The Forgotten Pulse of the Bond-Chapter 24: Fractures Beneath the Skin

The sun rose red the morning Camille began to fracture.

It cast an angry hue across the east-facing windows of Blackmist Keep, bleeding light into stone walls that never warmed. A bad omen, the elders said. But no one could look directly at Camille anymore let alone tell her that something felt wrong.

Because they already knew.

And so did she.

Magnolia waited outside the infirmary chamber, her hand flat against the door, listening to the stillness inside.

"She hasn’t spoken since yesterday," Elara said beside her. "Not even to me."

"What about the essence?"

"It’s binding tighter. Almost parasitic. Her vitals are stable, but her bond signature is... flickering."

Magnolia turned. "Flickering how?"

"Like it’s syncing with something else."

"Another wolf?"

Elara looked at her.

"No. Another memory.

Inside, Camille sat cross-legged on the floor.

She hadn’t moved in hours.

Her hair had unbraided itself, curls falling like shadows around her face. Her eyes, once silver, now shimmered red at the edges. The mark on her chest formed from the vial’s binding glowed faintly beneath her collar.

Magnolia stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

"Camille."

No answer.

She crouched down, slowly, staying outside the drawn circle of protection Elara had etched into the stone.

"Talk to me."

Camille blinked once.

Then again.

"You weren’t supposed to follow me," she whispered.

Magnolia frowned. "Follow where?"

Camille lifted her head.

"To the place where memories burn."

Magnolia stepped over the ward line.

"Are you seeing something again?"

Camille nodded.

"There’s a girl in white. She walks through a field of broken teeth. She doesn’t speak, but she hums. And when she touches the ground... wolves die."

Magnolia’s stomach twisted.

Camille continued. "I think she’s me. But she’s not. She’s what I will become if I don’t stop it."

"Stop what?"

"The merging."

She finally looked Magnolia in the eye.

"There’s not just grief in the essence. There’s command."

Beckett entered the chamber an hour later with a scroll from the Western library one Elara had sent for after cross-referencing the sigil burned into Camille’s chest.

He rolled it open on the table.

"Blood inheritance rites," he said. "Outlawed three centuries ago. Used in ritual bindings to pass strength from dying magic into living vessels."

Elara joined him. "But not just strength. Memory. Purpose. Emotion."

"Like grief," Magnolia said.

"Exactly."

Beckett pointed to the passage. "It requires three things: a tethered soul, a sacred vessel, and a willing gate."

They all looked at Camille.

"I didn’t volunteer," she said flatly.

"No," Elara whispered. "But you opened the seal. And that might have been enough."

Camille rose.

Her body shook faintly.

"I can feel it crawling inside me," she said. "It’s not violent. Not yet. But it wants to speak."

Magnolia stepped toward her. "Then let’s find a way to silence it."

"You can’t," Camille said. "Not without killing me."

That night, Camille locked herself in the observatory again.

No one stopped her.

The mark on her skin had spread now rising across her collarbone like vines, curling in runic shapes that glowed faintly in the dark.

She sat beneath the broken telescope, hands resting on her knees.

And whispered.

"I know you’re there."

No response.

"I saw your ruin. I felt your fall."

Still silence.

"I don’t forgive you."

The wind outside howled once.

Then stopped.

Camille smiled.

"But I understand."

Magnolia watched from the shadow of the stairwell.

She didn’t speak.

Didn’t move.

She just watched her sister spiral into something unrecognizable, and wondered how much further there was to fall.

The east tower had not been used in over a generation.

Its stairwell was sealed with binding sigils. The windows were long bricked over. No light reached its stone belly. Only echoes.

That’s where Elara told them it had to be done.

"Wolves are bound by instinct," she said, rolling open the crimson scroll across the circular table. "But when instinct falters when one bond begins to bleed into another you must sever the false root before it devours the true one."

Magnolia stood beside Rhett, her arms tight across her chest, the mark on her palm thrumming beneath layers of fabric.

"She’s not possessed," Magnolia said. "She’s carrying weight. Grief. Echoes. Not control."

Elara nodded. "And yet that grief is trying to reshape her. That essence is a living memory one that wants to become real again."

Rhett asked the question Magnolia couldn’t.

"And this rite will stop it?"

Elara didn’t answer right away.

Instead, she placed her hand against the seal on the tower door. It pulsed once violet and then turned to ash.

"It’ll give you a chance," she said.

The rite required three.

A bearer.

A tether.

And a balance.

Camille would be the bearer.

Rhett would serve as the tether.

And Magnolia the balance.

Not Elara. Not Beckett. Not Ivy.

Because the bond that had tied Camille to life was not the one that had saved her.

It was the one Magnolia had buried inside herself when the gate first shattered.

"You’re asking me to burn my connection to her," Magnolia said as she stood before the basin of obsidian salt.

"I’m asking you to choose which tether should survive," Elara said. "You or the grief."

Magnolia looked at her sister, unconscious on the slab of moonstone between them, the mark on her chest glowing like molten glass.

And nodded.

"Then light the flame.

The first stage of the rite called for invocation.

Not to a god.

But to a memory.

Rhett kneeled at Camille’s head, his hand pressed to her temple. "I call the echo within," he said softly. "Show yourself."

The air shimmered.

The second stage was confession.

Magnolia stepped into the circle, palm bleeding into the salt.

"I bind the grief to name," she whispered. "Ashriel. Echo of sorrow. Thread of ruin."

The salt hissed.

Camille’s body arched once.

Then stillness.

The third stage was sacrifice.

Elara lit the basin.

The flame surged upward, silver-blue.

"Each of you must pour one truth," she said. "Into the fire. A truth that cannot be returned."

Magnolia stepped forward.

Her voice was steady.

"When the gate cracked, I hesitated. I wanted to save myself. I let her fall first."

She dropped a strand of her hair into the flame.

It turned black.

Rhett stood next.

"I dream of her," he said. "Even when I’m with someone else. I never stopped."

He bled into the basin.

The flame surged higher.

Camille’s breath hitched.

Elara motioned for them to take their positions.

The final phase had begun.

Rhett pressed his palm to Camille’s chest.

Magnolia gripped her sister’s hand.

The flame enveloped them.

Their bonds collided.

Magnolia’s mark screamed inside her.

Rhett cried out as a thread of his essence was pulled into Camille’s body.

And then

Camille opened her eyes.

But they weren’t hers.

Not entirely.

Silver, gold, red layers of memory and emotion flashing behind them like a storm.

She looked at Magnolia.

Then at Rhett.

And whispered. frёewebnoѵēl.com

"I remember everything."

The flame roared upward.

The basin exploded.

Camille convulsed once, then twice.

Then went still.

The room fell silent.

Elara moved to check her pulse.

Then turned.

"She’s stable."

Magnolia staggered back, tears burning in her eyes.

Rhett caught her.

But something was off.

Her palm didn’t glow anymore.

The mark was gone.

"What does it mean?" she asked.

Elara met her eyes.

"You chose her."

Magnolia looked at Camille.

Then at Rhett.

And whispered.

"What did I lose?"

Rhett didn’t speak.

Because he knew.

In saving Camille...

Magnolia had just severed her last true bond.