Chapter 44
He opened his eyes, and the beast was gone.
The searing weight pinning him to the earth had vanished. The stink of blood and bile still clung to the air, but the immediate pressure of death had lifted. Rowan blinked against the smoke. His helmet was gone. Most of his armor hung in cracked, broken chunks across his chest. His fingers trembled against the scorched soil as he pushed himself upright.
And then he saw them.
A line of figures stood a few dozen paces ahead. Not one or two. Not a squad.
Dozens.
Each one different. No two looked alike, and yet they all shared the same impossible quality. One had a body wrapped in flame that never touched his skin. Another hovered inches above the ground, air rippling around her in silent waves. A woman with silver skin pulled a whip of unraveling time behind her as casually as if it were a scarf. Beside her stood a child no older than ten with six eyes and black veins crawling like lightning across pale arms.
They didn't move.
They didn't need to.
Because the monsters had.
The creatures that had charged so mercilessly through the front line only moments before now hesitated. Even the largest ones—those lumbering behemoths with bone-crusted jaws and limbs too long to be real—slowed.
One turned.
Another roared, but it didn't charge.
Rowan couldn't breathe. Not because he was afraid. Not anymore. Something deeper coiled in his chest, something that hollowed out the panic and replaced it with awe.
Bound.
He'd heard the stories. Watched the vids. Learned the rankings and the myths in school.
But he had never seen one. Not really. And certainly not like this.
Not dozens.
Not gathered together, radiating the kind of silent authority that made reality itself seem unsure.
His parents had been Bound.
High-Class. Veteran Seekers. He'd grown up in their shadow, played in a house built on the aftermath of their triumphs.
But even they had never displayed power like this. Not openly. Not physically.
They worked in administration. Safety. Strategy.
But these Bound...
These were war.
They stepped forward as one.
Not in unison—not robotic. But with a synchronicity so precise it felt orchestrated by instinct. Like dancers who had never met but knew the rhythm of the world in the same breath.
The first monster charged.
It didn't get far.
A hand—just a hand—flicked through the air, and the creature burst apart in a bloom of blue smoke and twitching bone.
Another leapt from the side. A Bound with a jagged spear met it midair, driving the weapon down in a clean arc that split the monster in two. No blood. Just the stutter of unbeing.
Rowan stared.
The world moved in silence. He couldn't hear the monsters scream. Couldn't hear the Bound shout. The battlefield was a vacuum now—no sound, just violence. Just grace.
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking again. Not with fear. But because something inside him was beginning to crack open.
This wasn't war.
This was a division.
Humans like him—untrained, unequipped, unaware—were thrown into the maw to slow the tide. To die. To buy seconds.
And then the Bound arrived.
He was a placeholder.
That realization settled heavy on his chest. His squad—what was left of it—had been nothing more than delay. All that screaming, all that blood, all those people broken and dragged across the soil—it had been to stall until these people could arrive.
People?
No.
They weren't people.
They were above that. More.
A woman passed close enough that he could see her face.
She was calm. Beautiful in a way that didn't register as human. Her skin shimmered, as if light didn't know how to leave it. Her eyes were pale gold, and as they met his for a single breathless instant, Rowan felt something move in his chest. Like recognition.
Then she was gone.
A blur of metal and silence.
He turned his head, watching as more Bound moved across the field. The monsters didn't stand a chance. Limbs were severed with thought. Creatures twice his height evaporated into mist and void. Each motion was artistry. Precision. Power.
The Rift-creatures were horrifying.
But these?
These were terrifying.
Rowan tried to stand. Failed. The exhaustion was too much. The pain. The confusion. His hands pressed against the scorched earth as he knelt in silence, watching a war he wasn't meant to survive.
Not as a fighter.
Not as a human.
He was just meant to see.
And maybe—he thought, as the last of the monsters fell, as the Bound stood like titans above the bones and ash of the battlefield—maybe that was the point.
To know the difference.