Chapter 34: The Ashbound Pact

The valley was a grave of mist.

Silent. Hollow. Steeped in pain.

It wrapped around Caelen and Elira like breathless cloth, choking light from the world. Within its folds, figures shimmered—wraithlike beings of silver and ash. Their eyes held the depth of oceans, but none of their sorrow could drown.

The Sorrowbound.

A race cursed to feel everything.

And never heal.

Caelen staggered as they emerged, his curse thrashing in agony. Their pain was like his—endless, old, corrosive. It mirrored him, twisted into thousands of reflections.

From their ranks came one taller, cloaked in fractured light. Its form flickered, as if it existed across moments. A voice spilled forth—a chorus of grief.

"You are the Ashbound," it said. "The bearer of wounds. The mirror of our curse."

"I am," Caelen answered, steady despite the storm within. "We seek the temple. Eredan-Mir must be stopped."

The leader tilted its broken crown. "You seek passage?"

"We need your help," Caelen said. "To cross the last path. To fight beside us."

The Sorrowbound whispered like wind through shattered glass.

"You would bind yourself to us?" the leader asked. "We are not guides. We are pain. We are what you run from."

"I won't run," Caelen said. "I will carry what I must. If you will stand with me."

The figure stepped forward. "And in return… will you carry ours?"

Caelen hesitated.

The promise hung like iron in the air.

"I'll try."

The pact was made.

The leader reached forward, its touch light as fog—and Caelen collapsed.

A wave of centuries crashed into him. Screams not his own. Loneliness without names. Regrets layered deeper than bone. His breath caught, his body convulsing.

Elira caught him.

"Caelen," she cried. "This is too much!"

His voice broke around the pain. "It's the only way."

And still, he rose.

The Sorrowbound moved with them then, flowing like dusk along hidden paths only they remembered. Their anguish remained constant—an ache beneath every heartbeat—but Caelen bore it, step by step.

And with every mile closer to the temple, his pain became something more.

A bridge.

A bond.

A hope forged in sorrow.