Chapter 5
Consciousness slowly returned to Garrett, not as a sudden awakening, but as an agonizing drag through shards of glass.
The physical reality of his incomplete execution slammed into him all at once.
The massive iron spike remained driven ruthlessly through his shoulder, pinning his weight to the stone.
Beneath the skin, the toxic burn of silver poisoning crept through his veins like liquid acid, turning his blood to sludge.
Every forced inhale clawed at his throat, his lungs still coated in the suffocating, phantom heat of Chimera ash.
He was failing. His more-than-mortal shell was rapidly running out of time.
Yet, as he forced his eyes open against the heavy shadows, something was entirely different.
The overwhelming, crushing pressure of Leviathan’s presence was gone.
The Demon Lord had vanished from the chamber, leaving the psychic air feeling oddly hollow.
Garrett’s fractured mind scrambled for an answer, but the silence offered no clues.
Why had he left? Had the monster finally broken through Garrett’s mental defenses without him realizing it?
Or had something else diverted the Dark Lord's attention?
Deep within his soul, Aodhan remained completely still. Keeping his presence tightly masked, the Dragon King offered no answers through the dark.
For the first time since his captivity began, Garrett realized the chamber wasn't entirely silent.
Drip. Drip.
It wasn't the sound of blood hitting the floor. It was water. A slow, heavy, churning pressure vibrated through the foundation of the room. The black stone walls were weeping. They were slick with an icy, thick condensation that smelled faintly of salt and primeval rot.
Garrett stilled his ragged breathing, straining to listen past the pounding of his own pulse. Far beyond the thick, weeping walls, the primordial deep was moving. He could hear a massive, suffocating rhythm– the sound of an ungodly volume of dark water shifting under a crushing weight.
Then came a vibration, rattling the iron spike in his collarbone. Something massive, ageless, and unfathomably huge was shifting just beyond the barriers of his cage.
The shadow guarding his cell hadn't just locked him in a dungeon. It had anchored him directly into the throat of the Darkness itself.
Garrett rested the side of his face against the freezing stone wall, his breathing a shallow, ragged rattle. The phantom echo of his own voice still vibrated in his throat, raw and desperate.
“RUN.”
He didn't know her. Not really. The realization was a bitter, hollow ache in his chest, far sharper than the silver poisoning his blood.
Whatever had happened to his mind during his captivity had left his memories in ruins.
He couldn't picture the exact shape of her face, the color of her hair, or the sound of her laughter.
Every time he reached for something solid, there was nothing but ash.
But his soul hadn’t forgotten.
His soul still supplied the baseline facts, etched into his core like runes of a forgotten time. There is a woman. He thought the words because it hurt too much to speak them aloud. Her name is Sydney. She is my Mate. I would set the world ablaze to keep her safe.
That was basically all he had left.
As the slow, heavy churning of the primordial waters echoed through the walls, a faint, weak ripple of amusement flickered across Garrett’s consciousness. It was a ghostly remnant of the man he used to be, cutting through the agony.
She had actually run. She had listened to him and done as he asked.
The Bond they shared had gone entirely dark. The warm, golden pressure that had nearly shattered his cage minutes ago had completely vanished, leaving behind nothing but the cold baseline of his own fading heartbeat. She had felt the danger, heard his command, and fled the blast radius.
A sudden, unexpected pang of emotion tightened his chest. It hurt worse than the iron spike in his shoulder. He had literally used his final breath to order her away. So why did a stubborn, irrational piece of his masculinity feel... slightly offended that she had actually listened?
“Good girl,” Garrett mumbled into the darkness, his split lip bleeding onto his bare and bruised shoulder. He forced a grim, self-deprecating smile. “At least... one of us has... some sense.”
Deep within the silent, locked-down recesses of his soul, a sound broke the quiet. It wasn't a word. It was a low, distinctly derisive snort—the unmistakable, arrogant rumble of a Dragon King making a deeply judgmental noise.
Garrett’s brow furrowed. His consciousness shifted inward.
“What?” His mental voice was weak but sharp. “What is it, Han?” He hoped using the Dragon King’s nickname would get him to talk.
But Aodhan remained shrouded in the shadows of their shared mind, refusing to step into the light. “Nothing,” the ancient entity radiated back, a flat wave complete silence slamming shut over the connection.
