Kael woke but not in the cell.
No chains bit into his wrists. No stone chilled his spine. No sour torch smoke stung his lungs.
Instead, he stood beneath a canopy of stars.
And he was not alone.
The world around him pulsed with unreality. A forest stretched in every direction, but the trees were too tall reaching far beyond what roots should allow, their bark threaded with veins of liquid silver. Leaves shimmered like frost suspended mid-fall. Every branch swayed without wind.
Overhead, the sky held no moon.
Just stars.
Thousands of them bright, enormous, alive. They shifted like fish in deep water, and as Kael took a breath, they moved in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He knew at once: this wasn't sleep.
This wasn't a dream.
This was the bond.
He could feel it in his chest, a second pulse not his own. A current humming beneath his skin. Ancient, watchful, waiting.
Then
"Kael."
He turned sharply.
Sylen stepped from between two trees, barefoot on the moss-glow ground. He wore the same dark robes as in the cell, but here they flowed differently like ink poured through starlight. His eyes glowed brighter than before, twin moons caught in an eclipse.
Kael's voice was hard. "Where are we?"
Sylen's steps were slow, deliberate. "This is the mirror path. The place between souls."
"I didn't agree to this."
"You didn't have to." Sylen's gaze was distant, but not cold. "The bond decides when we walk it. Not us."
Kael turned in a slow circle, breath fogging in the too-still air.
Everything felt real and not. Solid and made of memory.
A broken swing hung from a low-hanging tree branch, swaying gently despite the stillness. Faint laughter echoed childlike, warm but faded before it could finish. A rusted helm, scorched black, lay half-buried in the moss beside a stone path that twisted into shadow.
Kael's stomach turned. "These are… memories."
"Yours," Sylen said, stepping past him. "And mine. Interwoven."
Kael reached out to touch the swing, but it crumbled to ash beneath his fingers. The ash didn't fall. It rose into the air, into the stars.
His voice was barely audible. "Get out of my head."
But Sylen wasn't looking at him anymore.
His gaze had gone distant locked on something deeper in the trees, pupils dilated, lips parted slightly as if remembering something too old to speak aloud.
Kael turned to follow his line of sight and stopped breathing.
A woman stood in the center of the clearing.
Tall. Hooded. Veiled in black smoke that moved like it was underwater. Her face was entirely hidden behind a swirling mist, but her presence carved through the dreamspace like a blade.
From her fingertips dangled golden threads each one glowing, alive, writhing like silk spun from starlight.
Two threads ran from her hands to the chests of Kael and Sylen, connecting them like marionettes on shared strings.
The bond.
Kael's heart kicked. "Who is she?"
Sylen's voice was faint. "Not a who. A what."
The woman raised her hand.
Neither of them moved.
A low hum vibrated through the ground beneath Kael's feet. The stars overhead flickered.
Then
Kael screamed.
Agony ripped through his chest like claws, tearing through muscle, bone, breath. He dropped to one knee, gasping, eyes wide. The thread that connected him to the veiled woman seared like fire.
His voice was hoarse, broken. "What the hell what is this?"
Sylen flinched. His own chest spasmed with shared pain but he moved toward Kael without hesitation.
And reached out.
The moment his hand touched Kael's shoulder
The pain stopped.
Gone, as if it had never been.
The stars above them steadied.
The veiled woman lowered her hand.
And then
The forest shattered.
Like glass.
Kael woke with a violent jolt, the cold stone beneath him suddenly more real than anything in the dream.
His pulse thundered in his ears. His hands trembled. His breath came fast and uneven, like he'd been drowning.
Sylen knelt beside him, one hand still touching his arm.
Their fingers barely brushed but the bond blazed at the contact, bright silver flickering between them for a single heartbeat before dimming once more.
Neither of them spoke.
They sat in silence, the cell thick with the weight of what had passed between them.
Finally, Kael drew in a slow breath. "That wasn't a dream."
"No." Sylen's voice was rough. Quiet. "It was a warning."
Kael pulled his hand away as if burned, but the heat of the bond lingered.
He stood, pacing to the far wall. His thoughts were a storm torn between rage, confusion, and a sick curl of fear that refused to leave.
"She hurt me," he muttered. "She could've killed me."
"She didn't," Sylen said, also rising. "Because I stopped her."
Kael turned sharply. "Why? Why did that work?"
Sylen shook his head. "I don't know. But the bond recognizes us as halves of the same spell. If one breaks, the other… fractures."
Kael exhaled hard, his fists tight. "Then that thing whatever she was she's part of the bond?"
Sylen's mouth tightened. "A manifestation. A guardian. A warning. She may be all of them. The witches designed this bond to punish. But ancient magic doesn't just follow orders. It remembers them. And adapts."
Kael's breath caught on a single word: "Punish."
Sylen met his gaze. "They didn't forge this bond to heal. They made it to bind. And to destroy what didn't submit."
Kael stepped back, shoulders stiff. "And we're supposed to work with that?"
Sylen didn't answer immediately. His eyes had gone distant again. Haunted.
"When she raised her hand," he said, barely above a whisper, "I saw something. Not just pain. Not death."
"What then?"
Sylen looked up.
"I saw you. Falling."
Kael stared at him.
"And I saw myself," Sylen continued, "reaching for you. Not out of duty. Not because of the bond. But because… I wanted to."
Silence bloomed like thunder.
Kael couldn't answer. Wouldn't.
He turned back toward the wall, trying to slow the storm in his chest.
He didn't ask what Sylen meant.
He didn't want to know.
Because if this was what the bond was becoming memory, feeling, warning, desire
Then it wasn't a curse anymore.
It was a mirror.
And it was showing them who they truly were.
And who they might become.
If they survived.