Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 105939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
He found her standing center stage, motionless within a circle of that same silver fire. Her brown dress remained untouched by smoke or flame, but her eyes stared straight ahead with the blank expression of someone caught between waking and dreaming. The life-thread severance was already beginning—he could feel their magical bonds starting to fray under the pressure of the chaotic working, each severed connection sending sharp pain through his supernatural essence.
“Delia.” He approached the circle carefully, testing its boundaries with outstretched fingers. The silver fire burned cold against his skin but didn't completely repel him. “Delia, can you hear me?”
Her head turned toward his voice, but her eyes remained unfocused. When she looked at him, he saw no spark of recognition—only the growing confusion of someone whose memories were being torn away by forces beyond human comprehension.
“Who . . .” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the roar of collapsing timber and the crackling of magical fire. “I know I should remember, but I can't . . . why can't I remember?”
“It's me,” he said, stepping through the circle despite the agony that lanced through his essence with each movement. “It's Bastien. You know me. You've always known me.”
But she didn't. The ritual had carved away not just their connection, but her memories of him entirely. Every shared moment, every laugh, every gentle touch, every whispered endearment—all of it was being systematically erased as the arcane working prepared her spirit for binding to another consciousness.
He gathered her in his arms as the circle collapsed around them, silver fire dissipating into ordinary flame that caught at her dress, her hair. She was dying, and the worst part was that she was dying without knowing who held her, without understanding why this stranger seemed so desperate to save her from forces she couldn't even perceive.
The building groaned around them as support beams gave way to supernatural fire. Chunks of burning masonry crashed down, forcing him to shield her body with his own as they became trapped in a pocket of relative safety that wouldn't last long.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered, her lips barely moving as smoke filled her lungs. “I wish I could remember why you seem so important. There's something . . . something I should know . . .”
“Bastien—” The name came out as barely more than a breath, the single syllable carrying all the love and recognition that had been stolen from her consciousness. Her final word, spoken with the last air in her lungs, carrying his name like a prayer, like forgiveness, like a promise that somehow this wouldn't be the end of everything between them.
The soul rupture hit him like a physical blow as their connection severed completely, leaving him holding her lifeless body while the theater burned around them and the ritual's chaotic energies finally began to dissipate into harmless smoke.
The memory faded, leaving him kneeling beside Delphine's unconscious form in the present-day ritual circle. Her breathing was still irregular; her soul still being pulled apart by the same kind of chaotic forces that had killed Delia over a century ago. But this time, he had the tools to fight back.
He'd failed to save her then. He would not fail again.
Lifting Delphine's unconscious form, Bastien carried her directly into the heart of the ritual circle despite every instinct screaming that bringing her closer to the breach's epicenter would only make things worse. But the Votum Aeternum was pulsing against his side with increasing urgency, and through their tether he could feel her soul being torn apart by conflicting energies. The only way to stabilize her condition was to place her at the circle's center, where the magical forces were strongest but also most focused, and use the blade as an anchor point to channel those energies in controlled directions rather than letting them continue pulling her consciousness apart.
The ritual circle itself had been carved into the earth with amateur enthusiasm but surprisingly accurate technique. Whoever had triggered this disaster had done their research, creating a pattern that would have been elegant and functional if they'd possessed the skill to control what they were summoning. Instead, their inexperience had transformed a simple communion ritual into something approaching a dimensional breach, opening pathways that should have remained sealed and inviting in forces that belonged to entirely different realms of existence.
Bastien placed Delphine carefully beside the remnants of the shattered chalice, positioning her so that her heart chakra aligned perfectly with the circle's central axis. The Votum Aeternum grew warm in his hand as he drew it from its sheath, the ancient metal recognizing the spiritual configuration they'd found themselves within. This was exactly the kind of situation the blade had been forged to address—moments when soul tethers became dangerously unstable and threatened to pull their subjects apart at the most fundamental level.