Calla's POV
I collapse the moment we're through the fortress doors.
My legs give out and I hit the cold stone floor hard. Every muscle in my body screams. My magic is completely drained—using Guardian power against Morvess burned through everything I had.
Through the bond, I feel Eraxis's exhaustion too. He's barely standing, one hand pressed against the wall for support. Shadow-walking three people across dimensions nearly killed him.
But Papa is alive. Unconscious and bleeding from where Morvess hit him, but alive.
That's what matters.
"Can you stand?" Eraxis's voice is rough, pained.
"Give me a minute." I close my eyes, trying to catch my breath. My chest feels like it's full of broken glass. "Is Papa okay?"
Eraxis kneels beside my father, his hand glowing with soft silver light as he examines him. "Concussion. Broken ribs. But he'll live." He looks at me, and I see something flicker across his face—guilt? "I'm sorry. I should have protected him better."
"You saved us." My voice comes out sharper than intended. "We'd be dead or worse if you hadn't."
"Worse than dead," Eraxis agrees quietly. "Morvess would have studied your Guardian magic, replicated it, then slowly unraveled your soul across multiple timelines. You'd experience dying a thousand times simultaneously."
I shudder. Through the bond, I feel that he's not exaggerating. He's seen it happen before.
"How do you know her?" I ask. "Morvess. You called her by her first name. You know her."
Eraxis's jaw clenches. He stands up slowly, moving to a nearby window that looks out over the purple twilight sky. "She was my mentor. When I was young, barely a century old, she taught me everything about the Loom of Time. How to harvest souls cleanly. How to read thread patterns. How to serve the cosmic order with honor."
The bitterness in his voice is sharp enough to cut.
"She was at my coronation when I became Reaper Prince. She congratulated me, told me I'd earned it through merit and sacrifice." He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "All those years, she was lying. She killed my family. She manufactured the plague that forced me to reap their souls one by one. And I never suspected a thing."
Through the bond, I feel his emotions—betrayal so deep it's like a physical wound. Rage. Grief. And underneath it all, shame. He's punishing himself for not seeing through her lies.
"It's not your fault," I say softly.
"Isn't it?" He turns to face me, and his mercury eyes are blazing. "I'm over eight hundred years old, Calla. I've existed since before your ancestors were born. I should have seen what she was. I should have known."
"She fooled everyone. That's what manipulators do—they make you trust them." I force myself to stand, even though my body protests. "You can't blame yourself for believing someone you loved."
The word 'loved' hangs in the air between us.
Eraxis flinches like I slapped him. "I didn't—I don't—"
"You did. I can feel it through the bond." I take a step toward him. "She was like a mother to you after your real mother died. And she used that love to control you. That's not your fault, Eraxis. That's hers."
He stares at me like I just spoke in a foreign language. "How are you doing that?"
"Doing what?"
"Making me feel things I buried three hundred years ago." His voice drops to almost a whisper. "I've spent centuries teaching myself not to feel. Not to care. It's the only way to survive being what I am. But you—" He gestures helplessly at the silver chain connecting us. "Through this bond, I can't hide. You feel everything I feel. You see through every wall I build."
"Good," I say firmly. "Those walls were killing you."
"Those walls were protecting me."
"From what?"
"From this!" He moves suddenly, closing the distance between us until we're almost touching. "From caring about someone again. From having something to lose. Do you understand what you've done to me, Calla Thorne?"
His intensity should scare me. He's death incarnate, an immortal being who could kill me with a thought. But through the bond, I feel the truth beneath his anger—he's terrified. Not of me. Of what I make him feel.
"I didn't ask you to bind us," I point out. "You did that yourself."
"I know." He closes his eyes. "And I'd do it again. That's what terrifies me."
We stand there in silence, the bond humming between us like a living thing. I can feel his heartbeat—slower than human, steady and strong. I can feel his magic, vast and cold and ancient, wrapped around mine like a protective shield.
And I can feel something else. Something new and fragile and dangerous.
He's falling for me. Maybe already has fallen.
And I'm falling for him.
It's insane. We met less than two hours ago. He's a Time Reaper. I'm a fugitive Guardian. We're from completely different worlds, bound together by necessity and cosmic law.
But none of that changes what I feel pulsing through the bond—this impossible, terrifying, undeniable connection.
"What happens now?" I ask quietly.
