9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
Ididn’t go home. The path fell away under my feet, pine-needled and dark. The unnatural resonance curled around me, a reminder that things weren’t as they should be.
The Seven Realms. Seven weights that were only getting heavier.
I thought of Tairngire—standing there in the Elder’s hut, the cocky bastard he was, calling me both ignorant and arrogant in the same breath.
He probably thought I was some weak, mincing disciple—incapable of true knowledge.
Incapable of forming my own thoughts. He had no idea what the Sight took from me.
Anger coiled hot in my stomach at the thought of it.
A memory boiled to the surface against my will.
Brannach’s voice, calm, cold. “See it. You must see it.” I had been small then, six turns of the sun.
Barely taller than his staff, yet he’d dragged me into my first rite all the same.
Two mortals had stood there, pale and trembling, their wrists bound.
A crowd pressed in around the circle, silent and watching.
The pair had been chosen for descent. For the interim bond.
Touch them, he’d said, shoving me forward with harshness not meant for a child. See what becomes of their souls. It is your duty to carry it to the Oracle. I could feel his spittle landing on my forehead as he towered over me, the memory was vivid in the forefront of my mind.
I hadn’t wanted to do it. I had begged not to. But his hand pressed heavy on my shoulder until I obeyed, his nails dug into my soft flesh. Marking my skin with half-moons.
The moment my fingers grazed the couples' skin, the Weave erupted.
The silver threads blazed into being—one from each of them, pulled tight, tethered in cruel brilliance. For a heartbeat it was almost beautiful, the shiny silver bond that connected them. I looked upon them with childlike wonder, entranced in the magic of it all.
Until the vision tore me under without warning.
I saw them bound together not in love, not even in kinship, but in Fate’s mockery.
Dragged down into Morhaven’s ash. The bond burned brighter as they clutched for each other—one screaming, the other silent.
And then the executioner’s axe fell, splitting thread and flesh at once.
I felt the man’s head torn from his shoulders.
I felt the woman’s scream rip through her throat until it broke, until her soul cracked like glass.
And the bond was merciless. It didn’t end there, they never did, I would eventually learn that.
Even severed, it twisted them closer. His lifeless eyes opened beneath her grief, the bond forcing reunion in agony.
Over and over, I watched them find each other in the dark, different skins, the same suffering.
One would betray the other, then they'd be torn apart again.
Only for Fate to reshuffle them into cruelties worse than the last.
I'd convulsed on the stone that day. The taste of copper in my mouth where I’d bitten through my tongue. Brannach only watched, a pleased expression on his face while I laid gasping in the dirt.
Good, he’d said. Now you understand what lies beneath mercy.
That was when I understood—I would never grasp the cruelty of the Fates and their binding threads. Not truly.
The memory left me doubled over. My stomach knotted until I thought I would retch.
Why in all the realms did every vision end in ruin? Once, when I was younger, some bonds had ended in joy, in love. That was gone. Now, every glimpse showed only anguish, pain, war. And every time they did, I remembered the first time.
I wiped my mouth, fury hollowing out the sickness. That vision had branded itself into me. Descent wasn’t peace. It was slaughter painted in deceptively beautiful silver threads.
Branwyn’s voice echoed in my mind: Not everyone’s going to fight your battles for you, sacred Seer or not.
She was right. Saorla had told me to hold my chin high, sharpen my tongue, because I’d been chosen before I could even walk.
If I vanished, another Seer would rise in my place.
That was the point of the role. To prove none of us mattered—that every mortal soul was replaceable, even the Godheads’ chosen.
But the memory of lying there in the dirt, told me that it was all a lie.
Last night hadn’t been some breach in duty. It hadn’t been a vision gone too far. It had felt like drowning—and then clawing my way back to earth.
Because I wanted more than sacred duty. Because I wanted more than chains. The steady buzz wasn’t just louder—it was discordant, distant threads hummed, pulling in directions I couldn’t see. Creatures that looked like they were born of the shadow realm were finding their way through the liminal.
If the temple wouldn’t give me a blade, who would protect Anamcroí? Who would step up? Brannach, the High Priestess? I scoffed under my breath. No way in the Seven Realms either of them dared to dirty their sacred hands.
And Tairngire? He was no doubt too busy strutting about the village, dimming his godhood and flirting with unsuspecting mortals to give a shit about what was happening here.
I couldn’t help but to think that these…
intrusions had something to do with the cruelty I’d been forced to witness through the bonds.
That it wasn’t always supposed to be that way.
No. I needed to become the weapon.
I left the trodden path and let my feet choose the quiet, the way the Shaman taught me—step where the moss is thick, where roots will hold you, where bracken won’t gossip. The night breathed cold and resin-sweet. Somewhere, an owl cut the silence, quick and clean.
