Elara didn't make it to her chambers.
The moment Kael closed the door behind them, her knees buckled.
He caught her.
Barely.
Her body had gone cold.
Too cold.
Her breath ragged.
Her skin pale.
And on her collarbone—
The bone-ring tattoo had begun to shift.
Not fade.
Not glow.
But shatter.
Thin silver lines radiated out from the mark, fracturing across her skin in the shape of a star.
A curse sigil.
Old. Ancient. Forbidden.
Kael stared.
Then called for help.
No one came.
"Stay with me," he whispered, carrying her to the altar room beneath the keep.
The blood pool had long cooled.
The sanctum abandoned after the chaos of the feast.
Only the bones of old gods and shattered vows lingered in the corners.
He laid her down gently on the ceremonial stone slab.
Her chest rose in shallow gasps.
The starburst mark had spread.
Now reaching up her neck, down toward her heart.
And glowing.
Pulsing.
Kael knelt.
Raised both hands.
And began to chant.
The language of wolves was not meant for healing.
It was meant for dominion.
But if she was going to die—
He would claim her breath.
He whispered the ancient words.
Not with rage.
Not with lust.
But with sorrow.
"I bind your flame to my ash," he said, voice trembling.
"I name you mine, not by blood or pact, but by every part of me that forgot how to want until you taught it."
The starburst shimmered.
Paused.
Then surged outward—
And struck him.
Kael screamed.
The pain was instantaneous.
A spike through his chest.
Through his bones.
Through the silver shrapnel buried in his heart.
He fell to the floor, convulsing.
And in that moment—
He saw it.
Not her pain.Her memory.
A little girl.
Running through a burning house.
A body in her arms.
Her sister.
Dead?
No.
Dying.
And then—
A shadow.
A man standing at the threshold.
Kael.
Younger.
Bloody.
Frozen.
Watching.
Not moving.
Not saving.
Just watching.
Kael woke gasping.
Elara still unconscious.
The mark now flickering, pulsing like a dying star.
He stumbled to his feet.
Dragged himself across the room.
And retrieved the last thing he ever wanted to touch again:
The Mirror of Vow Echo.
A cursed object.
Made by the first blood-mages to reflect contract corruption.
He held it over Elara's chest.
The glass shimmered.
And in the reflection—
Not Elara.
Not Kael.
But someone else.
A hand holding a quill.
A scroll unfurling.
Someone rewriting the pact.
In real time.
Kael's breath caught.
"They're altering it," he whispered.
"They're reaching through the bone-ring bond."
Someone, somewhere, was manipulating the very roots of their connection.
Not breaking it.
But twisting it.
Turning it from a bond of blood into a leash of pain.
Elara stirred.
Her eyes fluttered open.
"Kael…?"
"I'm here."
She looked at him.
Then at the mirror.
She saw the reflection.
Saw the hand.
The writing.
The shifting vow lines.
"What is that?" she whispered.
Kael didn't answer.
He crushed the mirror beneath his heel.
The glass screamed.
The room went dark.
He knelt beside her.
Held her face in both hands.
"They're rewriting us," he said. "From the outside."
"Who?"
"I don't know yet."
"But they know us."
She swallowed.
"Can they make us forget?"
Kael closed his eyes.
"No."
"Then they've already lost."
He pulled her into his arms.
And whispered against her hair:
"The vow is alive.But so are we.And I don't share what's mine."