Eraxis opens his eyes. "Now, you train. Morvess is planning something catastrophic—I could see it in the corruption magic she used. She's poisoning the Loom from the inside, and she needs you dead so no Guardian can stop her."
"So you're going to teach me to fight her?"
"I'm going to teach you to survive." He starts walking deeper into the fortress, and I follow. "Your Guardian magic is raw power with no control. You burned through your entire reserve in that one attack. Against Morvess, that won't be enough. You need training, discipline, technique."
"How long will that take?"
"Years, normally." He glances back at me. "We have days. Maybe weeks if we're lucky."
We walk through corridor after corridor of black stone lit by floating orbs of silver light. The fortress is massive, cold, and eerily beautiful. It feels like walking through the skeleton of something ancient and powerful.
Finally, we reach a massive door carved with symbols that hurt to look at. Eraxis pushes it open, revealing a circular chamber with walls covered in glowing threads—thousands of them, stretching from floor to ceiling.
"What is this place?" I breathe.
"The Echo Chamber. It's where I practice reading the Loom." He gestures to the threads. "These are echoes of real threads—copies I can manipulate without affecting actual lives. You'll learn to read them, repair them, and eventually, fight with them."
I walk forward, reaching out to touch the nearest thread. The moment my fingers brush it, I see a life flash before my eyes—a woman in a village somewhere, laughing with her children, growing old, dying peacefully.
"Every thread is a life," Eraxis says behind me. "Every life is precious. That's what I learned from killing my family. That's what I forgot in the centuries since. And that's what you need to remember when you learn to wield this power."
I turn to face him. "Why are you really doing this? Training me? Protecting me? You could have left me for Morvess. Stayed loyal to the cosmic order. But you chose treason instead. Why?"
Eraxis is quiet for a long moment. Then, through the bond, I feel him lower his walls completely. Let me see the truth.
"Because," he says softly, "when I saw you perform that spell to save your father—when I felt your absolute certainty that love was worth damnation—something inside me remembered what it felt like to be alive. And I realized I've spent three hundred years being dead inside. Walking. Talking. Functioning. But not living."
He takes a step closer.
"You made me want to live again, Calla. You made me remember that existence without love isn't immortality—it's just an endless death." His hand reaches up slowly, giving me time to pull away. When I don't, his cold fingers brush my cheek with devastating gentleness. "So I bound myself to you. I committed treason for you. And I'll train you and protect you and fight beside you for however long we have. Because for the first time in centuries, I have something worth dying for."
My breath catches. "Eraxis—"
The fortress shakes violently.
Eraxis's expression hardens instantly. "She found us. Already."
"That's impossible! You said—"
"I said she couldn't follow immediately. I didn't expect her to be this fast." He grabs my hand. "We need to move. Now."
But the door to the Echo Chamber slams shut. The threads on the walls start turning black, corrupted by Morvess's magic seeping in from outside.
We're trapped.
Eraxis moves in front of me protectively, a blade of shadow appearing in his hand. "Stay behind me."
"I can fight—"
"You're exhausted and untrained. If she gets through that door, you die in seconds."
The corruption spreads faster. The threads are screaming—I can hear them, thousands of lives crying out as they're poisoned.
Then a voice echoes through the chamber—not Morvess's voice, but someone else's. Male. Young. Familiar.
"Eraxis, open the door. I'm here to help."
Eraxis goes rigid. Through the bond, I feel shock and something darker—suspicion.
"Who is that?" I whisper.
"Theron," Eraxis says grimly. "My former protégé."
"Former?"
"I trained him for a century. Treated him like a brother." His grip on his shadow-blade tightens. "But I'm starting to think I trained a traitor."
The voice comes again, more urgent: "Eraxis, please! Morvess's forces are surrounding your fortress. I barely escaped. If you don't let me in, we're all dead!"
Through the bond, I feel Eraxis's conflict. Trust or suspicion? Brother or betrayer?
"What do we do?" I ask.
Eraxis looks at me, his mercury eyes conflicted. "If I'm wrong and he's loyal, we need him—he's a powerful fighter. But if I'm right and he's working with Morvess..."
"Then letting him in means bringing the enemy inside our walls," I finish.
The door shudders as something massive hits it from outside. Theron's voice screams: "They're here! Eraxis, they're breaking through! Open the door or I'm dead!"
Eraxis's hand moves toward the door lock.
And through the bond, I feel something that makes my blood run cold.
He's already decided to open it.
He's choosing to trust Theron.
And I think it's a mistake.