Chapter 9: Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

The title hovered in the air—soft white letters against a dark backdrop.

📖 The Obedience Manuscript

Author: Ennet Vahr

Classification: Soul Magic → Experimental Rituals → Restricted

Status: Original copy sealed

Summary:

An obscure and incomplete record detailing a series of unsanctioned soulbond ritual experiments. The author references a prior anomaly and attempts to replicate its effects through undocumented methods. Purpose unclear. Final entries are fragmented. Use with caution.

Emily leaned in as the Threadkeep’s text shimmered faintly.

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all,” she muttered.

Caelan didn’t reply immediately. His pale eyes studied the summary, unblinking.

“Krockry,” he said, still watching the text. “Leave us.”

The librarian hesitated—but only for a breath—then bowed and left the room without another word.

Silence settled around them again.

Caelan spoke without looking away from the projection. “So far this is the only soulbound book we can’t open.”

Emily’s eyes flicked back to the plain brown volume on the table between them.

“‘Soulbond ritual experiments,’” she repeated, frowning. “What does that even mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Caelan said. “Not yet.”

He closed the Threadkeep interface with a flick of his hand. The air shimmered, then stilled.

“We’re done for today, you should go to bed” he said. “I’m going to hang on to the book. See if I can get it open.”

Emily didn’t argue. She felt the exhaustion sink into her limbs the moment the Threadkeep vanished.

“Okay,” she said softly, pushing back from the table.

She made it halfway to the exit before she paused and turned.

“Caelan?”

He looked up from the book in his hands, one brow slightly raised.

“…Can you walk me?”

For a moment, he didn’t answer. Then he nodded once.

“Okay.”

He tucked the sealed book under one arm and followed her toward the open archway.

They stepped through the archway into the main library chamber. The chandelier’s flickering white lights had dimmed slightly, casting long shadows across the domed ceiling.

At the threshold, two guards stood waiting.

Caelan didn’t break stride.

“You’re dismissed.”

The guards bowed and turned without a word, vanishing down one of the side corridors.

Now it was just the two of them.

Their footsteps echoed in the silence as they walked through the great hall, past rows of ancient tomes and slumbering scrolls. Emily walked beside him, her hands tucked in her sleeves, eyes forward—but her thoughts lingered elsewhere.

“Have you talked to little Tess at all?” she asked, turning her head just slightly toward him.

“Yes,” Caelan said. “She’s a very bright little girl.”

Emily nodded slowly. “Varis says she doesn’t have any family left.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

There was a pause before she asked, more softly, “Where will she go?”

Caelan glanced at her, his voice calm. “There’s an orphanage to the south. A good one. Trusted caretakers.”

“Yeah,” Emily said, frowning. “I know of it. But Varis says it’s already overflowing with children. Too many, not enough hands.”

She hesitated, then added, “I don’t know. I think she should get more. Do you know what I mean?”

Caelan was quiet for a few steps.

Then, in a voice lower than before, he said, “I understand. I’ll look into different family homes. See if any of them are willing—or able—to adopt her.”

Emily glanced over at him. A smile touched her lips, small but sincere.

“Thank you,” she said. “I just want her to have her best chance.”

Caelan didn’t answer this time. But his gaze remained steady ahead.

They reached her door.

The corridor had quieted entirely—no flickering sounds from the soullights, no footsteps from distant guards. Just the silence of stone and the hush of breath.

Emily stopped and turned to face him.

Caelan stood only a foot away, his features calm in the low light. The book was still tucked under his arm.

She looked up into his eyes.

“Thank you,” she said softly, “for walking me.”

His expression barely changed—but something in his eyes shifted. The tension behind them softened, just slightly.

“You’re welcome,” he murmured.

They didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

The quiet stretched—not awkward, but charged. His eyes held hers, and something passed between them—unspoken, warm, and frighteningly still. Not lust, not like before. This was something else. Something deeper. It gripped her from the inside.

Her chest tightened. It wasn’t just attraction—it was exposure. Like he could see past her sarcasm and bravado, straight to the pieces of her she hadn’t named yet.

She didn’t like that. But she didn’t look away.

And neither did he.

