The Cursed Bond: Bound By Ruin

Seraphina stood at the edge of the map room, her fingers pressed flat against the parchment that smelled like fire and salt. The fracture lines had grown overnight, spreading like cracked glass through every known leyline in the kingdom. Wherever the bond had rooted itself, it was breaking the land to reach farther.

The court was trying to contain it with wards and spells. That had already failed. Containment did not work on something that had decided to grow.

Behind her, Elion shifted. He had been silent for the past hour, studying the same map. Not speaking did not mean he was still. Seraphina could always tell when his mind was moving. The air around him changed, as if the bond stirred when he thought too hard about anything that mattered.

"This ruin is marked differently," he said, pointing to a spot near the coast. "It's not a leyline."

Seraphina followed his gaze. The symbol was not part of the original map. Her mother must have marked it by hand. It was a small circle, surrounded by slashes like teeth. No name. No description. Only silence.

"Maybe that's the point," she said. "It's where sound ends."

Elion's lips lifted slightly. Not quite a smile. "You think she meant that literally?"

"With her? Always."

They both knew what came next. They had known since the scroll opened in her hands. The only question was how far the road would stretch before it folded back on them.

---

They packed quietly.

Seraphina chose one cloak, two sets of clothes, and the dagger the Queen had gifted her. She left behind the silk gowns, the polished boots, the jeweled hairpins that once pinned her braids like a crown. None of those things mattered on the road.

Elion packed only what he could carry in a leather satchel. A blade older than the bond, two books bound in spells, and a silver pendant that belonged to someone he had never named.

When they met at the stables, the sky was still dark. Not with night. With waiting.

They did not say goodbye to anyone. The Queen already knew. The council did not deserve the grace.

The horses moved quickly once they passed the wards around the palace. No more illusions. No more enchantments to shield them from the feel of the world cracking underneath them.

Magic bled from the land in strange ways now. Trees shifted in and out of season. Rivers flowed uphill for a breath, then reversed again. Time staggered and skipped. Once, the moon vanished midmorning and returned as if it had never left.

The bond did not speak, but it buzzed. A low vibration, too deep for language. It felt like a warning. Or a hunger.

By the second day, Seraphina no longer flinched when the earth shuddered beneath their horses' hooves.

The first ruin lay in a valley no one had named. The grass was white. The sky above it had no sun, just a smear of light without a center. It was neither warm nor cold. It was not a place, not really.

They dismounted in silence and walked the final stretch.

The ruin was not a temple. It was not a tomb. It was a hollow impression in the shape of something that had once been loved, then forgotten.

The bond pulled. Not like a thread. More like a tide.

Seraphina took the lead.

At the center of the ruin, a stone pedestal rose from the ground. No inscriptions. Only a shape.

A handprint.

Not carved.

Burned.

She hesitated.

Elion touched her shoulder. "You don't have to."

"I do."

She pressed her palm to the mark.

The wind dropped.

The grass flattened outward in a perfect ring.

And the bond opened.

She fell into the memory like a stone dropped into still water.

But it wasn't her memory.

It wasn't Elion's either.

It belonged to something older. Something ancient and fractured, like a song sung through broken teeth.

She saw a man standing at a cliff's edge. Not Elion. Not anyone she recognized. His hair was long and dark. His eyes glowed gold.

He wore the same ring.

But it was on his right hand.

Behind him, a woman cried.

Not because she was heartbroken. Because she was terrified.

"Please," the woman whispered. "You don't have to use it."

He looked back at her and said nothing.

Then he stepped off the cliff.

And everything went black.

---

Seraphina woke on the ground, gasping.

Elion knelt beside her, face tight. "What did you see?"

She could barely speak.

"Someone else," she managed. "Another bearer."

"Not me?"

She shook her head.

"Not your past. Not mine. Not even Lysandra's. Someone farther back."

The bond pulsed in agreement.

"Are you sure it was the bond's memory?" Elion asked.

"I think it was the bond's beginning."

---

They camped near the ruin that night. Firelight flickered weakly against the strange, white grass. It would not catch properly. The wood here was stubborn.

Seraphina lay with her head against her saddle, staring up at a starless sky.

"Do you think there are others?" she asked.

"Others like us?"

"Others the bond has chosen."

"I think there were."

"And now?"

Elion's voice was quiet. "I think we're the only ones left."

---

The second ruin was deeper inland, hidden beneath the roots of a forest that grew in spirals instead of lines. The trees bent toward each other like they were whispering secrets. Nothing here moved unless you looked away. Then the moss crept. The shadows crawled.

This ruin was underground. A circle of stone etched into the floor of a cavern, no bigger than a well. But it hummed.

The mark on Elion's chest burned as they approached. His steps slowed. He pressed a hand against the stone before she could stop him.

This time, they both fell.

---

The memory was fire.

All around them, flames screamed. People fled in all directions, faces warped by grief and rage. A child stood in the center of the chaos, holding something to their chest.

The ring.

Only it was not glowing gold.

It was red.

Deep, angry red.

The child wept.

And the fire answered.

---

They woke coughing.

The cavern smelled like ash now.

Seraphina stared at Elion. "It wasn't a curse. Not at first."

"I know."

"It was grief."

He nodded once. "Grief made it grow teeth."

---

They moved faster after that. The ruins were not safe. Each one peeled something back. Memory. Emotion. Truth.

The third ruin was just a pool of water that reflected things wrong.

The fourth was a set of stairs leading nowhere, but every step hurt like regret.

The fifth whispered names in the dark. None of them familiar. All of them real.

By the sixth, Seraphina started hearing the bond in her sleep.

Not voices. Not language.

Just presence.

Like someone was standing at the edge of her dreams, waiting for her to notice.

---

They reached the seventh ruin on the edge of a cliff where the sea beat against black stone. It was the place her mother had marked.

Where sound ended.

There was no ruin here. Only a single figure, cloaked in wind and shadow, sitting on a rock.

Seraphina froze.

"Elion," she whispered.

"I see him."

The figure turned.

It had no face.

Only light.

It raised a hand.

And the bond inside both of them screamed.

Not in pain.

In recognition.

---

The light poured outward, and the world fell away.

They were not on the cliff anymore.

They were nowhere.

In the space between moments.

The figure stood before them, and when it spoke, it used every voice they had ever known. Lysandra's. Her mother's. The Queen's. Their own.

"You want truth, it said."

Seraphina nodded.

"Then speak his true name."

She hesitated.

Elion looked at her. His face was pale.

"I don't know it."

"Yes, you do."

The figure stepped closer.

The bond burned.

And Seraphina said the name.

A name not written.

Not whispered.

Not remembered until this moment.

And the world shattered.

---

She woke in her tent, shivering.

Elion was already awake.

He was breathing hard, skin glowing faintly.

"You said it," he whispered.

"I didn't know I knew it."

"You weren't supposed to."

"But I did."

They sat in silence.

Then Seraphina looked at him.

"What happens now?"

Elion stared past her at the sea.

"I think we just woke him up."