Chapter 9: The Binder Unchained

The Binder lunged.

The Hollow Reaches shuddered with a low groan, the twisted landscape recoiling beneath the weight of the ancient monstrosity. Segmented limbs like cathedral pillars slammed into the rot-riddled soil, scattering debris in all directions. Each claw glistened with runes of suppression—red-hot with divine venom—and its multitude of mouths screamed not with sound, but with emotion: the grief of fallen gods, the despair of banished titans, the forgotten mourning of the cosmos.

Rael stood unmoved. He raised his hand.

Gold and black light converged at his palm, forming a spear of condensed divinity. The weapon pulsed with radiant heat. With a sharp thrust, he launched it forward. It tore through the mist like a meteor and slammed into the Binder's chest, detonating in a shockwave that snapped trees like twigs and flattened swathes of cursed earth.

But the creature was not undone.

The explosion peeled away its outer carapace, revealing coils of muscle inscribed with binding glyphs—glyphs that healed as fast as they burned. Its central eye blinked sideways, locking onto Rael with hatred and recognition.

Selene darted across the battlefield, flashing into being atop one of the Binder's shoulders. Her twin daggers sank into the flesh between its plates, twisting. Shadow surged from the wounds like blood made of smoke.

The creature's shriek sent shockwaves through the air. A barbed limb caught Selene mid-slice, hurling her across the clearing. She slammed into a broken obelisk, sending a crack through the stone before rolling to a halt.

She rose groaning. "I think I made it angry."

"Good," Caelaris muttered. "Now we kill it."

She hurled her spear. Mid-air, it twisted into a chain of radiant energy, wrapping around one of the Binder's limbs and pulling with divine force. The massive body staggered sideways, crashing into a heap of dead trees. The battlefield thundered with the impact.

Rael seized the moment. His greatsword flared to life—obsidian edged in abyssal flame. He vaulted upward, carving across the creature's spine in a flaming arc. Black ichor sprayed. The Binder roared.

Chains erupted from its flesh like snapping whips. Rael twisted in midair, spinning between them, flinging bolts of divine will toward the creature's core. Three struck its eye. The gash of red pulsed, and the air around it rippled with pain.

All around them, the battle raged.

Rael's army fought like zealots. Abyss-forged mortals and exiled beasts clashed with writhing tendrils and spectral illusions. But even the most hardened warriors faltered. The Binder's presence clawed at their minds—twisting memories, conjuring hallucinations.

A soldier collapsed, screaming at shadows. Another slit his own throat, thinking he was saving a child from flame. The Binder fed on thoughts, rewriting the battlefield in fear.

"Regroup!" Caelaris shouted. "Hold the line!"

Aelthaea stood motionless, mist swirling at her feet.

"This is no longer just a creature," she said quietly. "It remembers. The longer it lives, the more it becomes what it was: a godslayer."

Selene reappeared beside Rael, panting. "It's using their minds against them."

Rael nodded. "Then it dies now."

He rammed his sword into the earth. A pulse of abyssal fire radiated outward, forming a dome of clarity. The illusions vanished inside it. Screaming slowed. Warriors gasped, clutching their heads as sanity returned.

But beneath their feet, the ground cracked.

Ancient glyphs long buried in the Hollow Reaches flared to life. A summoning circle emerged, divine symbols rising like fire from the dirt. The Binder lunged into its center—and the seal activated, locking around it like a cage of blood and soul.

Rael's eyes narrowed. "That's not ours."

"No," Aelthaea said. "It's the Dormant Court. They sealed it here. We triggered their failsafe."

Suddenly, the Binder's chains whipped outward—not toward Rael, but toward his army. They wrapped around screaming soldiers and dragged them into the circle. Their bodies burned to ash, but their souls were absorbed.

Rael's aura flared with fury. A divine cyclone erupted from him, golden and black flames reaching the sky. His voice cracked with power.

He spoke a word—low, guttural, ancient.

The Binder froze mid-motion.

Aelthaea turned sharply. "You remember the forbidden tongue."

Rael stepped forward. "I never forgot."

He raised his hand, abyssal energy spiraling upward. The seal fractured, runes shattering like glass. The chains turned to ash. The Binder shrieked, not in rage, but in recognition.

"Return to the abyss," Rael commanded.

And the void obeyed.

The creature unraveled. Its body came apart into streams of memory and divine residue. Glyphs flickered and died. The battlefield was left scorched and trembling.

But the air did not settle.

Something older stirred below.

Night fell swiftly over the Hollow Reaches, and the survivors gathered in the ruins of an ancient shrine. The stones were carved with symbols none could read, older than the Pantheon's oldest records. Wind carried whispers—faint, unintelligible.

Rael moved silently among the wounded. Some were barely breathing. Others stared blankly into the sky. The Binder had taken its toll.

Caelaris set a perimeter. Selene bound wounds without her usual snark. Aelthaea knelt before a cracked monolith, her hand resting on a spiral sigil glowing faintly beneath her fingers.

"These aren't court sigils," she murmured. "This is deeper magic. Something that predates the gods."

Rael sat beside a dying soldier—one of the first abyss-marked who had followed him through the fall.

"My lord," the soldier rasped. "Was it enough?"

Rael met his eyes. "You stood your ground."

The man smiled, then faded with the wind.

Selene approached him later that night, as Rael stood watching the horizon.

"We lost too many," she said.

"We always would," Rael replied.

"Then why keep going?"

Rael didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on something in the distance.

The stars were fading—not behind clouds, but behind something vast, something moving.

Caelaris appeared beside him. "You felt it too."

"I broke the seal," Rael said. "But that wasn't the end. That was the lock on the first door."

Aelthaea joined them last, the mist around her trailing into the grass.

"You speak like a god," she said, "but you act like a weapon."

Rael's golden eyes narrowed. "Then let them fear both."

And far beneath the Hollow Reaches, in roots twisted through time, an ancient heartbeat resumed.