Caelan stood perfectly still, gaze locked with hers like the world around them had frozen. The flickering lights cast soft shadows across his face, sharpening his features into something carved and strange.

Emily couldn’t breathe.

Then—almost reluctantly—he blinked and shifted.

“You should, um…” he said, voice lower now, rougher. “Get some sleep.”

Even those few words felt like they cost him something.

She sucked in a slow breath, her lungs aching. “Yeah,” she said, barely above a whisper. “You’re right.”

She turned and reached for the handle. Opened the door. Stepped halfway inside.

But she looked back.

And there he was. Still standing. Still watching.

Their eyes met again, and for one unbearable moment, she wondered what would happen if she didn’t shut the door.

But she did.

Slowly. Quietly.

Click.

The moment it latched, the spell broke.

She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her heart was racing, her face warm. Her knees felt loose, shaky.

She leaned back against the door, blinking fast.

“…What was that?” she whispered.

She listened for footsteps. For anything.

Nothing.

He must have left.

Sliding down to the floor, she pressed her back to the cold stone door. It felt grounding. Steady. She closed her eyes and let her head rest against it.

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Her skin still buzzed. Not from adrenaline—but from something else. Something quieter.

“Damn,” she muttered. “Why does he affect me like that?”

Was it the soulbond?

Some kind of manipulation?

Or was it… her?

She didn’t want to think about it. Not tonight.

Eventually, she pushed herself upright, peeled off the stiff orange robes, and pulled on something softer—an oversized tunic that draped to her knees, sleeves too long, fabric warm with familiarity.

She climbed into the cloudlike bed and sank into the mattress, mind still half-spinning.

She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

-

The next month passed in quiet, uneventful pieces.

There was just an increasingly familiar rhythm of training, awkward silences, and too many stolen glances Emily didn’t want to admit to.

Each morning, she trained.

Some days it was soulbond sensitivity drills—learning to feel magical pressure or emotional echoes across distance. Other days, Caelan tested her reflexive obedience: commanding her at random, trying to trip her up. She was getting better at resisting. Slower to react. Sharper.

But nothing—nothing—was worse than the hand-to-hand combat sessions.

—like that morning in the arena, when the sun cut sharp through the soullight canopy above the training ring. Emily braced herself as Caelan moved, fast as a striking shadow. She barely had time to blink before he swept her leg and slammed her onto her back—hard.

The wind left her lungs in a grunt.

Caelan stood over her, shirtless, his chest rising and falling in slow, controlled breaths. His skin glistened with sweat, muscles coiled with tension, the sigils on his forearm dark and gleaming.

“You hesitated,” he said.

Emily glared up at him, trying not to notice how annoyingly perfect he looked in that moment.

“I was distracted,” she muttered.

He offered a hand. She took it, yanked herself upright—and immediately yanked her hand away again, like he’d burned her.

He didn’t react.

Of course he didn’t.

Some evenings, she sat in the throne room while Caelan held audience. It was part of her new routine, though she didn’t know if it was meant as punishment or politics. She always knelt at her assigned place—just in front of and to the right of the throne.

Sometimes, what she heard surprised her.

For instance one evening an elderly woman knelt before Caelan, her hands shaking as she spoke of a collapsed well and a flooded storage cellar. Her voice trembled. Her words broke.

Caelan didn’t speak right away.

When he did, it was quiet. “I remember your son. He repaired stonework for the southern wall after the last storm.”

The woman nodded, eyes wide.

“I’ll send a crew to restore the foundation,” he said. “You’ll be reimbursed for the grain you lost.”

He stepped down from the throne.

And to Emily’s shock—he helped the woman to her feet.

She looked up at him like he was something holy.

Emily looked away.

It kept happening, little by little. These small cracks in her certainty. These slow, suffocating shifts.

It wasn’t just that Caelan was powerful. It was how he carried it—how controlled, how absolute. How he never apologized for it. How he showed mercy without softness. And how his people trusted him, even when they feared him.

He was infuriating. Overbearing.

And she was falling for him.

Unfortunately.

She tried not to be. She tried very hard. But that didn’t stop the way her stomach twisted when he glanced her way. Or the way her chest tightened when he stood too close.

