Pain is not what they are looking for.
Pain is a crude tool.
A primitive language.
Erynd has known this for a long time.
What they want is to keep him conscious.
He hangs in a black stone cavity,
a hollow tower forgotten by the world, but not by rituals.
The chains that hold him are not made of metal.
They are traced. Engraved. Spoken.
Runes coil around his wrists, his throat, his spine.
They pulse slowly, in time with his heart,
as if they were connected directly to it.
Each beat feeds them.
Each breath strengthens them.
His feet do not touch the ground.
He has lost all sense of time.
Only that of forced wakefulness.
When his eyelids try to close,
a rune lights up, burning, icy, contradictory.
The sensation pierces him like a needle stuck in his brain.
Sleeping is forbidden.
So is forgetting.
Above him, they are there.
The Corbins.
Not the ones who watch the borders.
Not the ones who guard the thresholds.
These ones are different.
Their wings are not made of feathers,
but of shifting shapes, as if the shadow itself had learned to flap.
Their faces are never quite visible.
Contours, masks of judgment, mouths that rarely open.
They don't need to speak often.
Silence is their authority.
"He's still breathing," one of them finally whispers.
The voice echoes in the stone, but also in his rib cage.
"His name holds," another replies.
Erynd breathes in slowly, despite the burning in his throat.
Blood runs down his temple, warm, real.
He clings to that sensation. To what is still human.
"He remembers," adds a third voice.
The runes tighten imperceptibly.
They move around him, tracing a slow, methodical circle.
Beneath him, the ground is covered with layers of ancient rituals,
engraved on top of each other like overlapping scars.
Interlocking circles, symbols crossed out, rewritten, corrected.
Mistakes that have become foundations.
"Your name was almost erased," says the tallest of the Corbins.
"Almost,"repeats another.
"But she intervened."
Erynd closes his eyes.
The mere mention of her name makes something vibrate in his chest,
where the ritual has left a permanent fracture.
Lunaya.
Her name is not spoken aloud.
But it is thought.
And here, thought is a key.
The chains suddenly tighten, pulling on his arms.
The pain shoots up his nerves, violent, but he grits his teeth.
He refuses to give them a scream.
"She chose you first, the voice continues.
"A deviation, another corrects."
"An error in the sequence."
A hoarse laugh escapes Erynd despite himself.
"You call that a mistake... he whispers,
his voice broken but present.
I call it a choice."
A rune lights up on his chest.
Absolute cold.
He gasps.
"She chose too soon, the Corbin decides.
Before the world was ready.
Before the weaving was stable."
Memories come flooding back, unstoppable.
The rain.
The altar.
The circle drawn with trembling but determined hands.
Lunaya kneeling before him.
Her eyes full of fear, but also of terrible confidence.
"You broke what was to come," they say.
"You hid her name."
"You fractured destiny."
Erynd raises his head with effort.
"I saved her."
Silence falls.
Heavy.
Thick.
Then,
They laugh.
Not a human laugh.
An empty echo, devoid of joy.
"You delayed her death, one of them replies calmly.
Nothing more."
They stop in front of him.
"And now she has returned.
The threads have awakened."
"The decision must be completed."
Erynd's heart sinks.
"You will not touch her."
A wing passes close to his face,
grazing his cheek without caressing it.
The gesture is neither cruel nor gentle.
He is the owner.
"We have already touched her, whispers the voice.
Every time she dreams of you.
Every time her blood turns silver.
Every time the others look at her and sense something they cannot name."
Erynd trembles.
Not with fear.
With rage.
"If you force her... His voice breaks.
If you make her finish the ritual..."
The chains contract violently.
Pain explodes.
His muscles tense, his lungs empty in a strangled breath.
But the response is calm.
"Then you will watch.[1]
And because your name is broken...[2]
You will remember every second."[3]
Something cracks inside him.
Not his body.
His restraint.
A cry tears from his throat, not loud,
not audible to the outside world, an inner cry,
animalistic, desperate.
Beneath him, the ritual circle glows.
A black-silver light slowly detaches itself from his chest,
like a thread torn raw. It vibrates, alive, painful.
"She's coming, says a Corbin.
And you... you are the door."
Erynd struggles.
He gathers everything he has left.
He thinks of her laughter.
Of her anger.
Of the way she says his name as if it still mattered.
"Lunaya..." he whispers.
The thread reacts.
It pulses.
Somewhere, far away,
something responds.
The Corbins freeze.
A tense silence falls over the tower.
"She felt that," one of them whispers.
Erynd smiles.
A broken smile.
Bloodied.
Dangerous.
"You kept me alive, he says in a hoarse voice.
You shouldn't have."
The runes flicker.
Very slightly.
But enough for them to feel it.
And in the shadows, between two heartbeats,
a certainty dawns:
The world is already in motion.
And this time,
He will not be alone.
[1] This is one of the Corbins speaking.
[2] This is one of the Corbins speaking.
[3] This is one of the Corbins speaking.