The room Xulthas had chosen was a sensory void located in the deepest bowels of the Castle.
the black stone walls were coated in a magical dampener that swallowed sound, light and even the vibration of one's own footsteps against the floors.
"Step inside," Xulthas commanded, his voice sounding oddly hollow in the threshold. "To break a bond forged in blood and loyalty, you must first dismantle the house that loyalty built. You will be alone. You will see nothing. You will hear nothing but the rhythm of your own pulse. And then, she will come."
Harun and Iruna shared one final look. For the first time in their lives, they were walking into a darkness they could not face together.
As the iron door closed shut, the world outside seemed to vanished.
A thick, white mist -the "Mist of the Unbinding" began to swirl from the floor. It was cold and swirling with old memories.
Within seconds, Harun could no longer see his hand in front of his face. He reached out for Iruna, but his fingers met only the freezing vapor. He was alone.
The silence was the first thing to attack. It pushed against their eardrums until their own heartbeats sounded like war drums.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Then, the memories began to bleed through the mist.
For Iruna, the fog turned into the grey, crumbling walls of their childhood home. She saw her father, a man with eyes like shards of glass towering over her. She saw her mother, beautiful and cruel, stroking Harun's pale cheek while kicking Iruna into the cellar.
"Why are you so dark?" the shadow memory of her mother yelled. "You look like a stain on this family. Harun is a pearl and you are the mud he was dragged through."
Iruna felt the phantom pains of the cellar, the cold almost freezing her to dead , the weeks without food, the darkness that had once been her only friend. She remembered the day Harun finally snapped . She saw him standing over their sleeping parents, his hands shaking as he poured the poison into their wine. She saw the orange glow of the fire as they ran into the night, leaving the house of their nightmares and their parents to burn into ash.
But the street was worse than the cellar.
Harun's vision shifted to the alleyways of the Capital. He was six, scavaging for scraps of rotten food while Iruna hid behind a dumpster. He remembered the day he came back to find the group of men laughing. He remembered the sight of Iruna, a bloody, broken mess on the cobblestones. The sexual assault had robbed her of her voice.
For weeks, she had stared at the wall, not uttering a word to her brother, she didn't eat nor sleep, she remained a hollow shell of the broken thing she always was.
"We should go to the Rift," Iruna had finally whispered.
Harun remembered washing her with milk and a sponge he had stolen. He had spent their last copper coins on a scrap of fine blue silk to wrap around her shoulders. "You are beautiful ,I love you Runa," he had told her, even as they stood on the edge of the abyss, ready to jump.
As they jumped. They felt the wind roar in their ears. And then, a hand caught them.
"And after all I did for you, this is how you repay me?"
The white mist parted, and there she was. Shadow-Kizari. She was more radiant than the sun and more terrifying than the void. Kizari didn't strike them , she simply walked around them, her multiple golden jewelry clinking with a sound that felt like it was happening inside their skulls.
"I found you at the bottom of the world," Shadow-Kizari whispered into Iruna's ear. "You were trash. Dirty, used, discarded filth. I gave you a name. I gave you silks to shudder you from the cold. I gave you the power to look at the world without flinching. Without me, you are just that wretched, abused girl in the streets. Do you really think a Celestial whore is going to love a stain like you?"
Iruna collapsed to her knees, her hands over her ears. The mental pain was worse than the cellar, worse than the assault. Kizari was the one who had "saved" them. How could she kill the person who gave her a reason to live?.
"Look at him," Kizari mocked, turning to Harun. "You think you can protect her? You couldn't protect her then, and you can't protect her now. You are nothing but a lowly wretch, A cold-blooded killer . I am the only one who can keep your hands clean."
The bond was a golden thread wrapped around their hearts, and Kizari was pulling it tight. Iruna felt her spirit breaking. It would be so easy to just submit. To go back to being the Queen's loyal dog. To let the darkness take her.
I can't... I can't do this... Iruna thought, her mind almost succumbing to the darkness.
