Calla's POV
Reality tears apart like wet paper.
Morvess's hand glows with sickly green light, and the walls of our cottage start dissolving. Not breaking—dissolving. The wood turns transparent, then fades to nothing. The floor beneath my feet ripples like water.
"Run!" Eraxis shouts, grabbing my wrist.
But there's nowhere to run. The corruption is spreading fast, eating everything it touches. Papa's bed vanishes. The table where we ate dinner together for twenty-four years turns to smoke.
"No!" I reach for Papa, but Eraxis pulls me back.
"Scholar, take my hand!" Eraxis extends his free hand toward my father.
Papa runs forward, reaching—but Morvess flicks her wrist and a wall of green fire erupts between us.
"The father stays," she says pleasantly, like discussing the weather. "I need him alive a little longer. Insurance, you understand."
"Touch him and I'll—" I start, but Eraxis clamps a hand over my mouth.
"Don't threaten her," he hisses in my ear. "She's powerful enough to erase this entire village without breaking a sweat."
Through the bond, I feel his fear. Not for himself. For me. For Papa.
Morvess walks through the green flames like they don't exist. "Eraxis, darling, you're making this more difficult than it needs to be. I'm not here to hurt the girl. I'm here to help her fulfill her destiny."
"By poisoning her father? By forcing her awakening?" Eraxis's voice is cold fury. "That's not help, Morvess. That's manipulation."
"Semantics." She waves a hand dismissively. The green fire spreads, surrounding us completely. We're trapped in a shrinking circle with the High Overseer blocking our only exit. "The Guardian bloodline needed awakening. I simply provided... motivation."
My magic flares hot in my chest, responding to her presence. Every instinct screams danger. This woman isn't just powerful—she's wrong. Corrupted. The same black rot eating Papa's thread clings to her like a second skin.
"You're the source," I breathe. "You're what's corrupting the Loom."
Morvess's smile widens. "Clever and powerful. You really are your grandmother's heir." She takes another step closer. "Elara was brilliant, you know. She discovered what I was doing decades ago. Tried to stop me. Tried to warn the Reaper Court."
Ice floods my veins. "You killed her."
"I eliminated a threat." Morvess shrugs elegantly. "Just like I eliminated the rest of your family. One by one, over the course of a century. It was quite tedious, honestly. But necessary."
Rage explodes through me—hot and bright and absolutely consuming. My magic responds, golden light erupting from my hands. "You murdered my family!"
"I removed obstacles." She examines her nails casually, completely unconcerned by my power. "The Guardian bloodline was the only thing that could stop my plan. So I hunted them down, suppressed the survivors' magic, and waited. Eventually, only one would remain—young, untrained, desperate enough to break cosmic law and reveal herself."
"Me," I whisper.
"You." Her eyes gleam with triumph. "And now that you've awakened, now that you've stolen time and made yourself a criminal, the Reaper Court will hunt you. They'll execute you. And with the last Guardian dead, nothing can stop me from remaking the Loom in my image."
Eraxis moves so fast I don't see it. One second he's beside me, the next he's between me and Morvess, a blade of pure shadow in his hand.
"You planned this," he says, his voice deadly quiet. "The Guardian massacre a century ago. You orchestrated it."
"Of course." Morvess looks genuinely pleased. "I fed false information to your father, the former Reaper King. Convinced him the Guardians were planning a coup. He ordered the purge himself. Really, Eraxis, your family did most of my work for me."
Through the bond, I feel Eraxis's emotions shift—shock, then horror, then rage so pure it makes my knees weak.
"My father," he breathes. "The plague that killed my family—"
"Also me." Morvess's smile is razor-sharp. "You're welcome, by the way. Clearing out the old Reaper royalty made room for you to become Prince. You should be thanking me."
Eraxis lunges.
His shadow-blade cuts through the air where Morvess's throat was a split second before. She dodges effortlessly, laughing.
"Still so emotional. That's always been your weakness, Eraxis. You feel too much." She raises both hands and the green corruption explodes outward. "Let me fix that for you."
The spell hits Eraxis square in the chest.
He screams—a sound of pure agony that rips through the bond and into my soul. I feel everything he feels: his thread being torn apart, his memories fragmenting, centuries of life being corrupted and poisoned.
"Stop!" I run forward without thinking, putting myself between them. "Leave him alone!"
Morvess's eyebrows rise. "How touching. The Guardian protecting the Reaper. Your grandmother would be so disappointed."
