Kael lowers himself to the floor.
One book becomes two. Two become five. He does not read carefully—he skims, hunts, tears meaning from the margins. Different lands. Different eras. Different magic. The afflicted bear different names in every text.But the endings do not change.
Isolation.
Escalation.
Loss of control.
One account ends with the subject imprisoned beneath a citadel, bound in wards so dense they collapsed inward, crushing the body they were meant to contain. Another describes a ruler who burned his own city rather than surrender himself to execution. A third ends abruptly, the final page scorched, the margins filled with frantic, looping script that breaks apart mid-sentence.
Always the same conclusion.
Madness, if mercy comes late.
Violence, if power remains unchecked.
Execution, carried out by those who once swore loyalty—for the good of the realm.
Kael closes the last book slowly.
His hand is steady. Too steady.
Beneath his skin, the darkness coils—not raging, not pleading. Waiting. As if it knows what he has learned. As if it approves of the only consistent finding:there is no cure.
The realization does not break him. It settles. A strange calm follows—clean, decisive. If this is how it ends, then he will ensure it endsquickly. Efficiently. Better a single monster than a trail of corpses left in his wake. Better their hatred than their graves.
And then it hits him. Not a thought—instinct. If he dies…shedies.
The bond between them is not symbolic. Not just emotional. Not just physical or mental. Not something that can be severed with distance or will. It is absolute.Final.
Soulbound.
Heartbound.
Starbound.
His death would not save her.It would take her with him.
There is no ending where the people he loves survive him. No ending where he overpowers this sickness. No ending where the fragment returns to its origin.
So death is no longer a solution.
Only delay.
Only control.
Only the careful management of something that will eventually consume him without taking her with it.
Not even death will save them.
The only option… is to live with it.
He stacks the books back where he found them, aligning the spines, erasing the evidence of his search. Control, restored.
He exhales.
That is when the shadows shift. Not a threat, but a slow, graceful approach that he knows better than he knows himself.
