[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 72: In Which We Pay the Price for Answers

The tether between us glowed steady and bright.

"Eighty-nine minutes," Azryth said.

I wiped my face, took a breath.

"How much further?"

He checked the compass, the needle was pointing straight ahead, but something about the pull felt different now. Final.

"Very close," he said.

We started walking, the gray ahead was changing, not lighter or darker, but sharper and more defined, like we were approaching something that imposed structure on the formless void.

After what felt like hours but was probably minutes, I saw it.

A barrier.

A veil of shimmer and light, stretching infinitely in both directions, impossible to go around. It looked like aurora borealis frozen in place, colors that shifted between visible and not.

"The arbiter boundary," Azryth said quietly.

As we got closer, I could see symbols moving through the veil, not carved or written, it’s just existing within the shimmer. Ancient, powerful, and older than anything I’d encountered.

We stopped a few feet away.

The compass needle was pointing directly at the veil, through it.

"Now what?" I asked.

The veil rippled, like it was responding to our presence.

Then a voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, it didn’t sound like words exactly, it sounded more like concepts transmitted directly into my mind.

*Passage requires offering, blood given freely, sacrifice is permanent.*

"Blood?" I looked at Azryth. "What does that mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like." His expression was grim. "Arbiters don’t accept simple payment, they want something that costs, something that changes you."

The veil pulsed again.

*Two bound as one, both must offer, both must sacrifice, the price is connection strengthened beyond breaking. Beyond death, beyond choice.*

I felt cold understanding settle over me.

"They want to make the binding permanent," I said. "Absolutely permanent, there’ll be no way to ever break it, even if we wanted to."

"That’s what it sounds like." Azryth was studying the veil carefully. "Blood mixed between bound partners creates an unbreakable tie. It’s definitely ancient magic, older than demon lords, older than wardens, once done, there’s no undoing it."

"And if we don’t accept?"

"Then the veil doesn’t open, we don’t reach the arbiters, we don’t get answers about stopping Veyrith." His jaw tightened. "We came all this way for nothing."

The veil shimmered expectantly.

*Choose. Offer and pass. Refuse and return. No middle path exists.*

I looked at Azryth. At the demon lord I’d accidentally bound myself to, who I’d fought beside, bled beside, loved beside.

The binding was already strong, already irreversible in any practical sense.. breaking it would kill us both.

But this was different, this was choosing to make it absolute, eternal, beyond any possibility of escape.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I think it’s a terrible price." He met my eyes. "But I also think we need those answers. And I think..." He paused. "I think I’d choose this even if we didn’t need them."

Something warm unfurled in my chest.

"Me too," I said.

The veil pulsed brighter.

*Decision made, offer blood, seal bond. Pass through.*

I pulled the spectral blade from wherever it manifested from, the edge gleamed sharp and ready.

"Your palm," Azryth said. "Cut it just enough to draw blood."

I pressed the blade to my left palm and cut. Quick, clean, painful.

Blood welled up immediately, dark red against my skin.

Azryth didn’t have a blade, but flames danced across his right palm, he shaped them carefully, precisely, using heat instead of steel to open his skin.

His blood was darker than mine, not quite black, but close. Infernal blood.

"Now what?" I asked.

*Press together, let blood mix. Speak the binding words.*

"What binding words?" I looked at the veil. "We don’t know..."

The seal on my wrist flared hot, knowledge surfaced, old words in a language I didn’t speak but somehow understood.

"Oh," I said. "The seal knows."

I held out my bleeding palm, Azryth held out his.

Our eyes met.

"Last chance to back out," he said.

"Not backing out."

"Neither am I."

We pressed our palms together.

The moment our blood touched, I felt it. Power surging between us, the binding flaring so bright it hurt to perceive even with closed eyes.

The words came from my mouth without conscious thought. Ancient and absolute.

"By blood freely given, by choice freely made, I bind myself to you beyond breaking, beyond death, beyond any power that would separate us."

Azryth spoke the same words, his voice steady despite the pain I felt radiating through the connection.

Our blood mixed, hot and burning where our palms met.

The veil shuddered.

The binding between us exploded with light, the golden tether blazing so bright it washed out everything else.

I felt something fundamental change. Not in the binding itself.. that had already been strong, but in its nature. Before, it had been a connection we maintained, now it was a fact, absolute, unchangeable, written into the fabric of what we were.

We could no more break this binding than we could stop existing.

The light faded slowly, leaving afterimages burned into my vision.

We stood there, palms still pressed together, both breathing hard.

"Did it work?" I asked.

Azryth looked at our joined hands, at the blood mixing between them, at the way the binding now pulsed with a deeper, steadier rhythm than before. "Yes. I can feel it, the binding is..." He searched for words. "Permanent and absolute, there’s no breaking this now. Not ever."

Part of me should have felt trapped, locked into something I could never escape.

Instead, I felt steady and certain, like something that had been loose had finally clicked into place.

The veil rippled one final time.

*Price paid. Offering accepted. Pass.*

It parted down the middle like a curtain being drawn back.

Beyond the opening, I couldn’t see anything clearly, just light and shadow moving in patterns that didn’t make sense, a space that existed outside the rules of limbo, outside the rules of anything.

The arbiter’s domain.

We stepped forward, still hand in hand, blood mixing between our palms.

The veil accepted us.

We crossed the threshold into something beyond limbo, beyond the mortal realm, beyond anything I’d ever imagined.

The opening sealed behind us immediately with a sound like reality sighing.

No going back now.