Soulbound

11

The city had changed.

Avery noticed it immediately, before she even stepped off the curb. Streetlights flickered like dying stars, their glow warped and uneven. Shadows clung unnaturally to walls and corners, stretching longer than physics allowed, curling around poles and trash cans as if tasting the air. People moved through it, oblivious—or pretending to be—but something was wrong. Their expressions were stiff, their movements jerky, and whispers trailed them like loose threads of sound that shouldn’t exist.

Kael’s presence at her side grounded her, but even he didn’t speak as they moved through the corrupted streets. His eyes scanned constantly, catching details she would have missed: a hand twitching where it shouldn’t, a shadow lingering too long after its owner had moved, reflections that didn’t match reality.

“They’re already here,” he said quietly, voice like gravel. “The corruption spreads faster than you can imagine. It doesn’t need to take every soul to control the city—it only needs enough to destabilize, to turn fear into chaos.”

Avery swallowed hard. The mark on her palm burned, reminding her that the last soul she had failed to claim had started all of this. She gripped her scythe tighter, feeling its pulse echoing hers.

They turned a corner and froze.

A man in a blue uniform—perhaps a security guard—was screaming at nothing. He flailed, tearing at the air, eyes wide and unseeing, shadows crawling over his body like black vines. Avery’s stomach twisted. The man wasn’t moving of his own accord; the corruption was bending him, turning him into a puppet.

Kael didn’t hesitate. He raised a hand, signaling Avery to step back, and with a swift motion, his scythe sliced the shadows away from the man. The uniformed figure collapsed to the ground, unconscious but alive.

“You have to keep your distance,” Kael said. “Engage with the corruption, not the person.”

Avery nodded, though her heart thudded painfully. She had wanted to help the man, to reach through the shadows and pull him free, but Kael’s words were harsh truth. The corrupted soul didn’t care. Only the Veil’s tools—reapers—could stop it.

As they moved deeper into the city, signs of disruption grew. A bakery’s window was shattered from the inside, flour coating the street like snow, while the baker screamed at nothing, trapped in some invisible cage. Dogs whimpered in the alleys, their hackles raised at shadows that slithered along the brick. Even the air seemed heavier here, laden with static energy that made Avery’s teeth tingle and her pulse quicken.

“See?” Kael’s voice cut through the tension. “This is why hesitation kills. Every corner you ignore, every soul you fail, it spreads.”

Avery swallowed the lump in her throat. She had seen bits and pieces before, but nothing like this. Entire blocks were fractured under the corrupted soul’s influence. Storefronts warped subtly, signs twisting, neon lights flickering in patterns that weren’t human. People stared into walls, muttering words that made her skin crawl. Even the wind seemed distorted, carrying whispers in languages she couldn’t recognize.

“How do you stop something like this?” she asked, voice trembling. “It’s everywhere.”

Kael’s gaze swept the streets with measured precision. “You don’t stop it by brute force. You isolate it, follow it, predict its movements. And then you strike when it’s vulnerable.”

Avery swallowed hard. Prediction. Strategy. Not just strength. Every lesson from the training yard pressed down on her now. Her scythe felt heavier in her hands, but the weight grounded her.

They turned another corner, and the city revealed its worst secret.

A plaza lay ahead, an open square twisted unnaturally. Shadows pooled in the center, coalescing into a mass that writhed and shifted. Buildings surrounding the square seemed to lean inward, their angles wrong, as if reality itself bent toward this corruption. Screams echoed faintly from inside the shadow mass, muffled but distinct. The corrupted soul wasn’t hiding anymore—it was drawing power, feeding, growing.

Avery’s stomach sank. “That… that’s it?” she whispered.

Kael didn’t answer. He stepped forward, scythe held at the ready. The air around them seemed to quiver, the static charge making Avery’s hair lift. “It’s worse than you think,” he said finally. “It knows you’re here. It senses you.”

Her pulse quickened. The memory of her first failure, the soul she had let escape, surged in her mind. I can’t fail again.

The corrupted mass rippled, and Avery felt a tug on her chest, a whisper threading through her thoughts: I remember you.

A shiver ran down her spine. Kael’s eyes flicked to her briefly, pale and unreadable. “It remembers,” he said. “And it will use that against you.”

The plaza stretched before them like a battlefield. Shadows clung to lampposts, pooled in fountains, and seeped from alleys. People passed near it, oblivious, or too paralyzed to act. A faint growl, deep and hollow, rolled from the mass, vibrating through the stone beneath their feet.

Avery gritted her teeth. “We have to… we have to stop it before it spreads further.”

Kael’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. But not here. First, we map it. Understand it. If you attack prematurely…” His gaze locked onto hers, deadly serious, “you die. And so do the innocent souls it’s feeding on.”

She nodded, swallowing her fear. Strategy. Patience. Control. Lessons she had learned in the Veil’s harsh training grounds suddenly made sense in the living, breathing world around her.

A low, distorted screech cut across the square. Shadows twisted into vaguely humanoid shapes, their movements jerky and unnatural. One stepped toward the plaza’s edge, leaving a trail of darkness that leapt from lamppost to lamppost.

Avery raised her scythe, sigil glowing faintly. The weight was steady now, familiar in her hands.

Kael’s voice was calm, clipped, and precise: “This is the heart of the corruption. Every movement you make, every choice, will ripple through the city. Follow my lead. Stay sharp. Remember your training.”

Avery’s hands trembled, but determination surged through her. The corrupted soul had grown, yes—but so had she. And this time, she wouldn’t let it escape.

Above them, shadows writhed, and the city held its breath.