Chapter 26. The Broken Bond

They met beneath the Moon Temple, where the air was thick with silence and ash. Neriah paused in the corridor just beyond the threshold, one trembling hand pressed to the damp stone wall. She could feel the temple’s heartbeat—the ancient pulse in its bones, echoing through her own. Each footstep she’d taken on the way here felt heavier than the last, as though the ground itself was reluctant to let her cross into fate’s waiting mouth.

The doors behind her groaned shut, sealing her inside the sanctum. Before her, the stone chamber yawned wide—vaulted ceilings arched overhead, held aloft by columns carved with runes so old the language had become prayer. The scent of burnt offerings lingered, sweet and acrid, clinging to the tapestries that fluttered in the cold draft. Candles cast trembling shadows across the floor, where a circle of salt and bone marked the place of severing. The moonlight slanted in through a narrow oculus above, cold and silvery, pooling on the ritual circle