The whisper of the system flared in Aiden's vision, fading like embers carried by the wind. His body moved before his mind could calculate—an instinct, primal and inescapable.
It was not strength guiding his blade, not skill, not discipline, but something deeper. A tether. A thread.
Amber.
He could feel her. Not see, not hear—feel. The way one feels the ache of a missing limb or the pull of the tide beneath still water.
Somewhere inside, carved into marrow and fire, her presence burned. It tugged him through the dark, telling him she was ahead, somewhere beyond branches that clawed his armour, somewhere beyond the breathless silence of the forest.
After she had been claimed—after she had become the one and only to pass into the final stage of his possession—something between them had changed.
The leash was no longer just a chain of power. It had become a bond, as if two souls had been forced into the same chamber, learning each other's secrets with every shared heartbeat.