It was the first tiny hint that the King was keeping secrets. Garrett stared into the darkness of his cell, a sudden, uneasy suspicion creeping over him. Han knew something he didn't– and whatever the Dragon King was hiding, it meant Sydney's story was far from over.
The silence inside Garrett’s mind stretched tight, vibrating with an unnatural tension. Up until this moment, Aodhan had been a fortress of absolute denial– a crushing weight whispering a single, constant directive: No. Stay blind. Say nothing.
But when Sydney’s Light had punched through the blackness of The Abyss, everything changed.
The raw, cataclysmic Power of the Mating Bond hadn't just reached Garrett. It had fractured the steel-plated walls the Dragon King had built inside their shared consciousness. The cracks were open, and through them, the ancient entity’s presence flooded into Garrett’s awareness with terrifying clarity.
It wasn't a seamless conversation. It came in jagged fragments– shards of raw emotion, flashes of blinding gold, and fleeting, age-old images that evaporated the second Garrett tried to grip them.
Frustrated and bleeding, he lashed out into the mental fog, his thoughts sharp and desperate. “Who is she?”
Silence. The fog didn't shift.
“Tell me!” Garrett demanded, his mental voice roaring against the borders of his own mind. “You know exactly who she is!” It was an accusation.
“No,” Aodhan’s voice finally resonated, a deep, tectonic rumble that shook Garrett’s very marrow.
Fury ignited in the Guardsman’s mind– white-hot and laced with a terrifying sense of violation. The anger pushed him past the physical pain of the iron spike and the creeping silver poison.
“You know her,” Garrett snarled, his consciousness pressing aggressively against the shadow of the Dragon King. “You took her from me.”
The accusation cut through the mental chamber like a razor blade.
Ouch.
From Garrett’s perspective, it was the honest-to-the-Goddess, unvarnished truth. Aodhan was the one who had systematically incinerated his memories. Aodhan was the one who had locked away the image of his Mate, leaving him hollow, floating in a dark sea of amnesia.
The Dragon King didn't flinch. He didn't retreat. But a heavy, suffocating wave of ageless sorrow bled out from Aodhan’s soul, carrying a crushing weight that he had been forced to bear completely alone in the dark.
“I kept her alive,” the Dragon King radiated back.
The four words hit Garrett with the force of a physical blow.
The telepathic resonance was flat, exhausted, and absolute.
There was no malice in it. No betrayal. Just the grim, tactical reality of a god who had chosen to mutilate his own vessel's mind rather than let a Demon Lord trace a path to the woman they both already loved.
Garrett went entirely silent, his mental rage collapsing into a stunned, hollow vacuum.
The jagged pieces of his reality suddenly shifted. The cold, mechanical ruthlessness he had perceived as a betrayal completely transformed. Aodhan hadn't stolen his life out of malice or cowardice.
The Dragon King had mutilated Garrett's mind to build a shield. And behind that shield, Sydney was alive.
The mental rage had cooled, but the hunger remained. Now that the door between their minds was cracked open, Garrett couldn't stop himself.
He didn't search for complex tactical data or the locations of the Guard. He reached for her. He forced his awareness into the fog, desperate to grasp the name his soul kept repeating.
Sydney.
The second his mind brushed against the syllable, the darkness fractured. A violent, blinding cascade of images flooded his consciousness.
A flash of golden-blond curls catching the sun.
He reached for it, but it slipped through his mental fingers like sand. They were gone.
A pair of bright blue eyes, wide with a fierce, untamed intelligence.
He tried to lock onto them, to anchor them to his soul. They vanished.
The phantom echo of a melodic, breathless laugh.
It rang in his ears for a millisecond before evaporating into static. Zapped from existence in a single beat of his heart.
And then, the most absurdly mundane detail flashed through the Void– a pair of scuffed, light blue Converse sneakers standing on a concrete floor. It was so ordinary, so intensely real, that it made his throat tighten with a sudden, suffocating grief.
Before he could even register the memory, a massive wall of tectonic Dragon Magic slammed shut, incinerating the images and throwing him back into total amnesia. The vault was ruthlessly locked once more.
“STOP TAKING HER AWAY FROM ME!” Garrett screamed into the internal dark, his telepathic voice cracking with a raw, agonizing desperation that mirrored the physical torture of his body.
“I am not taking her away,” Aodhan’s voice resonated back, the Dragon King’s tone heavy, exhausted, and laced with a profound, solemn truth. “I am keeping him from finding her.”