The Forgotten Pulse of the Bond-Chapter 98: Broken Mirror

Camille sat barefoot at the base of the vault stairs, her gown torn and stained with moon ash. Mirrors, seven of them, shattered in jagged crescents, circled her in a crude halo. Each fragment held a version of her: one with hair snow-white, one sobbing blood, another smiling with too many teeth.

"Camille," Rhett’s voice came first, firm and low. He stepped into the vault, boots clicking on stone, eyes locked on the woman he once thought fragile.

She didn’t respond.

"Camille, it’s Rhett. Look at me."

She turned slowly, her irises flickering silver, then pitch black. A grin stretched across her lips, not hers. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

"Is it Camille you’re looking for? Or the other one who wears her face?"

Rhett hesitated, fingers twitching toward the dagger at his hip. "Let her speak."

"She’s listening," the not-Camille said in a sing-song voice. "She’s always listening."

Celeste arrived next, robes brushing stone, her voice calm and cutting. "Step back, Rhett. She’s not gone."

"Then what is she, Celeste?" Rhett growled. "This is the second time she’s escaped. She drew sigils in her sleep. Her blood opened a sealed vault."

"And yet she breathes," Celeste countered. "Which means her soul hasn’t shattered entirely."

Camille’s head tilted as if to listen to a distant sound.

"The mirror doesn’t lie," she whispered.

Beckett knelt by one of the shards. "These are memory prisms. You only see what the mirror remembers of you."

"Or what it wants you to remember," Camille murmured.

Rhett knelt in front of her. "Camille, if you’re in there, I need you to fight her. That thing inside you."

She blinked, a flutter, brief. "I’m trying. She’s loud."

"Then shout louder."

The shard by her foot began to hum. The reflection showed Camille as a child, hair wild, eyes wide with fear, clutching her twin’s hand.

"I didn’t know she existed," Camille whispered. "We were split... before the first moon."

Celeste’s brow furrowed. "Twin soul? That’s ancient magic. Soul-splitting hasn’t been practiced since the Binding War."

"She wasn’t meant to survive," Camille said. "But she did. Inside me."

The air thickened.

Rhett’s voice dropped. "If you have a twin soul, and she’s awake..."

"Then Camille isn’t alone," Beckett finished grimly.

The mirrors pulsed. Each fragment now shimmered with movement, Camille in war paint, Camille weeping over a corpse, Camille clawing at her own skin.

Celeste took a deep breath. "We have to fuse them. Or banish one."

"What happens if we choose wrong?" Rhett asked.

Camille looked up, the real her peeking through. "I die. Or worse."

Celeste stepped forward and drew a circle of lunar dust. "Sit her in the center. We start the invocation."

Rhett reached out to help Camille, but her hand seized his wrist, strength unnatural. "Don’t lie to me," she hissed.

He didn’t flinch. "I won’t."

She released him and allowed herself to be placed in the circle. Her breaths came sharp. Each mirror shard levitated, drawn into the dust ring. Whispers filled the chamber.

"If you see someone else when you look in the mirror," Celeste said, beginning the chant, "who do you become when that mirror breaks?"

Camille’s lips parted.

Two voices answered.

One soft, scared. The other hungry.

The vault floor cracked.

"Do you feel that?" Magnolia clutched her chest, her breath uneven.

Rhett paused mid-step. The war chants from the outer chambers dimmed in his ears. A piercing sensation, like spectral claws raking across bone, flared behind his ribs.

"It’s not pain. It’s... a pull," he muttered.

Magnolia’s knees buckled.

He reached her in two strides, arms locking around her waist before she hit the floor. Her eyes, wide with a daze that wasn’t hers, blinked slowly.

"Magnolia?" he whispered, cradling her head.

"I felt you," she murmured. "But not here. Somewhere older."

The torches in the war chamber flickered. Flames bent sideways toward her as though drawn to her breath.

Magnolia wasn’t bleeding. Yet red marks curled across her arms, ancient glyphs rising like whispers beneath her skin.

"I’m... branded," she said faintly. "With your pain."

Rhett didn’t answer immediately. His gaze dropped to his hands. Thin crimson lines, barely healed claw marks, sliced across his palms, identical to the ones she bore.

Celeste entered, urgency in every step. "You two must not be in proximity now. The pulse has begun."

"The what?" Rhett demanded, lifting Magnolia as she trembled.

"The ancestral bond you forged in the war rite, it was never meant to bind bloodline to bloodline. Spellbinder to Alpha? That union was forbidden by Luna herself."

"But we didn’t complete the rite," Magnolia whispered.

Celeste’s jaw tightened. "Even unfinished, it bound you through the blood you carry. The moon has chosen, whether or not you were ready."

Rhett stared at the silver locket Magnolia wore, his mother’s relic, now pulsing with violet light.

"Then what’s happening to us?" he asked.

Celeste’s voice was grave. "You are fusing. Soul to soul. If he dies, you will too. If she bleeds... you’ll taste it in your mouth."

Rhett didn’t flinch. "Then we fight together."

"No," Celeste snapped. "This isn’t honor-bound. It’s a curse. One that will tear your minds apart if you’re not aligned. You must learn to breathe as one. Or perish as two."

Magnolia winced. "What if we’re not ready?"

Celeste’s eyes flicked to the vault below. "Then pray the war waits. Because your heartbeat isn’t yours anymore."

Magnolia sat upright, breathing shallow. Her eyes glazed as something, some memory not hers, flashed across her vision.

"I see fire," she said.

"I hear crying," Rhett added. "A child’s voice."

Their hands reached for each other instinctively. But just as their fingers brushed, the floor beneath them rumbled.

Beckett rushed in from the stairwell, wild-eyed. "Camille’s at the vault again. She’s speaking tongues I don’t know, and every relic inside is vibrating."

Rhett’s eyes darkened. "She’s the key."

Celeste sighed. "No. She’s the gate."

They ran.

Down ancient stone steps carved before memory. Every step echoed with a heartbeat not entirely their own.

"Rhett," Magnolia whispered mid-descent. "If one of us has to fall... let it be me."

He stopped cold. "Don’t say that."

"I can feel your wolf," she continued. "How he claws to protect me. But what if protecting me destroys you?"

Rhett turned fully to her. "Then let him destroy me. Because without you, there is nothing left to fight for."

Silence hung between them until Celeste cleared her throat and pushed past.

At the vault’s threshold, Camille stood in a circle of shattered bone mirrors. Her arms spread wide, glyphs blooming down her neck like vines.

"I remember now," she whispered. "Who I was. Who I will be again."

Rhett stepped forward, but the air shimmered. A barrier, moonlight turned solid, pulsed around Camille.

"Don’t," Celeste warned. "That shield’s not of her making. It’s Luna’s own lock."

Camille opened her eyes. Not her usual hazel, but pitch black, bottomless.

"Camille?" Magnolia asked.

She tilted her head. "She’s sleeping. I’m not."

Rhett bristled. "Who are you?"

"The one who remembers. The first twin. The first vessel. The one the blade couldn’t kill."

Then she smiled, and every relic in the vault screamed.

The mirrors cracked again. Rhett pulled Magnolia behind him as the ceiling groaned.

Camille’s voice rang like a lullaby. "The bond is open. But so is the wound."

The ground split beneath their feet.

Rhett and Magnolia fell, together, into the darkness.