Lahat ng Kabanata ng Bound by Crystals and Shadows: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 73

Blinding, endless gold, flooding through the darkness so suddenly it stole the rest of the images away. It wasn’t soft like the light around me. It burned, cutting through everything else, forcing itself forward like it had been buried too long and was finally breaking free.A strangled sound left my throat as the force of it hit.The energy surged outward from my chest, no longer controlled, no longer contained within the slow rhythm of the ceremony. It pushed back against the light around me, clashing with it, not blending, not yielding.The difference was immediate.The golden light from the tree was steady, ancient, controlled. But this, was not.It twisted through me, sharp and unfamiliar, carrying something colder beneath its brightness, something that didn’t belong to the same source. It lashed outward, and the roots beneath my feet reacted violently, their glow flaring so bright it became almost white as cracks spread through the ground around me.The chanting broke all at onc

“But if I use my powers…” I started, my voice catching as the thought fully formed, heavy and sharp all at once. “The demons might sense me.”The clearing felt colder just saying it out loud.“They’ll come for me,” I continued, my throat tightening as the weight of it pressed down harder. “They’ll come for all of us. I won’t just be putting myself in danger—I’ll be putting all of you in danger too.”A knot formed in my chest, making it harder to breathe, harder to keep my voice steady.“What if I can’t control it?” I added, quieter now, the fear slipping through despite my effort to hold it back. “What if I make it worse?”Corin didn’t let go.If anything, he stepped closer, his presence firm, unshaken, even if the uncertainty still lingered beneath it.“Then we prepare for that too,” he said. “We don’t wait for it to happen. We stay ahead of it.”He glanced briefly toward the others before looking back at me, something more fo