I made a decision the same way I’d made my first kill: fast, absolute.
I would build myself a place my wardens hadn’t sanctioned. A place to learn what my hands didn’t know. I didn’t need an arrogant god to do that for me.
I felt it before I saw it—a tug low in my chest, Fate guided me with a fine thread.
The hillside to my left split in a dark seam, half-hidden by hanging ivy and a fall of stone.
I could’ve sworn this ridge held nothing but fox dens and wind.
I’d walked this way since I was a child.
The cleft had not always been here. That I knew for certain.
The mouth was narrow enough to turn sideways. Cool air whispered out—dry, iron-tinged. No carrion, no sharp ammonia of denning cats. Thank the goddess for that. I eased inside.
The cave opened like a held breath finally finding its way to the surface.
Stone ribs arched overhead, the floor mostly level, strewn with grit and old leaf.
A natural shelf cut along one wall. Water dripped slow at the back into a shallow stone bowl.
Something—time, divine, luck—had carved a training ground out of the earth and left it for me.
Yours, the dark seemed to whisper.
I walked the perimeter at first, checking for other entrances. None. The airflow was steady—there was a second vent somewhere high, enough to keep a torch alive but not enough to pull smoke out fast. Bats? Nope. Good again.
I marked a notch at the mouth waist-high. If anyone else slipped through, I’d see a broken edge.
Then I set about making it real, not looking a gift-horse in the mouth. I would take it as Fate doing something kind for once, setting this perfect playground in my path.
From the ceremonial ash in my belt pouch, I chalked a rough circle on the floor—the ring, the scroll had called it.
Inside, I marked a T for lead foot and glade line, and a second ring a pace back for retreating steps.
The diagrams in the forbidden folio were burned into me: Wolf guard: blade forward, off-hand high.
Stag Guard: weight back, lure, then drive.
Serpent Slip: hip-turn, shoulder under, cut across the ribs.
I said the names under my breath, because rhythm makes the body remember.
I propped a large stick in a crack in the rock.
Peeled the bark so cuts would show. Packed a leather sack with river stones to hang from a root—swinging weight to train my eyes to track and my feet to move.
I braided ivy with cord to make a wrist-thick loop and hung it from the shelf—a target to stab, not slash.
The scroll’s margin note came back, scrabbled script from some dead soldier: Slash for show. Thrust for truth.
Then came the body. The part no book could teach me. This would be hard without someone to help me.
Tairngire’s arrogant face popped into my mind and I let out an annoyed huff at the unwelcome intrusion and forced my mind into sielnce.
I set Wolf Guard. Too wide. My knees screamed.
I narrowed my stance, rolled my shoulders down, and locked my wrist. The dagger felt wrong, like it had the first time I’d wielded it.
My forearm shook. Breathe in for the step, out for the strike.
I stabbed the loop. Missed. Again. Hit, but weak.
Again. The hilt bit a blister at the base of my thumb.
I swore and shifted my grip—a finger along the spine to guide the point. Better.
Footwork came next. Half-step, pivot left, drop the weight, and rise through the thrust. I dropped too slow and cracked my knee on stone.
The sound slapped the cave, I froze, listening for any answer.
Nothing but my own breath. Again. The motion was smoothed by grain that I’d put down, because the last thing I needed was to explain a knee injury to the Elders.
My movements were far from elegant, but they were true, and that’s all I needed.
I rolled, as the serpent diagram showed—shoulder to hip, come up blade-first. Gravel chewed my skin. My elbow pinged, bone against hard rock. I laughed once, breathless, because pain meant I was feeling something. Doing something.
Between sets, I set small things in order: a wedge of driftwood for a torch rack, a stash spot behind a loose slab for the dagger and scrolls that I would bring from my stash, and a plaited fern broom to erase tracks at the door.
I traced a simple trip-line inside the mouth at ankle height—not to wound, just to warn anyone with curious, prying eyes.
I worked until my arms quivered and sweat cooled salt on my lips, until the ache in my thighs drowned the ache in my chest. Until the part of me that only ever belonged to duty loosened, just a fraction.
No chants. No eyes. No chains. Just stone, breath, and steel.
I pressed my palm to the cave wall, rough and damp. “You don’t tell,” I murmured, and I swear I felt the cave vibrate back like an unspoken promise.
In fourteen moonfalls, Tairngire would begin his training and “protecting.” Until then, I would continue taking something only I could claim in this makeshift gym.
Fuck my wardens, fuck the Old Gods, and fuck him.
This was mine, and nobody was going to stop me. Not even Caerthannas.