But then, something else broke through the white mist It wasn't a memory she had forgotten, it was a vision of the present. She saw the circular room in the North Tower.
She saw Zaliyah, bandaged, and unconscious, lying on that bed. She saw the way his fingers twitched in his sleep, reaching for a hand that wasn't there. She saw the snow piling up against the window and realized that if she gave up now, Zaliyah would wake up all alone in this frozen wastelands.
He would wake up in a den of wolves with no one to guard him. He would wake up to see a broken reflection in the mirror and a child in his womb, with only the cold , calculating eyes of Xulthas to greet him.
NO
The word was a spark in the darkness.
I am not trash, Iruna thought, her eyes snapping open. I want to live, I want to live a normal life, My...My....Harun needs me,I have to protect his highness
.
She looked at the Shadow-Kizari. "You didn't save us because you loved us," Iruna said, her voice finally finding its strength. "You saved us because you wanted a mirror. You wanted to see your own power reflected in our misery. I would rather be nothing... I would rather die than live another hour as yours."
In his own corner of the void, Harun felt Iruna's resolve. He saw the image of the Zaliyah they had protected, the boy who had treated them like friends instead of slaves.
"I don't fear the void anymore," Harun roared into the mist. "And I don't love you. I...I don't love you anymore, My sister ...she means the world to me, my soul would be shattered to thousand pieces before I let you hurt her"
With a sound like a thousand mirrors shattering at once, the twins lunged at the image of the Queen in their minds. It was a mental suicide, a violent tearing of the fabric of their own identities. They were killing the "loyal dog's" they had been for fourteen years.
The iron door swung open.
Xulthas stood there holding his cold violet tea in his hand. He watched as the two figures stumbled out of the white smoke.
Harun and Iruna were unrecognizable. They were trembling and their skin was slick with a so much sweat. They fell to the floor, gasping for air as if they had just been pulled from the bottom of the ocean.
When they finally looked up, Xulthas raised an eyebrow.
The change was physical. The golden hue that had always simmered in their eyes, the mark of Kizari's enchantment was gone.
Harun's eyes had turned a piercing, icy blue, like the glaciers of the Northwest territory. Iruna's eyes had changed colour to a deep grey, reflecting the magical core she had finally claimed for herself.
"It is done," Harun tried to say, but no sound came out. He tapped his throat, looking at Iruna.
She tried to speak to him telepathically, but the mental bridge was gone. The "Twin-Bond" had been severed along with the Queen's. They were no longer two halves of a whole, they were now two separate individuals. They looked at each other with a mixture of terror and an exhausting relief. The price of their freedom was the loss of their telepathy.
In the Royal Palace of the Capital city, the atmosphere was much different than that of the northwest.
Kizari sat on a chaise lounge draped in regal black silks. , her eyes were fixated on the centre of the room.
In the center of the room, two male demon slaves were wrapped around eachother, engaged in sexual intercourse for the sole purpose of her entertainment. She watched them with a bored expression, her chin resting on her hand.
Suddenly, she gasped. Her hand flew to her chest, her fingers clutching at the silk over her heart. It felt like a hot needle had been pulled out of her skin.
She stayed still for a moment, the silence of the room only interrupted by the heavy breathing of the two men on the floor. Then, slowly ,a grin spread across her face.
"It took them long enough," she whispered as she took a sip of her wine, her eyes glittering with excitement , Kizari wasn't angry. "My little dogs have grown teeth. How... interesting."
She looked like a predator who had just realized the hunt was finally going to be a challenge.
Back in the Northwest territory, Harun and Iruna dragged themselves up the stairs of the North Tower. Every muscle in their bodies ached. Their minds felt like open wound the lowly beast were feasting on .
They reached Zaliyah's door and pushed it open.
The room was quiet, the Firestone coating It in a bright orange, They sat on either side of Zaliyah's bed, taking his hands in theirs.
They couldn't speak to each other telepathically.
They couldn't even speak to him. But for the first time in their lives, the air they breathed belonged to them.
They sat in the glowy room, two silent sentinels, waiting for the moon to rise over the snow.