Karina

"Get back!" Rhydan shouted.

Something exploded behind us.

A scream-not human-ripped through the stone walls. I stumbled, ears ringing, eyes burning from smoke. The ground shook. Dust rained from the ceiling as we turned and ran out of the bone chamber.

"Move!" Rhydan grabbed my arm and yanked me forward just as a black claw slammed into the archway behind us. Stone shattered. The thing roared.

"What is that?" I gasped.

"It shouldn't be awake!"

"Then put it back to sleep!"

He didn't answer. He just ran, dragging me behind him. The stairwell was collapsing, stone crumbling beneath our feet. Something chased us, its voice full of hunger. No footsteps-just wind and screams and the stench of rot.

We reached the top of the stairs, and the door slammed shut behind us.

"Seal it!" Rhydan shouted.

I didn't know how. My mark burned red-hot. I pressed my hand against the wall, screaming as the pain surged up my arm.

The runes on the door glowed.

The wall pulsed.

And then-silence.

Whatever was behind that door... it stopped.

I dropped to my knees, panting, hand shaking.

"What just happened?" I whispered.

Rhydan was pacing. Fast. His sword was out again.

"That thing... the curse was supposed to keep it sleeping. Locked under the throne. How did it wake up?"

"I don't know. But it saw me."

He stopped pacing.

"Karina. What do you mean it saw you?"

"I mean it *looked* at me. Directly. I felt it. Like it knew my name before I said it."

Rhydan's expression turned cold. "Then we're out of time."

Back in my chamber, I tore off the riding cloak and dropped it to the floor. My skin was burning, my bones felt too tight, and my mind wouldn't stop spinning.

This wasn't just a cursed marriage.

It was a war no one had told me I was part of.

Rhydan paced the room like a wolf. I'd never seen him shaken-not like this. His voice was low, sharp, the calm between lightning strikes.

"You said it saw you. It marked you."

"I didn't say it marked me."

"You didn't have to."

I looked down.

There, just above my binding mark, a second shape had appeared. Not carved. Not burned. It looked like it was made of shadow. A black ring around the first symbol.

"You didn't do this," I said.

"No," he replied. "It chose you. That's worse."

"Tell me what it is."

He sat down. Face pale. "A gate. A living one. Not part of the curse. Older. Raw. Buried under the throne when the First Pact was made. If it wakes fully, the walls between this world and the one beyond will crack."

"And it wants me."

"It wants through you."

I leaned against the wall and slid to the floor.

"I never asked for this."

"No one does."

"You knew this could happen and still brought me here."

"I didn't know you would be the one."

"So I'm just lucky?"

"You're alive. That already makes you different."

He crossed the room slowly and sat across from me. The firelight caught on his armor. His eyes looked darker than before.

"The other brides," I said. "They died because they couldn't contain it?"

"No. They died because the curse didn't want them."

"And now it does?"

He hesitated.

Then nodded. "Yes."

I stared at the fire.

"I should hate you," I said.

"Do you?"

I looked up at him. "Not yet."

Later that night, I woke screaming.

My lungs were full of smoke. My skin felt wet. My throat burned. But there was no fire.

Just a dream.

A room full of mirrors, each one showing a different version of me-crying, laughing, burning. One version had black eyes. One had no mouth.

And one... was smiling with Rhydan's face.

I sat up in bed, gasping.

Someone was in the room.

"I see you."

The voice was thin. Female. Close.

I turned fast, but no one was there.

"Who's there?" I demanded.

Silence.

Then, in the mirror across from the bed, I saw it.

Not my reflection.

Her.

Same body. Same dress. But her skin was pale as ash, her eyes full black, and her mouth bleeding red.

"I'm what you'll become," she whispered.

I threw the nearest thing I could grab-a candleholder. The mirror cracked.

But her reflection didn't vanish.

She only smiled.

Rhydan burst in a second later, sword drawn.

"What happened?"

I pointed at the mirror.

"She was in there. Not me. Something else. It spoke."

He crossed to it, examined the glass.

Then drew his sword across the mirror's frame.

The blood from the blade turned black.

"Reflections are thin here," he said. "Sometimes they lie. Sometimes they don't."

I stood. "I want answers. No more riddles. Who was she?"

"The version of you that says yes to the gate."

"And what happens if I say no?"

"You'll die."

The next morning, I was summoned.

Not by Rhydan. Not by a servant.

By the castle itself.

The hallway outside my chamber was different. The walls had shifted. The doors were gone.

Only one path remained-straight, narrow, pulsing with cold light.

I followed it.

Not because I wanted to.

Because I didn't have a choice.

The path led to a chamber I hadn't seen before. Tall, round, empty-except for a basin of water in the center.

I approached.

The water was black.

Then it moved.

Visions swirled in the surface-me, on the throne of bone. Me, standing over Rhydan's dead body. Me, holding a sword with flames rising around me.

"No," I whispered. "This isn't me."

The water hissed.

Smoke rose.

Then a voice-deep, ancient, inside my head.

"Choose."

"What?"

"Open the gate. Or burn with him."

I staggered back.

"No."

"Then you will become nothing."

Suddenly the room was on fire-walls burning, the floor cracking, voices screaming.

And then-

Hands.

Real ones.

Rhydan pulled me out.

The fire was gone. The basin was gone. The room was empty.

"What did it show you?" he asked.

I didn't speak.

He grabbed my shoulders.

"Karina. What did it show you?"

"You," I said. "Dead. Me on the throne or everything gone."

He looked down.

"Then it's begun."

"What has?"

"The Binding. It's choosing."

I stared at him and yelled back.

"Then stop it."

He let go immediately and snapped back. "I can't."

"Then what do we do?"

He met my eyes.

"We survive."