"My grandmother," I snarl, "would want me to stop you."
I don't know what I'm doing. I've had my magic for less than an hour. I've never trained, never learned control. But I reach deep inside myself, into that well of power that's been locked away my whole life, and I pull.
Golden light erupts from my hands—pure Guardian magic, the kind my ancestors used to repair reality itself. I throw it at Morvess's corruption spell, and the two magics collide in an explosion that levels what's left of our cottage.
When the smoke clears, Eraxis is on his knees, gasping. The corruption spell is gone. But Morvess is still standing, and now she looks impressed.
"Remarkable. You instinctively used Repair magic to counter my Decay spell. Your grandmother took years to learn that." She claps slowly. "You really are the last Guardian. Which means I really do need to kill you."
She raises her hand for a killing blow—
And Papa hits her with a iron skillet.
The pan connects with Morvess's skull with a satisfying CLANG. She stumbles, more surprised than hurt, and Papa grabs my arm.
"Run, Calla! I'll—"
Morvess backhands him casually. Papa flies backward and hits the ground hard, not moving.
"Papa!" I scream.
"He's alive," Morvess says, annoyed. "Barely. Though not for long if you don't cooperate." She fixes me with a cold stare. "Here's what's going to happen, child. You're going to come with me quietly. I'll study your Guardian magic, learn how to replicate it, then kill you. If you resist, I'll torture your father until he begs for death. If you run, I'll erase his thread from existence—he'll have never been born. Choose."
My magic rages inside me, desperate to fight. But Papa is unconscious on the ground. Eraxis is barely recovered from her corruption spell. And Morvess is so powerful that even my untrained instincts know I can't beat her.
I'm trapped.
Then Eraxis stands up.
He's shaking, blood dripping from his mouth where the corruption spell damaged him internally. But his eyes are blazing with fury and something else—determination.
"There's a third option," he says hoarsely.
He grabs my hand and speaks a single word in the Old Tongue—a word that makes reality scream.
The world explodes into shadow.
Suddenly we're falling through darkness, through spaces between spaces, through the gaps in reality where nothing exists. I'm holding Eraxis's hand so tight my bones ache. Papa appears beside me, unconscious but wrapped in Eraxis's magic.
"What did you do?" I gasp.
"Shadow-walk," Eraxis grits out. "Forbidden technique. Burns through life force. But it's the only way to escape someone as powerful as Morvess."
"Where are we going?"
His mercury eyes meet mine, and through the bond, I feel his answer before he speaks it.
"The Twilight Veil. My realm. It's the only place she can't follow—not immediately, anyway. You'll be safe there."
"For how long?"
"I don't know." He pulls me closer as the darkness around us grows teeth and starts biting. "But Calla, you need to understand something. By bringing you to my realm, by protecting you from the High Overseer herself, I've just committed treason against the entire cosmic order."
The weight of what he's done crashes over me. He's risking everything. His position. His life. His immortality.
"Why?" I whisper. "Why would you do that for me?"
The darkness swallows us completely before he can answer.
When we emerge, we're standing in a realm of eternal twilight where the sky is purple and stars burn in colors that don't exist in the mortal world. A massive obsidian fortress rises before us, beautiful and terrible.
Eraxis staggers, falling to one knee. The shadow-walk cost him more than he let on. Through the bond, I feel his life force dimming.
"You're hurt," I say, kneeling beside him.
"I'll heal." He looks at Papa, who's still unconscious but breathing. "We need to get him inside. And then—"
He stops mid-sentence, his eyes widening.
"What? What's wrong?"
"The bond," he breathes. "When I used the shadow-walk, when I pulled you and your father into my realm against Morvess's will... the bond activated fully. We're not just connected anymore, Calla."
"Then what are we?"
His expression is terrified and awed in equal measure.
"Soul-bound. Permanently. If either of us dies, the other follows. If either of us is corrupted, the other turns too. Your life is my life. Your death is my death."
"You mean—"
"I mean," he says quietly, "that to save you, I've just tied my fate to yours completely. For better or worse, until death takes us both."
Behind us, the sky tears open.
Morvess's voice echoes across dimensions: "Run all you want, Eraxis. I'll find you. I'll find the girl. And when I do, I'll make you watch her die slowly for this betrayal."
The tear seals shut, but her promise hangs in the air like poison.
Eraxis meets my eyes. "Welcome to the Twilight Veil, Calla Thorne. Hope you're ready for war."