Chapter 29: The Primordial Beast Woke Up And My Shadow Goddess Is The Price Of Putting It Back To Sleep?!

The First Shadow unfolded from the crystal and the room got bigger and smaller at the same time.

It wasn’t a wolf the way Grimm was a wolf.

It was the idea of wolf, stripped of everything soft and rebuilt in living shadow.

Six-tailed.

Eyeless.

A body that filled the upper half of the chamber and kept going, its mass pressing into the stone ceiling and through it, into spaces that shouldn’t have existed.

Grimm locked against Soren’s leg and the sound she made was the sound of a dog who has found its mother and its mother is a god.

The First Shadow looked at Grimm.

Then at Soren.

Then it reached through the crystal with something that wasn’t a hand and grabbed at the bond between them and PULLED.

Grimm’s whole body seized and Soren felt it in his chest.

The connection between them stretched and he could feel something on the other end trying to reel it in, trying to pull Yara out of him and back into the dark.

Grimm screamed.

Troy had his sword up before the echo finished.

"What is that thing doing to her?" Selah was already moving, frost climbing her forearms in a hard shell, her eyes locked on the reaching shadow.

"It’s trying to take Yara back." Soren’s hands were on Grimm’s muzzle and she was shaking so hard he could feel her bones vibrating. "It wants her."

Troy’s knight fired three blasts of white light.

They passed through the Shadow’s reaching arm and hit the wall behind it and did nothing.

Selah threw a spear of ice the size of her arm.

It shattered against the Shadow’s body and the pieces fell to the floor and melted into dark water.

Maren flared both hands gold and the fire she threw was the hottest thing she’d produced since the reveal, bright enough to leave spots in Soren’s vision.

The shadow ate the flames whole and the chamber got darker.

"Nothing’s working," Troy said in a way that meant he was already calculating retreat routes.

Then Yara manifested.

She stepped out of it, full humanoid form and she was bigger than she’d been in the dorm room.

The shadows on the floor bent toward her and stayed bent.

She faced the crystal and the First Shadow’s eyeless head tracked her.

"I left you," Yara said.

"I left because you taught me to devour and I wanted to protect."

The First Shadow made a sound that filled the chamber without being a sound at all.

Yara turned to Soren.

Her red eyes found his and the look in them was the most terrifying thing he’d seen since entering this world because it was total surrender wrapped in absolute demand.

She wanted him to save her and she wanted him to know what it would cost and she wanted him to do it anyway.

"Bond me," she said. "Fully. Now."

His blood went cold. "My soul is at sixty-six percent. A full bond will drop me below fifty."

"I know."

"Joan’s monitoring seal triggers at fifty. The Bureau gets everything."

"I know." Her voice was steady and her hands were not.

They were shaking at her sides, fingers curling and uncurling, and every shadow in the chamber pulsed with each curl.

"If I bond you and survive, I lose the one thing keeping the Bureau off us."

Yara stepped closer.

Her hand came up and pressed flat over his heart, and her fingers spread wide.

The touch burned cold through his shirt and the bond between them vibrated with it.

"If you don’t bond with me, she takes me back."

"And I will spend eternity inside that crystal."

Behind them the First Shadow reached again.

Yara’s hand pressed harder against his chest.

Her other hand came up to the side of his face and her thumb traced his jaw and her claws left thin lines on his skin that didn’t bleed. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"Choose me, master."

Yara was looking at him and she had never once in the entire time he’d known her asked him for anything until now.

"I choose you," Soren said.

Yara’s breath caught and her whole body shuddered against his and for one second her hand on his face tightened enough that her claws drew blood.

She leaned in and pressed her forehead to his and whispered "Mine"

[DING! — FULL BOND INITIATED: Yara Hale, Shadow Goddess of the Veil, Mythic Tier-6.]

The world ripped open inside his chest.

[DING! — Soul integrity dropping... 60%... 55%... 52%...]

His vision whited out and then it went dark.

Until he was standing in a place that had no floor or no ceiling and Yara was there, her true form, enormous and beautiful.

[DING! — BOND: YARA HALE (Shadow Goddess of the Veil, Mythic Tier-6). Bond type: PRIMORDIAL TAMER. Status: PERMANENT. Obsession Index: Yara Hale 49/50 → RESTRUCTURED to 35/75 (new cap at Rank D equivalent, granted by full bond resonance).]

[Soul integrity: 51%.]

[Joan Sawyer’s monitoring seal: STABLE. Threshold: 50%. Margin: 1%.]

He was alive by one percent.

The last thing he saw before his body hit the stone floor was Yara turning toward the First Shadow with her hands open and every shadow in the sublevel following her.

Selah caught him before his head hit the ground.

Maren was already there, her body hot against his side, her tail wrapping around his arm.

"Don’t you dare," Maren said and her voice cracked. "Don’t you dare die while I’m holding you."

"I’m not dying," Soren managed.

"Your nose is bleeding from both sides and you can’t stand up."

"That’s normal for me."

Selah’s hand was on the back of his neck, and the frost from her fingers was spreading into his skin and it felt good.

"I’ve got you," Selah said.

Through the new bond Yara’s voice came through.

"Watch me, master. I’ll make you proud."

She walked toward the First Shadow and the dark moved with her.

[DING! — Obsession Index: Yara 35/75. Selah 27/50. Maren 8/50. Soul integrity: 51%. Margin until Bureau auto-report: 1%.]