The witches returned at dawn.
Kael didn't notice the time until it changed the air shifted first, becoming heavy with the cloying scent of myrrh and charred sage, thick enough to sting the eyes. It bled through the cracks in the old stone door like a living thing, crawling into the cell with ancient purpose.
Then the torches flared of their own accord, burning blue at the tips.
And then the door creaked open.
The sound was slow, deliberate. A rusted groan echoing down a hallway of silence.
Three figures entered, their forms cloaked in ash-gray robes that pooled like smoke around their feet. Their hoods were drawn, their faces veiled with embroidered silk woven so fine it looked like mist clinging to bone. But their eyes burned gold behind the fabric, too bright, too steady. Not human.
They were witches, yes but older than the word suggested.
Kael sat up straighter despite the pull of the chains. His instincts screamed against their presence.
Beside him, Sylen stirred as well. The fae straightened without sound, his gaze sharpening, jaw tightening ever so slightly as the witches crossed the cell threshold. He didn't speak. Just… watched.
One of them stepped forward, the movement unnervingly smooth, like her feet never touched the ground.
"The bond stabilizes," she said.
Her voice was like brittle parchment fragile and dry, but threaded with some undercurrent of magic that left Kael's skin crawling.
Sylen said nothing.
Kael's throat burned with the effort to hold back his fury. "We didn't ask to be bound."
The witch's head tilted slightly. "You already asked. Your soul did. The moment your hatred turned to fear."
Kael's back stiffened. "I don't fear him."
Sylen spoke then soft, low. "Not yet."
Kael turned to glare at him, but the witch was already shifting her attention.
She moved toward Sylen. The movement should've made a sound cloth brushing stone, the whisper of footsteps but the silence around her held fast, as if the air itself bent to her will.
"And you," she murmured, her words like snow falling on glass. "Who walked the Dreaming Path with blade in hand and no name on your lips. Even you asked to be understood."
Sylen's expression didn't change, but something in his shoulders tensed. Barely a flicker. But Kael noticed.
The witch lingered, as if seeing something even Sylen didn't understand. Then she turned back.
"Why us?" Kael demanded. "Why bind me to him? There were others on that battlefield."
The witch raised one pale hand. Her fingers were stained with old ink, the nails cracked, each joint ringed with faded runes. "The bond is ancient. Older than kings. Older than bloodlines. It finds those fractured by war and presses them together until they bleed truth."
Kael laughed once, bitter and sharp. "Then you've damned us both."
"Perhaps," the witch said, already turning toward the door. "Or perhaps we've forced salvation into hands too proud to ask for it."
They left without explanation.
The torchlight dimmed again.
And the silence that followed was a different kind of unbearable.
Not the cold silence of a prison, but the weighted quiet of something unfinished. Something listening.
Kael exhaled, slow. His back pressed against the wall, the stone cold enough to leech the heat from his skin. The chains pulsed again blue now, not red and a fresh throb echoed behind his eyes. Not pain. Not entirely.
A presence.
Sylen.
His thoughts.
His emotions, barely warded off.
Kael's voice was low. "I'll find a way out of this."
Sylen didn't look at him. "You can try."
No sarcasm. No smugness. Just... an answer.
Kael turned to face him fully. "Don't tell me you're resigned."
"I'm not resigned," Sylen said after a moment. "I'm strategic."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "Strategic how?"
"It means we stop bleeding in a stone cell while your kingdom plots its next war, and mine decays from within."
Kael studied him for a long beat. "You want to escape."
"I want to survive," Sylen said. "There's a difference."
The fire in Kael's chest flared. "We're not allies."
Sylen smiled faintly. "No. But we're not strangers anymore, either."
Kael hated that more than anything.
He rose again, slowly, ignoring the jolt of heat that raced through the chains as he moved. "And how do you propose we 'survive'?"
Sylen turned toward him fully now, and raised his bound wrists. The glyphs along the manacles shimmered not the violent red they once were, but a softer, brighter blue that flickered with each breath.
Kael blinked. "What did you do?"
"I started listening."
Sylen stepped forward. The chains didn't resist him this time.
"I stopped fighting the bond," he said. "And it showed me what it can do."
Kael scoffed. "You're making that up."
Sylen's smile widened just enough to be unnerving. "Am I?"
Then the ground shook.
It wasn't much barely a tremor but it was real. Dust spilled from the cracked mortar above Kael's head, and one of the smaller runes along the wall behind him flared briefly, then died out.
A fracture ran down the stone like a vein of shadow.
Kael stepped back. "What the hell"
"I told you," Sylen said, voice low and edged with satisfaction. "The bond doesn't just tie pain."
Kael's chest tightened. "Then what?"
"It ties power."
Silence.
Kael felt it now faint, distant, but unmistakable. A pull. A thread winding between them, through them. Not just emotional. Not just magical.
Elemental.
"What kind of power?" Kael asked cautiously.
"The kind that breaks locks." Sylen's eyes gleamed. "Or bends them."
Kael frowned. "You said it unravels. With blood and trust."
Sylen nodded. "We've already bled."
"And the trust?"
Sylen shrugged, chains chiming faintly. "That's the tricky part."
Kael wanted to scream. Wanted to punch the wall until his fists broke. But he couldn't deny what he'd just felt.
The bond was changing.
Adapting.
And so were they.
He sat back down slowly, mind racing. "So what now? We wait for another tremor? Hope the walls just fall apart?"
"No." Sylen crossed the cell and knelt near the etched runes on the wall. "We provoke it. We test the bond's limits. Together."
Kael stared at him.
"You want to collaborate."
"Reluctantly," Sylen said. "But yes."
Kael leaned back against the wall, eyes never leaving the fae. "You're insane."
"I'm alive." Sylen glanced over his shoulder. "And if you want to stay that way, I suggest you stop clinging to the illusion that this bond can be undone by sheer will."
Kael was silent.
Outside, the sound of distant bells rang once. Twice. Dawn was bleeding into morning.
He clenched his fists.
They weren't allies. Not yet.
But they weren't enemies in the same way, either.
And that whatever that meant was its own kind of terror.