Sound returned in fragments.

  Drip.

  Crackle.

  A distant, hollow groan as something heavy collapsed into fire.

  Seris blinked, vision swimming. At first she thought she’d sunk into darkness again, but it was only smoke; thick, choking, tinted red by the glow of burning timbers. She pushed herself upright with shaking elbows.

  Her head throbbed. No, their head throbbed. A pulsing ache threaded between her mind and another consciousness. Her stomach lurched.

  She remembered the ritual. The impossible light. The pain splitting her thoughts open. Fury pressing through her skull like a storm trying to tear its way in.

  And now—

  He stood only a few steps away.

  The Bone Harrower.

  He didn’t need to restrain her. Her own soul was the tether.

  Seris swallowed, tasting soot. “Where… where are the others? My master? Maren? Anyone?”

  The Harrower didn’t answer. Not aloud nor through the bond. He tilted his mask toward the street beyond the alley, and she followed his gaze.

  Varenthol was dying.

  Buildings had collapsed into one another. Smoke drifted in heavy layers, swallowing rooftops. Fires licked what remained of the northern market. Corpses - some whole, some animated by lingering Legion magic - lay scattered like broken dolls. And the Bone Legion, leaderless and confused, wandered without direction.

  Seris clamped a hand over her mouth. “Gods…”

  Her heart slammed, and the bond answered.

  Pain detonated in her chest, sharp and immediate, as if her ribs had been struck from the inside. She cried out, collapsing back onto her elbows, vision flashing white. Not just pain, but displacement.

  The bond yanked her forward, an inch, snapping taut. Her pulse thundered and she felt it echo elsewhere, heavier, slower, answering beat for beat, but he had not moved.

  The air around him flexed, warping as shadows peeled off the walls and dragged themselves closer to his feet.

  She gasped. “Don’t—don’t do that—”

  His masked head tilted, and suddenly the pressure spiked.

  Stone cracked beneath her palms.

  Seris screamed again as the bond convulsed violently, yanking her forward an inch then snapping back, tightly.

  Her vision fractured and for a heartbeat, her body forgot its own shape. She felt forward motion that wasn’t hers; crushing weight, armour, stone breaking beneath a stride she did not take. Bone soldiers shifting instinctively at her, his, passing.

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  The Harrower’s attention snapped back to her. He stepped forward and the bond yanked at her core. Pain lanced up her spine. She gasped and fell backward, barely catching herself.

  He froze.

  You—

  The thought hit her like a blade driven straight into her skull.

  You moved.

  “I didn’t mean to,” she choked. “I—I just woke up—”

  You pulled.

  The alley trembled.

  A pile of rubble at the far end suddenly lifted, suspended midair, then smashed violently into the opposite wall. Stone exploded outward.

  She hadn’t commanded it. She’d reacted, and the bond had answered for her.

  Seris curled in on herself, hands over her head. “Stop! Please—stop!”

  The force vanished as abruptly as it had come. A thick, dangerous silence followed.

  She looked up slowly.

  The Harrower stood rigid, one clawed hand half-raised, as if caught in the middle of a strike he hadn’t chosen to make. Fissures of necrotic light crawled along his armour, brightening, dimming... unstable.

  His presence pressed against her thoughts like a storm barely contained.

  What have you done to me?

  Her stomach twisted. “I, I don’t know. The ritual... it wasn’t meant to... ”

  You bound something that does not bend.

  The bond twisted again, harder this time.

  Stop—stop— she thought, instinctively—

  The thought lashed through the bond, unshaped and desperate, and he froze.

  Dark energy crackled across his armour, sparks racing along bone-carved plates. The air tightened, pressure building until her ears rang.

  You do not command me.

  The words struck her chest like a blow.

  “I didn’t. I wasn’t trying—”

  Her breath cut off completely as pain crushed her chest. She clawed at her sternum, panic surging.

  Across the street beyond the alley, something answered.

  A Bone Legion soldier convulsed violently, sigils flaring erratically before its body shattered into a heap of inert bone. Another lurched forward without command, slamming into a wall hard enough to crack stone.

  Seris sobbed. “They’re reacting to us—”

  To you.

  The correction was immediate and uncertain.

  His fury slammed into her thoughts, but tangled with something else now: strain. Resistance. A pressure pulled too tight.

  She forced herself upright, legs shaking. “Why didn’t you kill me?” The question burst out of her, raw and terrified. “You could have. You still can.”

  The bond pulled tight as wire.

  I have tried.

  The words did not come with certainty.

  She felt the hesitation. Felt him testing the connection, pressing against it from different angles, searching for a seam.

  When I strike—

  Pain flared again, sharper than before.

  —I feel it here.

  Confusion bled through the bond, corrosive and dangerous.

  And when you fear—

  The alley darkened.

  —the Legion answers.

  Her head snapped up as another distant crash echoed through the city, followed by screams. Closer than before.

  Her voice shook. “Then what happens if you lose control?”

  Silence.

  That silence terrified her more than his fury.

  I do not know.

  A tremor ran through her whole body.

  Because uncertainty meant possibility, and possibility meant catastrophe.

  "Then what do you want from me?" she asked, afraid to know the answer.

  For you to break what you made.

  The words sharpened.

  And then I will kill you.

  A violent shudder ran through her. The bond pulsed with something that wasn’t hers; restraint, strained thin. He wanted more than her death. The bond simply would not allow it.

  Suddenly, a distant horn sounded. Clear, sharp, unmistakably human.

  The Empire.

  Seris stiffened. Survivors. Reinforcements. Rescue.

  The Harrower turned sharply, sensing it at the same moment she did. The air grew colder.

  They come for you.

  A beat.

  And for me.

  “If they see you—”

  They will try to kill me.

  Bitter.

  And you will die with me.

  Her mouth went dry. “I have to warn them—”

  You cannot.

  His presence surged forward, suffocating.

  You are bound to me. You die. And I follow.

  Boots thundered through smoke. Armoured voices cut through the ruin.

  The Harrower stepped into the mouth of the alley, blocking the way out.

  Seris pressed a trembling hand to her chest, feeling the bond pulse between them.

  She was alive.

  He was alive.

  Together.

  For now.

  As boots thundered closer, the bond tightened.

  Someone shouted orders through the smoke.

  And then the Harrower stepped forward.