All Chapters of Soulbound: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

There was no sky in this place. No ceiling either — just light. It pressed from every angle, bright and bloodless, until Avery couldn’t tell where the walls ended and she began. She thought she was lying down, but even that felt uncertain; her body seemed to float, half suspended in weightless air. Her first thought was am I dead again? The second came slower: was I ever alive to begin with? A faint hum ran through the light, low and rhythmic, like the pulse of some distant machine. Each vibration crawled beneath her skin, matching the beat of her heart — or maybe the tether, whispering faintly against her ribs. She tried to move. Her fingers twitched, sluggish, as if dragging through water. When she looked down, she saw her own hands — or what should have been her hands — outlined in faint silver, flickering between solid and translucent. Something inside her pulsed harder. Memory. Pain. Kael’s voice, echoing from the battle: “Don’t hesitate. Not even with me.”

Silence. It wasn’t the kind of silence that meant peace — it was the suffocating kind that followed disaster. Avery woke to it. She didn’t remember losing consciousness; one moment she’d been clinging to Kael’s voice inside the collapsing chamber, the next she was here — bound again, suspended upright in a vertical restraint field. The air hummed with containment energy, cool and sharp as ice. Across the dimly lit hall, Kael was shackled to his own field, scythe confiscated, wrists cuffed with glowing seals. He looked half-drained but very much alive — eyes open, fixed on her. No words passed between them. The hum of the fields made conversation feel sacrilegious, like speech itself would wake something sleeping beneath the floor. Then, the doors at the far end of the chamber opened. Five Councilors entered in silent procession. Their robes shifted like mist, each step measured, rehearsed, merciless. At their center walked Warden Soreth, his gaze hard enough to cut stone

The Council chamber burned with light. Cold, sterile, blinding. Every lantern along the high walls flared white as the alarms began to shriek, echoing up the marbled dome. Glyphs carved into obsidian glowed sickly red — containment breach warnings pulsing like a heartbeat. Councilor Soreth rose from his seat before the sound finished its first cycle. His dark cloak unfurled like wings. “Report,” she snapped. No one moved at first. The circle of elder reapers — thirteen shadows bound by ancient oaths — sat frozen in their thrones, staring at the crimson flare on the center dais where containment schematics shimmered. A younger attendant stumbled forward, pale and shaking. “The ward surrounding Cell 9 collapsed, High Councilor. Defensive measures have failed. The signatures inside—” He faltered, eyes wide. “—have multiplied.” “Multiplied?” Soreth’s voice cut like glass. “Impossible. It’s a two-occupant field.” “It was, Councilor. Now it reads eight distinct reaper signat

Avery woke to the sound of screaming light. It wasn’t human — not sound, not really. The noise rippled through the marrow of her bones, shattering memory from sensation. The air smelled like lightning and ashes; the world around her pulsed between form and emptiness. She was lying on glass. Or maybe water. Or maybe both. Something dripped against her cheek — black and luminous. She blinked, vision swimming through fractured color until it found the figure kneeling beside her. “Kael…” He looked half-real. One shoulder flickered between shadow and form, veins of light crawling beneath his skin like living cracks. His hand, when it touched her face, was cold enough to sting. “You’re alive,” he said. The relief in his tone was buried deep, muffled beneath exhaustion. “Don’t move yet. The tether—” She felt it before he finished — that thin, silver thread connecting their chests, humming like a heartbeat. It ached when she breathed. “What… happened?” Kael’s gaze swept their surroun

The command chamber reeked of ozone and fear. Retrieval squads stood in formation beneath the Council dais—shadows against the silvery light cast by the suspended soul mirrors. Each warrior wore reaper black, their scythes burning with pale runes that marked them for sanctioned descent. At the chamber’s center, Soreth paced like a caged beast, his armor humming with restrained fury. “They fell through the Vein,” he growled. “That’s not containment breach, that’s an existential threat.” Across from him, Veyra stood perfectly still. Her cloak was white, in defiance of the chamber’s gloom, her eyes a cool storm-gray that revealed nothing. “And yet they still exist. That alone warrants study.” “Study?” Soreth’s voice cut through the room like a blade. “One of our reapers is corrupted, the other compromised. They’ve entered the heartstream. We should burn it out before it spreads.” Veyra’s gaze flicked briefly toward him—measured, amused, dangerous. “You speak of annihilating the