The wind outside had shifted.
Kael felt it before he heard it — a low, restless howl that seeped through the cracks in the ruined stone like breath from something sleeping too close.
But inside the ruin, the air was still.
He woke slowly, his limbs aching with exhaustion, his muscles stiff. A cold patch on his side told him his shirt had stuck to half-dried blood. When he sat up, the creature — Ash — lifted its head, ears twitching. The bond between them was faint but present, like a hum in the bones.
Kael blinked at the mirror-rune again. The images were gone now, but the sense of… presence lingered.
He moved to the center of the ruin. Scattered across the altar stones and cracked floor were ancient bones, roots, and the dried husks of small creatures long dead.
A voice echoed faintly in his skull — not words, not commands, but memory.
To bind is to give life. But life always comes at cost.Choose what you're willing to lose.
Kael's jaw tightened. He looked down at his palm, clenched it into a fist, and opened it again.
He reached toward the corpse of a crow lying crumpled in the moss.
"Let's see if this wasn't a fever dream."
He began by mimicking the gesture he'd seen in the vision. He drew a shallow cut across his forearm with a shard of bone — not deep enough to scar, but enough to bleed. His blood hit the earth beside the bird.
Nothing happened.
He reached again, this time placing two fingers on the crow's breastbone.
He inhaled.
Focused.
He remembered how the runes had pulsed. How the creature — Ash — had seemed to hear his heartbeat. He tried to will his own breath into the dead thing. His will. His life.
A sudden crack echoed through the ruin.
Kael jerked back as the crow's bones twisted.
Its wings flared.
Its skull turned slightly, beak twitching.
It opened its eyes.
Glowing green.
And then it screamed.
A raw, broken sound — not of life, but of remembered death.
Kael stumbled backward, clutching his temple as pain lanced through his skull. Blood spilled from his nose. His vision fractured. The world spun.
Ash barked sharply and lunged, pinning the crow-thing with a paw. The creature spasmed… then went still.
Kael collapsed to one knee, panting. The pain receded slowly, but it left a ringing in his bones. A cold chill deep in the marrow of his spine.
When he looked at his hand again, the mark on his arm — the one from the beast-bond — had spread. A second rune, thinner and more jagged, now coiled near his wrist.
His breath shook.
I brought it back.And it was wrong.
He didn't try again that day.
Instead, he sat by the ruined altar, sweat drying on his brow, heart still pounding.
Ash curled up beside him, tail twitching.
Kael stared into the soft green glow of the ruin's moss and whispered, "How many times do I have to bleed before I learn how to use this?"
The beast made no sound.
But it leaned against him.
A small gesture. A weight. A reminder.
He wasn't entirely alone anymore.
That night, Kael dreamed of thorns growing from his spine.
Of a woman with glowing hands offering him a flower made of bone.
And of Lyra's voice, whispering his name just before the petals crumbled into ash.