Все главы SoulBound: Chosen by Darkness: Глава 1 - Глава 10

II—The Echo of Severance The chamber had no windows. Candlelight licked the stone walls, soft and unsteady, throwing shadows that clung too long to the corners. Salt had been poured in a wide circle across the floor, its white line broken only where three figures stood inside it. The air smelled of ash and old incense, the kind that lingered in places where grief had been practiced into ritual. The bonded pair stood facing each other at the circle’s center. They were young. Not in years, perhaps, but in the way their hands shook when they tried to hold still. Their fingers brushed, then hesitated, as if even touching might make what was about to happen more real. “I don’t want this,” the woman whispered. Her voice barely reached past the salt. “But they said it’s the only way.” The man didn’t answer. His jaw was locked tight, eyes fixed on the thin space between them. Something glimmered there, faint as heat over asphalt—a thread of pale light stretched from his chest to h

1 Neon & Silence The city was loud enough to drown out most things. Not the silence inside him. Tharien moved through the press of bodies like a shadow slipping between beats of light. Neon bled across wet pavement. Bass from the club across the street thumped through brick and bone. Sirens wailed somewhere too close to be comfort. The night was alive with heat and noise and hunger. None of it touched him. His awareness stayed sharpened, predatory in the way that came from too many years of learning how to survive without flinching. He catalogued exits, reflections in dark windows, the subtle shifts in a crowd when danger passed too near. His hands remained loose at his sides, ready. His breath stayed measured, controlled. And beneath all of it, the bond pulled. It wasn’t a voice. It wasn’t a command. It was a pressure behind his sternum, a warm, aching gravity that tugged him toward a single point in the city. Toward her. Tharien ignored it. He’d learned to live with the p

3 The First Lie Tharien didn’t sleep. He told himself it was the city. The noise. The work. The adrenaline that clung to him long after he’d stopped moving. But he knew the truth the way you know a knife is still in you even when the bleeding slows. He’d silenced her call. And the bond had answered with something colder than pain. It wasn’t quiet now the way it used to be when he was alone by choice. This silence was hollowed out. Mechanical. Like someone had reached into his chest and pulled the warmth out by the root. He stood at the sink of a narrow apartment that wasn’t his, staring at a glass of water he hadn’t touched. Streetlight spilled through blinds in pale bars across the counter. Somewhere outside, an engine revved and faded, the city’s heartbeat moving on without him. Behind his sternum, the bond throbbed in dull, steady protest. Not sharp enough to force him to move. Not warm enough to comfort him. Just there—like a bruise you can’t stop pressing. Restraint, he

5 When the Bond Fractures Nori didn’t remember walking home. She remembered leaving the coffee shop—pushing the door open, stepping into the cold, hearing the bell above the frame give a bright, cheerful sound that didn’t belong to what she was feeling. Then the city swallowed her. Neon smeared across wet pavement. Voices blurred into one long, distant sound. Streetlights cut her into pieces as she moved beneath them, bright-dark-bright-dark, like she was flickering in and out of the world. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Not from the cold. Not really. From the thin, burning ache behind her sternum that kept tightening whenever she thought his name. Distance doesn’t hide you. It highlights you. The Watcher’s words followed her down the sidewalk like a second shadow. Nori pressed her palm to her chest as she walked, as if she could hold the bond in place by force. The sensation didn’t soften. It sharpened—an invisible thread pulled too tight, vibrating with strain. At the

7 The Night He Leaves Tharien stood with the door shut between him and the city, and for a moment he hated the quiet more than he’d ever hated noise. Gibor’s presence filled the hallway like a wall. Calm. Certain. Built from rules. Tharien’s chest ached with the bond’s thin, furious pull—Nori’s fear flickering through it like a bad signal, too weak to steady her, too strong to ignore. “She’s on a list,” Tharien said, voice low. “They’re texting her severance offers like it’s a coupon.” Gibor didn’t blink. “That means they can prove fracture symptoms,” he replied. “That means she’s visible to a system that treats pain like paperwork.” Tharien’s jaw tightened. “Then we burn the paperwork.” Gibor’s gaze sharpened. “We don’t burn anything,” he said. “We move her quietly. We remove the stimulus. We let the bond settle.” “The bond is tearing,” Tharien snapped, and the words came out rawer than he meant. “It’s not settling. It’s failing.” Gibor’s tone didn’t change. “And if you rus