Bronze Concord Vault, Sealed Area, Tenzurah Buried Library
He told himself he could manage.
Two hours.
That’s all it had been since he offered the food.
She hadn’t touched it. Just placed it on top of her flask.
The tether had hummed. Not gently. Not faintly.
A pressure under the skin, demanding to be felt.
He told himself it was fine.
That this was fine.
He’d turned to a book. Counted glyphs. Anything to stop his thoughts from straying too far.
Then she picked up the half-ration and ate it.
Small bites. Careful. Mechanical.
She still didn’t look at him.
But she ate it.
Not when he gave it to her.
Not even in the first hour.
Only after the fifth book, when her back curved, her fingers ached, and the ink had dried on her hand, did she finally bite.
Kion felt the tether twitch in his chest.
Relief. Restraint.
A flicker of warmth he didn’t deserve.
Once she’d resumed her copywork, he asked.
Voice low, carefully measured.
"Is it alright if I check the corridor?"
She didn’t speak.
Just nodded.
Eyes never left the page.
That was permission enough.
He’d had a strange feeling about that door the moment he noticed it existed.
He brushed it off.
Mostly because Writ hadn’t bothered with it either.
Just one glance, then back to her usual spot.
The tether had hummed in quiet agreement with that choice.
But now, as he flew further from her, it protested.
He told himself she’d taken his food. That was enough.
So he pushed forward.
Toward the unknown door, hoping to find another exit, or maybe a new source of water.
The moment the second door in the vault creaked open, Kion felt it.
Magic. Ancient.
Crawling across his skin like a web of breathless threads.
He hovered at the threshold, wings dimmed.
The air beyond the doorway shimmered with stillness, but underneath it, something pulsed.
Not human. Not even close.
Arachne, maybe.
Masters of poison and spatial distortion. Thread-bound illusion.
Movement traps spun so finely, they didn’t need to renew their enchantments for decades. Sometimes centuries.
He stepped in. Not with feet, but with a slow, measured hover.
Wings humming at the lowest pitch. Eyes sharp.
The corridor stretched ahead, just like Writ described.
But now, he saw more.
The walls were laced in lightweb.
Fine as breath. Thin as memory.
They weren’t visible to the naked eye. Not unless you knew what to look for.
And even then, only if your magic resonated close enough to interfere.
Kion did.
He excelled in illusion.
Spent years weaving and unraveling it, tuning his senses to spot false echoes before they took shape, refining it until catching a shimmer across a crowded street felt as natural as breath.
Illusion and telekinesis were the only branches he trusted in his hands.
Everything else? Hopeless.
He could barely coax a fire the size of a matchstick. Elementals laughed at him. Healing fizzled out on touch. Wards slipped through his grip like smoke.
But illusion... Illusion obeyed.
Or so he thought.
But this? This web?
It didn’t bend to human structure. It didn’t ripple under pressure. It didn’t leave a trace.
Even his senses barely caught the veil.
And they said similar magic calls to itself.
He felt almost nothing.
It wasn’t alive. Just a leftover weave.
A trap so intricately spun, it didn’t need upkeep.
The floor caught his attention next.
Subtle differences in sheen.
Strands that pulled, not against the body, but against the mind.
A Walker’s Mirage, expertly cast.
You’d keep moving. Forward, you’d think. But every step was the same. Every inch repeated.
You’d march for hours and never leave the corridor. You’d run out of supplies before you ever realized.
He drew a sharp breath, and whispered, "thank the roots you never tried this."
Writ.
Already stretched thin. Already rationing. Already haunted by the silence pressing against every book-laden wall.
If she’d stepped here, if she’d tried to trust this hallway first... She would’ve broken.
He hovered in place, still surrounded by that near-invisible lattice.
One wrong move and even he might've tripped something.
The Bronze had sealed records on magical creatures like these. Retracted knowledge from human archives, redacted entire libraries.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
It was their way of protecting what few allies remained.
Creatures once allied to the Bronze Concord, hidden now, safe from purge or hunt.
And this trap? Maybe this was their way of returning that favor.
Protecting the Bronze's secrets with traps only magical minds could see.
But then... What did that make him?
The Arachne wove their magic to trap intruders. To guard intel.
And he? He offered it.
Handed it over.
He gave her the maps.
The migration routes.
The supply caches.
The vaults.
The shrines.
The disguised safehouses.
And when she finishes, the Accord would have all of it.
Dozens of paths compromised.
Refugees cut off. Smugglers trapped.
Glitterstorm cornered.
All because he wanted to be near her.
Because she said "thank you" once and it shattered him.
Even his food, she dissected.
Not out of caution. Out of necessity.
Like everything he gave had to be survived, not received.
And still... He stayed.
He lied to himself.
The Accord already knows.
They would’ve found the maps eventually.
This was going to happen anyway.
But he knew the truth.
He followed feelings. Blindly.
Trying to atone for a past he couldn’t change.
Risking everyone who trusted him.
Who believed in him.
All for one person.
At what cost?
He felt her move.
The tether pulsed. A brush of presence, faint and sure.
She was at the entrance door again.
Checking. Pulling, pushing.
Like she always did.
A moment later, the thread snapped back into its usual distance.
She was rejected again. Returned to her book.
The tether throbbed. Heavy. Too heavy.
He closed his eyes. Felt it tug. Felt it echo.
Felt it consume.
This was why solo tethers were forbidden.
This was why it needed both ends to anchor.
Because the caster, he, was unraveling.