It was happening anyway.

Outside of training, she spent more time with Varis and Tess. The two of them were basically joined at the hip. Tess followed Varis like a tiny shadow, and Emily could see—plain as day—that the healer was growing attached. She never said it out loud, but the way she braided Tess’s hair or adjusted her little robe when she thought no one was looking said everything.

Caelan, Varis, and Tess went and visited three orphanages. Each one worse than the last.

Tess hated them all.

Too crowded. Too cold. Too many crying children and not enough hands to help. After each visit, the little girl went quiet for hours, curled up on Varis’s lap with a fist tangled in her robe.

Caelan didn’t stop looking. He found a few families willing to meet with them—good people, stable homes, kind voices. But none of them had felt right. Not to Tess. Not to Varis.

And now, finally, they were on their way to meet one last family.

A couple that hadn’t come through the registry.

They’d been suggested to Caelan directly.

-

The front doors of the keep groaned open.

Emily stepped out into pale, dry sunlight for the first time since arriving in Viremoor.

Varis was just behind her, dressed in deep green robes with Tess tucked close at her side, small hand gripping the folds of fabric like an anchor. Two guards flanked them wordlessly, their expressions unreadable beneath their metal-woven cloaks.

Emily paused just outside the threshold.

Everything looked… empty.

Flat. Ashen. Colorless. The landscape stretched for miles in all directions, a cracked desert of muted grays and browns. There were no trees. No buildings. Just distant mountain peaks piercing the horizon like broken teeth.

She blinked.

“There are villages nearby, right?” she asked, squinting into the glare. “Farms?”

“Yes,” Varis said simply.

Emily frowned. “Then… where are they? Shouldn’t I be able to see something from here?”

But Varis didn’t answer.

Together, they started down the massive stairway carved into the blackstone cliff. The descent was long—easily ten stories tall—and the stone beneath her boots radiated warmth from the morning sun.

Halfway down, movement caught her eye.

A few villagers were climbing the path in the opposite direction—traders, by the look of them. Others passed through an unseen border, heading toward the castle gates with carts, beasts, and rune-stamped goods. Their faces shifted subtly as they drew near—eyes downcast, respectful but wary.

And then—

As Emily reached the bottom of the staircase, something shifted.

It was like walking through a membrane of warm air. A pressure lifted. A veil fell away.

And suddenly—

A village stood around her.

She gasped.

Buildings. Stalls. Roads. All of it—just there, where moments ago there had been nothing. It wasn’t an illusion exactly, but it felt like one. A hidden layer of the world pulling itself into view.

Everything was made of stone—smooth stone, rough stone, carved stone of every shade. Even the carts and transport carriages weren’t made of wood or iron but sculpted blocks that glided over the ground, runes glowing beneath their bases like hovercraft.

Emily stared, jaw slightly open.

She pointed to one passing nearby—a sleek, rectangular vehicle made entirely of polished basalt, hovering a few inches off the ground and humming softly.

“What is that?”

Varis followed her gaze. “Transit rune vessel. Village-class. They run on embedded cores—tuned stone and stored charge. They only work in short-range circuits, though.”

Emily blinked again. “So like… a magic car?”

Varis gave a small nod. “That’s one way to describe it.”

Emily turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. The stone homes. The rune lanterns. The pale dust swirling between doorsteps. Children darted between structures. Adults bartered near open stalls. Everyone moved like the world had always looked this way—like nothing strange had happened at all.

Parked just beyond a glowing stone archway, sat a sleek black transport vessel.

It was about the size of an SUV—but taller, broader, shaped like a seamless, obsidian beetle. The body gleamed matte black from end to end, so dark it seemed to drink in the sunlight. Even the windows were pitch, like polished onyx. You couldn’t see inside. Not even a reflection.

“Let me guess,” Emily muttered. “Royal transport?”

One of the guards gave a faint grunt that might’ve been a yes.

The side panel slid open with a whisper, revealing a cool interior lined with wide black seats and softly glowing trim. The walls were rune-etched, the sigils dim but alive. Unlike the outside, the windows inside were completely transparent—offering a perfect view of the world beyond, as if nothing had been tinted at all.

