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หน้าหลัก / Romance / SoulBound: Chosen by Darkness / บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

บททั้งหมดของ SoulBound: Chosen by Darkness: บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

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Prologue—Thread

⚠️ CONTENT WARNING ⚠️ This story contains dark romantic themes, emotional trauma, themes of abandonment and separation, coercion, ritualized harm, and intense psychological distress. Reader discretion is advised. ---Prologue The Thread Between Us The city outside the window breathed in neon and sirens, a restless animal that never slept. Inside the apartment, the lights were low, curtains drawn against the noise of it. The world had been reduced to the soft circle of lamplight on the floor and the quiet space between two bodies. Tharien sat on the edge of the bed with his forearms braced on his knees, the familiar tension coiled tight in his spine. The night pressed in on him from every direction—the weight of what he was, the things he carried, the violence he kept leashed behind his ribs. He could feel it humming under his skin, a low throb of readiness that never fully left him. Then Nori moved closer. She didn’t speak. She never did when she felt the storm building
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Part II—Echo

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
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Part III—Lie

Part III The Lie Is Born The air in the apartment still carried the faint chill of whatever had passed through the city. Tharien felt it like an echo under his skin—a wrongness that didn’t belong to this room, this moment, this breath shared between him and Nori. The warmth behind his sternum had thinned, stretched too tight, as if some distant wound had tugged on the invisible thread between them. He forced his focus back to her. Nori was still close, still within the small circle of lamplight, her hands resting against his chest where she had anchored him only minutes before. Her thumbs traced slow, grounding patterns, but the steadiness he’d found there was slipping through his fingers. The bond that had felt like gravity moments ago now carried a faint tremor, subtle but unmistakable. “Something changed,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Nori had always been able to feel the weather inside him before he named it himself. Her gaze searched his face, her mouth parting as
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1—Silence

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
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2—Distance

2 What Distance Promises The bond tightened as Tharien put more streets between himself and the quiet circle of lamplight he’d left behind. It wasn’t pain at first. It was pressure—an invisible hand pressing into the hollow behind his sternum, reminding him of the line he was stretching thin with every step. He kept his pace steady, eyes forward, breath measured. The city blurred into a smear of light and motion around him, but the ache in his chest remained precise. Distance is how I keep her safe. He repeated the thought until it began to feel like a rule instead of a lie. His phone vibrated once in his pocket. Tharien ignored it. The pressure in his chest sharpened, a brief flare of heat that made him slow despite himself. He drew in a breath and let it out slowly, forcing his body back into rhythm. Control was a muscle. You trained it by denying instinct, by holding still when every part of you wanted to turn back. Another vibration. Short. Insistent. He didn’t reach for
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3—The First

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
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4—Watcher

4 The Watcher in the Crowd Nori didn’t go back to the window. She stood in the middle of her living room with her palm pressed to her sternum, listening to her own breath like it might tell her what was real. The apartment felt smaller than it had an hour ago—walls closer, air heavier, silence thick with the aftertaste of being seen. She tried to reach for him through the bond the way she always had. Nothing answered. Not warmth. Not steadiness. Not that quiet gravity that used to live behind her ribs like a promise. Only a thin ache. A stretched thread. A wrongness that tightened the second she focused on it, as if even wanting him made the distance worse. Nori swallowed hard and forced herself to move. Her phone sat where she’d left it on the counter. She picked it up and stared at the screen until the glow blurred. No new messages. No missed calls. No sign that he existed on the same plane of reality as her. A sick thought crept in, soft as smoke. What if he’s done? Wha
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5—Fractures

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
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6—Ash

6 – Ash on the Tongue Tharien stood with the phone pressed to his ear and the world narrowed to one thin, screaming thread behind his sternum. It rang once. Twice. Nori’s name glowed on the screen like a wound. Then the knock came again—two sharp raps that weren’t a question. A signal. The kind of knock you answered or you paid for later. Tharien’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt. He didn’t look away from the door as the call dropped into voicemail. The bond twanged in protest—tight, raw, furious—as if it could feel the missed connection and the cost of it. He exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, the way Gibor had taught him. The way he’d taught himself. Control first. Emotion later. Survival always. He unlocked the chain and opened the door. A man stood in the hallway with a hood up and a plastic document sleeve tucked under his arm. Not young. Not old. Ordinary in the way dangerous things often were—clean hands, calm eyes, posture that said he belonged wherever he st
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7—He Leaves

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
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