Chapter 7

The sound of Vane’s voice was no longer a comfort or a threat; it was a distraction. Elara stood before the vanity mirror, her breath coming in short, shallow hitches. The reflection staring back at her was a stranger. The skin of her forearms was beginning to fracture—not like a wound, but like dry earth during a drought. Through the cracks, a soft, pulsating violet light bled out, casting long, jittery shadows against the walls of her room.

“Elara! Open the door!” Vane’s voice was a low growl now, the sound of a man losing his patience or perhaps his composure.

“Go away, Vane!” she shouted, but her voice cracked. The double-tone was stronger now, a resonant vibration that made the glass of the mirror vibrate.

She looked down at the word on her throat: THE END OF VANE. It was glowing with a feverish intensity, the letters appearing to be etched by an invisible needle. Every time the word pulsed, the cracks on her arms widened.

She wasn't just becoming powerful. She was becoming a hollow.

***********

The heavy oak door didn't just open; it exploded inward, the hinges shrieking as they were torn from the stone. Vane stood in the threshold, his shirt disheveled, his eyes wide and burning with a frantic, orange light. He didn't look like a Duke. He looked like a man watching his world catch fire.

He took one look at her glowing, cracking skin and swore a dark, ancient oath under his breath.

“You stubborn, arrogant fool,” he hissed, lunging across the room. He grabbed her by the shoulders, but the moment his skin touched hers, a shock of cold energy sent him reeling back. He looked at his hands—they were frosted over, the skin turning a deathly blue.

“Don’t touch me!” Elara cried, backing into the vanity. “You did this! You said I was a vessel!”

“A vessel needs to be primed!” Vane shouted back, his voice echoing through the manor. “You tore up the contracts, Elara. You rejected the tether. Without a contract to anchor the energy to this realm, the Void has nowhere to go but through you. It’s eating your physical form to sustain its presence here.”

“I don’t care! I’d rather burn out than be your puppet!”

“You won’t just burn out,” Vane said, stepping forward again, ignoring the frost creeping up his arms. “When a Vessel collapses without an anchor, it creates a vacuum. It will swallow this manor. It will swallow the Veil. And it will swallow your sister, Elara. Mia will be the first thing dragged into the nothingness you’ve unleashed.”

Elara froze. The anger that had been sustaining her since the Iron Market vanished, replaced by a cold, paralyzing dread. She looked at her hands—a piece of her skin, thin as a wafer, drifted off her wrist and vanished before it hit the floor.

“How do I stop it?” she whispered.

Vane was in front of her now. He didn't grab her this time. He reached out slowly, his hand trembling. “You need a new anchor. A different kind of bond. Not a contract of possession, but a Covenant of Blood.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A contract is a law,” Vane said, his voice dropping to a desperate, intimate crawl. “A Covenant is a life-link. You have to share the burden. You have to let me take half of the Void into myself.”

Elara laughed, a jagged, hollow sound. “You want my power? That’s what this is about? You’re just trying to find a way to steal what I took from you.”

Vane’s expression shifted. The arrogance was gone. In its place was a raw, naked vulnerability that Elara had never seen before. He reached up and unbuttoned his shirt completely, flinging it aside.

His chest was a map of scars and tattoos, but at the center of his heart was a dark, pulsing core that looked exactly like the light bleeding out of Elara’s skin.

“Look at me, Elara!” he commanded. “I have been the Warden of the Seventh Circle for three thousand years. I have held the Void back alone. My own form is failing. Why do you think I needed a Vessel? I didn't want a toy. I wanted a partner. I wanted someone who could help me carry the weight before I am consumed.”

He stepped into her space, the cold coming off her skin clashing with the heat of his.

“If I wanted to steal it, I would have let you collapse and harvested the remains,” he whispered. “I am trying to save us both. But you have to trust me. For once in your miserable, defiant life, you have to believe that I am on your side.”

The cracks on Elara’s neck reached her jaw. She felt a piece of her soul slipping away, a terrifying numbness spreading through her chest. She looked into Vane’s grey eyes and saw the truth—he wasn't just a predator. He was a prisoner, just like her.