Emily stepped in after Varis and Tess, blinking at the contrast. The space felt huge—open and quiet, with far more leg room than any vehicle she’d ever seen. The seating curved around the edge like a luxurious, stone-lined limo. Tess climbed up and sat close to Varis, who reached toward the hovering control panel at the front.

A smooth black tablet hovered there, like it was waiting.

“Do you have the address?” Varis asked.

Emily reached into her robes and pulled out the thin, rune-stamped slip Caelan had given her that morning. She handed it over.

Varis held the slip above the tablet—and let go.

It didn’t fall.

Instead, it hovered an inch above the panel, slowly rotating. Runes lit up across the glass, crawling outward, like veins of light. A low hum filled the vessel, barely audible.

The doors slid shut.

And with no further sound, no warning jolt, the transport began to move.

They glided down the stone roads in silence, the transport so smooth it barely felt like they were moving at all.

Emily leaned against the cool window, eyes wide as she watched the village pass them by. Stone buildings with rune-marked doors. A woman hanging pale laundry from a floating clothesline. A man carving symbols into the side of a transport core with glowing tools.

It all looked so alive. So solid.

And then—

Gone.

The road curved once, then straightened.

And just like that, the entire village vanished.

No flicker. No shimmer. Just gone.

Emily blinked. She twisted in her seat and looked out the back window.

Nothing.

No Viremoor. No keep. No buildings. Not even the mountains.

Just flat, stretching desert and a single dirt road behind them, winding toward nothing.

“What the—” She turned sharply to Varis. “What just happened? Where did everything go?”

Varis looked calm, as always. “The concealment field resets once you cross the boundary.”

“Okay,” Emily said slowly, “and what the hell does that mean?”

“It means the keep and the surrounding village are hidden from outside view. Permanently. You can only see them when you’re inside the warded boundary. Once you leave…”

She gestured to the desert around them.

“It’s like they were never there.”

Emily stared at her. “So how are we supposed to get back? Just drive around in circles until the walls magically appear again?”

Varis actually smiled at that—barely, but it was there. “No. The transport is bound to the keep’s return path. It will know where to go.”

“Right. Of course it will,” Emily muttered, slumping back into her seat.

Outside, the world stretched on—quiet, sunlit, and empty. Just a pale dirt road and the silent hum of runes guiding them toward something she couldn’t yet see.

The desert rolled on.

Minutes passed in silence, the only sound the soft hum of the runes threading through the transport. The inside of the carriage stayed cool, unaffected by the heat outside, though Emily could feel the sunlight pressing against the windows like a slow pulse.

She shifted in her seat and glanced toward Varis.

“How long is this ride, anyway?”

Varis leaned forward and tapped the hovering tablet at the front of the carriage. A new set of runes flickered to life, forming a small directional map with looping coordinates and slow-turning markers.

“About another hour and a half,” she said.

Emily made a soft noise—something between a sigh and a “cool, whatever.”

She slouched slightly, let her eyes drift around the carriage again. The space was quiet, comfortable, and weirdly elegant for something made entirely of stone and light. Her gaze traced the glowing symbols etched into the inner walls—lines of runes coiled like vines, some dim and steady, others pulsing faintly with movement.

“You know,” Emily said after a moment, “I’ve never actually asked this before, but… what do all these runes mean?”

Varis turned her head, following Emily’s line of sight.

“They’re layered spell work,” she said. “Mostly protection. Some shielding. The rest are for tracking.”

Emily raised a brow. “Tracking?”

“In case something happens. The royal carriages are always traceable. It’s part of the shielding net—it allows the keep to retrieve them if they go missing or are attacked.”

Emily’s lips pressed into a flat line. “Okay. That’s not at all unsettling.”

Varis gave a faint shrug. “It’s not about control. It’s about survival. Outside the wards, this land isn’t always safe.”

Emily leaned back into the cushions and looked out the window again. The desert stretched on forever—flat and quiet, painted in golds and soft grays.

Nothing moved.

And yet the runes pulsed steadily all around her, like the vessel was breathing.