You can't unring a bell. And you can't unbind a soul once it starts to remember.
It began with silence.
Not the peaceful kind, not the type that came with rest or solitude, but the brittle, waiting silence that creeps into places where something has gone wrong—where air holds its breath and walls listen. Lira woke into that silence with her hand pressed to her chest and the Binding Mark burning faintly beneath her skin. Not painful. Not pleasant. Just present.
Like a second heartbeat.
Like someone else was awake, too.
She sat up slowly, disoriented not from sleep but from the fragments of dreams still tangled around her mind. She'd seen the girl again. Eryndra. Or someone who looked like her. Her own face reflected back at her in a cracked mirror, whispering things Lira couldn't fully remember.
When she swung her legs over the bed, her toes met cold stone.
The room was dim.
Kael stood at the window.
Still. Dressed. Awake.
He didn't look at her, but she could feel him watching her in the glass reflection. The bond was a thread now—glowing faintly in the air between them when the light shifted just right. No one else could see it, but they both knew it was there.
"You felt it too," she said.
Kael nodded once. "Something's coming."
"From where?"
"I don't know," he said. "But it's close."
The summons came an hour later.
This time, it wasn't from the headmaster.
It came from the Council of Six—an emergency convening called in the middle of a cycle, which hadn't happened in over forty years. Lira hadn't even known the Council could call a session without triggering a war.
The message was short:
"Attend. Alone."
Kael read it with a frown.
"They're separating us," he said. "Testing your compliance."
"And yours?"
"They already know I won't comply."
Lira folded the parchment. "Then I'll go. Alone."
Kael didn't argue.
But he handed her a ring—plain silver, etched with a whisper-thin line of shadow magic—and said, "If they try anything, squeeze it."
"You'll feel it?"
"More than feel it."
The Council chamber was colder than it had any right to be.
Lira had never been in the upper citadel before. The ceilings were high and choked with enchantments. The stained-glass windows were darkened to black. And the six Elders sat at the far end of the chamber in raised thrones of stone and gold, each one bearing the sigil of their House.
Elder Mirin of Seer. Elder Daskar of Flame. Elder Virel of Bloodcraft. Elder Rhos of Spirit. Elder Jada of Chrono. And at the center—Elder Calren of Shadow.
Kael's uncle.
The one who had trained him.
The one who had once offered to kill him, quietly, in the name of control.
"Lira Vale," Calren said.
Her name echoed too loudly.
She stepped forward, hands behind her back. "I'm here."
"You are not what you say you are."
"I never said I was anything," she said. "You said it for me."
Murmurs.
Daskar scowled. "You mock the court?"
"I mirror it," she said. "I learned from the best."
Calren raised a hand and the room fell silent.
"Your bond has reached a state none of us foresaw."
"I think some of you did."
Virel hissed through his teeth.
Lira kept going. "You've known about the seventh House for years. Veylan has proof. Eryndra's records. The crest. The lost rituals. You buried it all."
"We buried a threat," Calren said coolly. "Not a legacy."
"And now it's rising again."
She stepped closer. "You're afraid. That's why I'm here. You don't know what happens when the twelfth line finishes."
"We do," Jada said. "We watched it happen once. And it ended in fire."
Lira didn't flinch.
"Then don't fan the flames."
The air trembled.
Behind her, the doors slammed open.
Kael entered like a storm.
Every Elder rose halfway to their feet.
Calren stood. "You were not summoned."
"You touched her," Kael said, voice low and cold. "I felt it. You breached the bond."
"We tested resonance reaction—"
"You provoked a soul-level flare," he snapped. "Don't lie to me."
Lira felt the ring cool again. Kael must have felt something subtle—a pulse of emotion, a tremor in the thread. That was all it took now.
The bond was nearing twelve.
And if it snapped the wrong way…
Calren stepped down from his platform. "You are a son of Shadow. You will not defy your blood."
Kael met his gaze without fear. "My blood already defied you."
The council chamber screamed with silence.
Then Calren's voice came, quieter. More dangerous.
"If you cross that line, boy, you will not come back."
Kael took Lira's hand.
And the Binding Mark ignited between them.
Line twelve.
The final arc of the Mark burned into existence in real time, lighting her skin with searing gold, his with freezing black.
Power surged.
Every Elder shielded themselves.
Stone cracked.
And Lira felt her body shift—not physically, but existentially, like a memory snapping into place.
She wasn't alone.
She was Kael.
And he was her.
The bond no longer ran between them.
It ran through them.
Merged.
Whole.
Awake.
They left the council chamber without permission.
No one stopped them.
No one could.
They didn't speak for a long time afterward.
Not until they were back in their room, door sealed, wards drawn tight.
Lira sat down first, fingers still trembling. Kael paced once, then twice. Then stopped and leaned back against the wall like it might keep him upright.
"I felt everything," he said.
"I know."
"It wasn't just your fear. Or your pain. It was… everything. Thoughts. Memories. Desire. Guilt."
"Mine or yours?"
"Yes."
Lira looked down at her hands. The mark was still glowing faintly on her chest, even under her shirt.
"Do you regret it?"
Kael crossed the room.
He knelt in front of her.
And for the first time, he didn't look cold. He didn't look closed off. He looked like someone who had let down every wall and didn't know what to do with the wind on his skin.
"I don't know who I was before you."
Lira's voice cracked. "That's not romantic. That's terrifying."
"I know."
She reached for him.
And this time, when their hands met, there was no flare.
No warning.
No magic burst.
Just the steady beat of one soul learning how to carry two names.