it three times before crumpling it.
"She's chasing him," he said.
"She's protecting him," Yvaine corrected.
"What's the difference?"
Yvaine sighed. "One ends in blood. The other ends in sacrifice."
He turned to her. "How much did you know?"
She didn't blink. "Only what she let me."
Far beyond the Rhime borders, through the mist-stained lowlands and the broken wall remnants of the Marov frontier, Sera moved like a shadow among ruins.
Ezra had left no trail. No tracks. No disturbances.
Which told her everything she needed to know.
He hadn't come to confront the past. He'd come to vanish into it.
But the bond still held. And while she couldn't hear his voice, she could feel his silences. The weight behind them. The quiet ache that built beneath her ribs when the wind changed or the dusk fell too fast.
He was close.
And he was walking toward death.
She pressed onward—through the hollow pass, where bones littered the cliffs like old leaves, and into the forest beyond. No birds sang here. No crickets. No life she could see.
Only the faint shimmer of old wards, straining against time.
She paused at the base of a withered tree. The bark was scorched black, and carved into its trunk was a single serpent—its mouth open, fangs bared.
Marov.
Old Marov.
She touched the carving, and the ward flared faintly.
Then died.
Ezra knelt before the burned altar of the watchtower's ruin.
He didn't speak.
He hadn't spoken since the confrontation the night before. Since the girl—no, the woman—he'd spared stepped from the shadows like a revenant from the old songs.
He hadn't raised his blade again.
Not yet.
She hadn't struck either.
Instead, she had watched him.
As if waiting.
"You won't run," she'd said.
"No," he'd replied. "Not again."
"Do you remember his name?"
Ezra had hesitated.
"Yes."
"Say it."
"Thalin."
She'd nodded. "Then you know what must be done."
Now, as the sky turned to iron and the clouds thickened with storm, Ezra stood and faced her again.
Her name was Arlyss.
She had taken no other.
She'd learned the blood languages in the years after the razing. Traveled east to the broken isles where old oaths still had voice. Found the remnants of the Black Clerics who remembered the serpents before they were hunted. She had carved her magic from bone, inked her body in truth, and waited.
Waited for him.
"I can't undo what I did," Ezra said.
"No," Arlyss replied. "But you can pay what's owed."
She drew a dagger. Short. Wide-bladed. The kind used in sacrificial rites.
"Blood for blood. Or truth for truth."
Ezra breathed in.
"I choose truth."
Arlyss narrowed her eyes. "That's the harder path."
"I know."
She stepped forward, and the dagger glowed faintly in her hand.
"The rite will show you what you buried," she warned. "It will not be kind."
Ezra looked to the sky. The wind had stilled.
"I don't deserve kindness."
Arlyss raised the dagger.
And cut.
Not him.
Herself.
A line down her forearm, where the old ink ran thickest. Blue met red. Sigils flared. The light spread outward like roots across the clearing.
Ezra's breath caught.
He saw them then—shadows rising from the earth. Not spirits. Not phantoms.
Memories.
The village. The fire. The boy's scream. The silence that followed. The dagger. The words.
He fell to his knees.
But Arlyss kept the wound open.
"You said his name," she said. "Now say your own."
He looked up.
"Ezra."
"No," she snapped. "Not your given name. Your true one."
He hesitated. Then—
"Ezra of the D'Arcos. Oathbound to Thalin Marov. Named by fire, scarred by blade."
The wind roared.
The blood ignited.
And the vow cracked open.
Miles away, Sera screamed.
Not from pain.
From connection.
The bond flared. Aurelian doubled over in the strategy room, clutching his ribs.
"Something's happening," Yvaine said.
"He's dying," Aurelian gasped.
"No," Yvaine murmured. "He's changing."
In the ruins, Ezra opened his eyes.
The blade Arlyss held shimmered with white fire now.
The serpent behind her pulsed faintly on the stone.
"You have seen," she said. "You have remembered."
Ezra nodded.
"Then you know what comes next."
He rose to his feet.
And for the first time in twelve years, his voice did not tremble.
"I do."