But the contamination was already seeping through their bond, the pain and memories forcing their way into Damian’s mind despite his defenses. It hit him like liquid fire—foreign emotions and half-remembered lives flooding his senses until, for terrifying moments, he couldn’t tell where his own thoughts ended and the lost soul’s began.
“Damian!” Cael's voice cut through the confusion, anchoring him to his own identity through the sound of his name spoken with desperate love. “Don't lose yourself for me. Not for this.”
The foreign consciousness gradually settled into manageable compartments within his expanded awareness, but the experience left Damian shaken in ways he couldn't immediately process. This was what Cael was dealing with—not just emotional trauma but actual invasion of alien thoughts and memories.
They sat in the clinic's familiar quiet, but the easy intimacy they'd built felt strained by cosmic forces neither fully understood. Every touch carried the risk of further contamination, every moment of closeness potentially dangerous to them both. The love that had seemed like salvation was becoming a liability neither could afford.
Their fragile peace was shattered when Lennar burst into the clinic without ceremony, his scarred face grim with terrible knowledge that made the very air around him taste of dread and desperation.
“It's started,” he announced without preamble, his voice carrying the harsh edge of someone who'd been running on adrenaline and fear for hours. “Senra's issued the call for the Mirror Offering. She's gathering the materials and power sources needed to perform the ritual at the Obsidian Basin tomorrow night.”
Damian felt his blood turn to ice water. The Obsidian Basin was a natural amphitheater carved from volcanic glass, used for the most dangerous magical workings because its properties contained and amplified supernatural forces. If Senra was planning to use that location, she was preparing for magic on a scale that could reshape reality itself.
“Tomorrow night?” Damian repeated, his voice barely above a whisper. “As in less than twenty-four hours from now?”
“She's been planning this for months,” Lennar said, spreading ancient texts across Damian's examining table with movements that spoke of barely controlled urgency. “Every healer she captured, every soul she extracted, every time-crystal she hoarded—it was all building toward this moment.”
As Lennar detailed the true scope of Senra's ambition, the magnitude of what they faced became clear. The Mirror Offering wasn't just about stealing time or accumulating power. It was a cosmic replacement ritual that would transfer Cael's divine authority to Senra herself, making her the new avatar of Death with none of the restraints or mercy that had defined Cael's service.
“But she needs a powerful anchor to stabilize the transfer,” Lennar explained grimly, his finger tracing relevant passages in the crumbling texts. “Something already bound to the current Reaper. Something that can bridge the gap between cosmic authority and mortal realm.”
The implications hit Damian like ice water cascading down his spine. “She's not trying to kill me. She's trying to use me as a spiritual battery.”
His soulbond with Cael had made him valuable enough to replace Cael entirely. Senra could tether herself to Death's cosmic role through Damian's already-established connection, bypassing the usual safeguards and restrictions that prevented mortals from claiming divine authority.
“Exactly,” Lennar said, his voice heavy with grim certainty. “With you as her anchor, she could wield cosmic power without cosmic restraint. Death without mercy, ending without purpose beyond her own hunger for control.”
Cael overheard the conversation from the clinic's back room, and his anguished voice carried clearly through the thin walls: “If I stay near you, I doom you to become her tool. But if I leave, you're defenseless against forces you can't fight alone.”
Damian grabbed his hand with fierce determination, their fingers interlocking despite the supernatural cold that still clung to Cael's transformed flesh. “If you leave, I'm already doomed. We face this together or not at all.”
“You don't understand,” Cael said, his voice breaking with the weight of cosmic knowledge. “The Elder Wardens gave me seventeen days to sever our bond voluntarily or face mutual erasure. That was yesterday. Seventeen days left, and now Senra's moving faster than anyone anticipated.”
The revelation hit Damian like a sledgehammer to the chest. Sixteen days until cosmic erasure, less than one day until Senra's ritual—they were caught between impossible deadlines with no safe options remaining.
As Lennar gathered his materials to spread word through the underground resistance, he left them with a final warning that seemed to echo with prophetic weight: “The ritual begins at moonrise tomorrow. Whatever you're going to do, decide quickly. Cosmic law won't give you time to deliberate.”
The door closed behind him, leaving Damian and Cael alone with impossible choices and the crushing weight of limited time. The clinic that had been their sanctuary now felt like a tomb, filled with the ghosts of conversations they'd never have and futures that seemed increasingly unlikely.
Needing space to think and giving Cael time to process the cosmic upheaval in his essence, Damian made his way to the Memory Orchard as evening approached. The sacred grove was dangerous for someone in his emotional state—the trees that grew from unspent soul energy had a tendency to show visitors exactly what they most needed to see and least wanted to confront.
The orchard existed in the spaces between districts, accessible only through forgotten passages that predated the Time Exchange's systematic mapping of Varos. Ancient treesgrew in impossible spirals, their fruit glowing with ethereal light that contained visions of what could have been if different choices had been made.
Among the memory trees, Damian found a memorial stone marked with his mother's name. The carving was simple, elegant, surrounded by symbols that belonged to the Ashen Accord and spoke of love that transcended death itself. His fingers traced the familiar letters while his heart hammered against his ribs.
When he touched the stone's surface, the world dissolved around him, replaced by visions that felt more real than his current existence. He was transported into his mother's final memory—binding his soul with desperate love while seven-year-old Damian slept nearby, unaware that his world was about to change forever.
Her whispered words echoed across twenty years: “He will need you one day, my brave boy. When Death comes calling, be his mercy, his anchor, his choice to stay human. Love will not be enough—you must be strong enough to fight for it.”
The vision showed her weaving soulbinding magic with hands that shook from exhaustion and approaching death, pouring her life force into protective spells that would activate decades later when her son needed them most. She'd seen this moment, had prepared for cosmic forces that wouldn't manifest until Damian was old enough to understand their weight.
“I don't want to be someone's mercy,” Damian told the memory-shade of his mother, his voice thick with tears he'd been holding back for hours. “I don't want to be a cosmic necessity or a strategic anchor. I want to be someone's choice, someone's joy, someone's freely given love.”
The shade smiled with devastating gentleness. “Love and duty are not opposites, my heart. Sometimes the greatest loveis choosing to be what someone needs even when it's not what either of you wants.”
The vision broke Damian's carefully maintained composure, and he wept among the memory trees for everything he'd lost and everything he was afraid to lose. Twenty years of accumulated grief poured out of him in waves—for his mother, for his lost childhood, for Oris and all the other casualties of Senra's ambition, for the impossible future he'd glimpsed with Cael.
“She knew,” he whispered to the indifferent stars beginning to appear overhead. “She knew this would happen. She prepared me for it.”