One person wasn’t meant to hold all of it.
The silence. The suspicion. The weight of another’s breath.
It wasn’t just a link anymore. It was worship.
He was going mad.
And the worst part was that he knew it.
Every fairfolk whispered about it. Mocked it.
Every community branded it forbidden.
Every warning carved into hushes and scowls aimed at the caster, he remembered them all.
And every single one ended the same way.
“One-way tethers corrode the mind. Slowly. Without mercy.”
Because it starts soft.
At first, it’s awareness.
You feel a pull. A brush.
The quiet shift of presence in a room you can’t see.
Then it deepens.
You stop measuring time in hours, you start measuring it in breaths not yours.
The tethered's movements become your clock. Their silences become your storm.
You start syncing. Bending. Not because they asked, they didn’t need to.
You just wanted to.
He did.
And that was the mistake.
Because logic told him he was slipping.
That the tether had carved too deep.
That her silence cut worse than any blade.
That her frown rewired his instincts.
That her flinch turned him into ash.
And this proximity didn’t help.
It amplified everything.
What the tether once delivered in whispers, distant, muffled, now roared.
Loud. Demanding to be felt. To be seen. To be acknowledged.
He’d stopped sleeping properly two days ago.
Stopped eating his own rations on schedule.
Started trailing her breath with his own.
Started tuning his heartbeat to hers.
Not because he had to.
Because he couldn’t not.
And all the while, he told himself it was strategy.
That he needed to anticipate her needs.
That she might collapse if he didn’t.
But it wasn’t care anymore.
It was compulsion.
It was him, rewiring himself to ease her weight.
It was him, trading logic for instinct.
It was him, trapped in a bond that only he could feel, and still convincing himself it was worth it.
Because if he tuned just a little sharper...
If he caught every flicker of her doubt...
If he made himself small enough, careful enough...
Maybe she’d accept him.
Maybe she’d let him stay.
And wasn’t that the madness?
He clenched his jaw.
He was still Kion. Bronze Concord.
The outlier who left his fairfolk kin to stand with humans.
One of the reasons Glitterstorm even had access to fairy privileges.
He was still himself. Still aware.
But the tether blurred all of it.
Like walking through fog that only thickened the closer he got.
And he couldn’t stop.
Didn’t want to.
Because it hurt when she pulled away.
Because it singed when she rejected food.
Because it bled when she didn’t speak his name.
And he knew, he knew, that wasn’t love.
That wasn’t loyalty.
That was the tether hollowing him out.
That was addiction.
He exhaled, slow and strained.
She moved again. Shifted a page. Adjusted her grip.
He felt it even though she's in the next room. His breath adjusted with it.
Too much.
He’d let it become too much.
And the worst part?
He didn’t want to stop. He didn’t regret it. He’d do it again.
If it meant keeping her safe.
Even if he had to juggle between the trust of his people and the girl who never looked him in the eye.
He exhaled.
There had to be a way.
A way to balance this.
To come back to center.
To claw his mind back from the edge, return to his choices, his will, before the tether unraveled them completely.
To be Kion again.
Not just a conduit. Not just a reflection of her breath and heartbeat.
To keep his footing between two worlds without falling to either.
Because the moment Writ finished this mission...
The moment she stepped out of the ruin...
The Accord would know.
Everything she’d copied. Every diagram. Every route. Every last truth hidden beneath the Oathroot’s shadow.
Destroying her notebook was off the table.
That would risk her freedom. Her safety.
But he could delay it.
Just like the Accord-issued map she’d carried in Kesherra Basin, disguised to show flora documentation to any outsider, but to her, it revealed the full building layout.
He could do a same illusion as that.
Wrap the copied texts in glamours.
Spells that looked different to others, but remained clear to her eyes.
Illusions tailored to deceive Accord eyes. With subtle fairfolks signatures.
That should buy time.
A window to reroute, erase tracks, clean up the paths she’d exposed, before the Accord could act.
And Writ... she had no magic affinity. Especially not illusion.
There’d be no way for her to weave something so complex, so foreign. Not human-made, not something she could fake.
They’d know that.
They’d blame the ruins. The ambient magic. The traces left behind by things far older than her.
But if they didn’t?
If suspicion still reached her...
Even if they locked her again in a cell...
He could just take--
SLAP.
Hard. Right across his own cheek.
"Stop."
SLAP.
"Stop it."
SLAP. SLAP.
His cheek burned.
"Enough."
Another breath. Another blow.
It had been too long since he was this isolated.
Too long with no one else but a tether humming through his ribcage.
Too long, with nothing between them but rejection and cold silence.
It was bleeding into him.
The madness. The obsession.
He couldn't afford that now.
They had to leave. Alive.
Preferably with the intel buried deep enough to buy her time.
He opened his eyes again.
The illusion was gone.
Or rather, no longer showing to him.
His magic, now in harmony with the weave, repelled it.
He floated forward. Examined the shimmer-web anchoring the floor.
The spatial distortion threads. The balance triggers.
He let himself touch down.
Light. Deliberate.
No pull. No loop.
The illusion-laced webs recognized him now.
Familiar, almost welcoming.
Not a threat, not a stranger.
A fellow illusionist.
Kin.
He could use this.
Yes.
He would use this.
A room that hides its truth unless you match its magic.
A layout only he could map.
A spell only he could cast.
To delay. To deflect. To deceive.
For her. For the Bronze.
For the thin thread still clinging to both.
Even if it strangles him in the end.