“What do I have to do?” she gasped.

“A Covenant of Blood,” Vane said. He produced a dagger from the air—a blade made of pure, white bone. He sliced his own palm, then held the blade out to her. “Cut yourself. Then join your hand to mine. You have to give me permission to enter your mind, Elara. You have to let me in completely.”

Elara took the blade. It was heavier than it looked. She looked at the door, thinking of Mia sleeping in the next room, safe in the sunlight she had created.

She sliced her palm. The blood that came out wasn't red; it was a shimmering, dark violet.

She pressed her hand against Vane’s.

The world didn't just explode; it imploded.

Elara was slammed into Vane’s consciousness. She saw thousands of years of loneliness. She saw the burden he carried—the screams of the damned that he had to filter every second of every day. She felt his obsession with her, but it wasn't the obsession of a collector. It was the obsession of a man who had found the only other light in a world of absolute darkness.

And then, she felt him touch her mind.

It was an intrusion more intimate than any physical act. He saw her fear, her love for Mia, her secret longing for the very man who had enslaved her. He saw the "Other" Elara in the void and crushed her with a thought, shielding the real Elara with his own essence.

“Hold on to me,” his voice echoed in her soul. “Don’t let go.”

The violet light began to recede from her skin, flowing into Vane. His body jerked as he took the pressure. The tattoos on his neck began to glow with a blinding white light, his skin cracking in sympathy with hers. He was taking her pain. He was becoming the anchor.

**********

When the light finally faded, the room was silent.

Elara collapsed into Vane’s arms, her breath coming in heavy, exhausted gasps. The cracks on her skin were gone, replaced by faint, silvery scars that looked like lightning strikes. The word on her throat had changed again.

It no longer said THE END OF VANE.

It said: ETERNAL.

Vane held her tightly, his head resting against hers. He was shaking, his body radiating a heat that was almost unbearable.

“Is it over?” Elara whispered.

“The crisis is over,” Vane said, his voice a hoarse wreck. “But the Covenant is permanent. We are linked now, Elara. Your heart beats with mine. If I die, you die. If you bleed, I feel the pain.”

He pulled back, his eyes searching hers. The grey was back, but it was softened by something that looked dangerously like affection.

“You’re no longer my consort,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “You are my equal. The Lady of the Seventh Circle.”

Elara looked at him, the fear finally replaced by a cold, sharp clarity. “And what happens to the bank? To the debt? To the people who tried to take my sister?”

Vane’s smirk returned, a lethal, beautiful thing. “The Covenant gives us shared authority, Elara. You don't have to ask me for permission anymore. You just have to command.”

Elara stood up, feeling a power that was no longer consuming her, but serving her. She walked to the window and looked out at the Veil. The Iron Market was still smoldering in the distance.

“Then I want them gone, Vane. All of them. Anyone who had a hand in the Vance debt. I want their names erased from the books.”

“A bloody request,” Vane remarked, standing up and reaching for his discarded shirt. “I like it.”

But as he turned, he stumbled. He gripped the edge of the vanity, his face turning a sickly, ashen grey.

“Vane?”

He looked at her, and Elara felt a sudden, sharp pang of cold in her own chest—a reflection of his pain.

“The anchor... it has a price, Elara,” Vane whispered. He collapsed to his knees, his eyes rolling back in his head. “The Void... it didn't just stop. It’s looking for the original source. It’s looking for your father.”

***********

Elara caught him before he hit the floor, but as she did, the shadows in the room began to scream. A portal opened in the center of the rug—not a bone archway, but a jagged rip in reality.

A man stepped out. He looked like Elara, but his eyes were voids of pure shadow. He held a staff topped with a human skull, and he was smiling.

“Hello, Elara,” the man said, his voice a hollow echo. “Thank you for opening the door. Now, give me back my Duke. I have a debt to settle with the man who stole my daughters.”

It was her father. But he wasn't a Guardian anymore. He was the King of the Grey Wastes