Chapter 92: The Binding Clause

The council didn't imprison her.

Not exactly.

After a long, tense silence, Councilor Mirelda proposed what she called "a mutual assurance agreement." In truth, it was a magical leash, thinly veiled by bureaucracy. A binding clause. A tether, enchanted to notify the council if Rose's connection to the Rift grew unstable—or dangerous.

Rose stared at the scroll for a long moment.

"It won't imprison you," Mirelda insisted. "It's merely a precaution."

"I've seen how your 'precautions' end," Rose replied. "Usually with torches and pitchforks."

Mortain stepped beside her. "Let me read the binding. Carefully."

Nimbus hovered closer, whispering into Rose's ear, "This contract smells like burnt feathers and old fear. I don't like it."

Rose signed anyway.

The ink burned gold.

Her blood hissed against the parchment.

And just like that, the line was drawn—not just between her and the Rift, but between her and the world she was trying to protect.

Afterward, she sat at the edge of the Emberfen ruins, legs swinging over the broken aqueduct. Mortain joined her, silent for a long while.

"You didn't have to sign it," he said.

"I did," she answered. "Because next time they try something, it won't be parchment. It'll be chains."

Mortain nodded. "I'd have fought them."

"I know." She leaned her head against his shoulder, the smallest of gestures, but it said more than words could.

He reached for her hand, lacing their fingers. "You're still human."

"I don't feel it sometimes."

"You kissed me like one."

She blinked, startled.

He smiled faintly. "Back in the Rift plane. You thought you were about to die."

"You weren't supposed to remember that."

"I remember everything about you."

Their silence afterward was not awkward. It was warm. Close.

Until Gregory, chewing loudly on something unidentifiable, ambled into view and ruined it. "Hate to interrupt the dramatic romance scene, but you should probably see this."

He gestured toward the northern edge of the valley.

There, curling out from beneath the soil like a black root, something writhed. It shimmered with the same absence of light as the Riftborn—but this thing dug downward, not up. Like it was tunneling.

Rose stood. "That wasn't there before."

"Nope," Gregory said. "And I checked. It's not from your army."

Mortain's eyes narrowed. "Then what is it?"

Nimbus quivered. "An echo. A seed. Something slipped through."

Rose tightened her grip on the key.

"I thought closing the Rift would end this," she whispered.

"It never ends," Nimbus said grimly. "It just gets quieter. And the quiet is when it learns."

Rose looked up at the darkening sky, where the scar in the Veil was healing—slowly, but imperfectly.

A tether around her wrist hummed with council magic.

A seed writhed in the earth.

And something, far older than Riftborn or keys or queens, opened its eyes beneath the world.