Unbinding the Cuffs: Part 2

The cuffs hit the floor with a final, hollow clink. But before Mae could even pull her hands fully back, before her mind could register freedom. Ashar’s fingers brushed hers. Not intentionally. Not purposefully. An accident. A brief, harmless touch.

It should’ve meant nothing. Instead. It meant everything. The air fractured. Not visually. Not audibly. But physically, reality itself lurched. A deep pulse, like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to any living thing, rumbled through the floor. 

The walls trembled, not like stone, but like something unraveling and remembering it was never supposed to be this way. Light shifted. The twisted pillars, those warped, spiraled structures that defied geometry, snapped. Straightened. Realigned. Not violently. Not destructively. But like a deep, aching correction. Like bones setting back into place after being shattered for so long they forgot what straight felt like. The vaulted ceiling, once coiled and fracturing endlessly into itself, folded outward. Expanded. Flattened.

Cracks in the floor pulsed with radiant threads of energy-lines of gold and white that hadn't glowed in ages. The castle itself, breathed. Alive. Awake. Something whispered through the stones, not in words but in sensation. Welcome back. The shift was instantaneous. Powerful. And wrong. Or maybe, right. But only partially. Because as soon as Mae jerked backward as soon as Ashar pulled his hand away like he'd touched something white-hot, then the change stopped. Froze. Half-finished.

One side of the throne room stood corrected. Clean lines. Stable architecture. Walls that reflected light in angles that made sense to any being from a sane universe. The floor was smooth, solid, unmarred by the chaotic fractures of before. The other half, still broken. Still twisted. Shadows bent at impossible angles. Pillars curved back into themselves like serpents devouring their own tails. The boundary between the two was razor thin. A perfect line where reality simply couldn’t decide what it was supposed to be. Silence. None of them moved. Not a single one.

Even Kaine, ever the first to bark, threaten, curse, had stood perfectly still, his lips parted but no sound forming. Lucien’s hands trembled, just once, before he clenched them behind his back like he could crush the tremor into submission. Riven stared at the walls like he expected them to start bleeding. Sethis’s smirk was long gone, replaced by something that looked an awful lot like disbelief. Or maybe fear. And Ashar, Ashar just stood there. Staring at his own hand. Slowly, very slowly, he flexed his fingers, turning his palm, watching the faint glow fading from the thin web of lines that had momentarily appeared across his skin when their hands met.

His voice, when it came, was lower than usual. Rougher. “That’s-” His eyes flicked to Mae, no longer calculating. No longer cautious. Staggered. Raw. Awestruck.

“That’s not supposed to be possible.” Mae’s throat closed. Her arms curled around herself instinctively, but she couldn’t breathe. Wh-what did I just do? Her gaze snapped to the half-corrected room. To the line where reality itself had literally stopped shifting the moment they broke contact. The walls still shimmered faintly on that side, as if waiting. Expectant. Ready, if only the connection resumed.

No no no no no no. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I didn’t even do anything. I didn’t, I didn’t. Why, why does it feel like I did something really bad?

Ashar finally tore his gaze away from his hand, back to her. For the first time since she’d met him, he looked shaken. Not frightened. Not angry. Not confused.

But like a man who had just seen something so big, so vast, so unspeakably important, it cracked something inside him. “This place, hasn't shifted, hasn’t remembered what it was, since-” His voice caught. Almost unheard of for him.

“Since the fracture.”

A long breath dragged through his teeth. His jaw tightened. His hands flexed again.

“Since, my people died.” And then, silence. Barely a whisper. “Until now.” The others still hadn’t spoken. Not because they couldn’t. But because, what do you even say to that? Ashar stepped back once. Barely. Then sat down heavily, for the first time not like someone settling into control, but someone who wasn’t sure whether the ground was still going to be under him when he finished sitting. The silence that followed was a kind none of them had ever experienced. The silence of knowing nothing about the world would ever make sense again.