The Forgotten Pulse of the Bond-Chapter 38: Beneath the Seal, the Root Burns

The wind had changed by the time Camille stepped through the archway of the seal chamber, thick with something she couldn’t name. Not danger she had learned to recognize that a long time ago but something deeper, older, a memory stretched taut across time. Her boots echoed softly across the stone, the torchlight above her flickering with uncertainty. Beside her, Magnolia walked in silence, one hand curled at her side, not in fear but in readiness. They both knew what they were walking into now. The pages from the archive had confirmed what Camille had already begun to remember: Subject 1 wasn’t lost, wasn’t dead, wasn’t hidden in some far-off ruin or sealed beneath a forgotten mountain. She was here, walking the same halls, breathing the same air, standing in the same cursed kingdom that had once tried to break them both.

The moment Camille stepped into the inner ring of the chamber, she felt it. A shift. Like the floor dipped beneath her boots. Her bond pulse flared, reacting instinctively, flinching in her chest like a child recoiling from a cold hand. The seal stone in the center of the room glowed faintly, responding to her presence like it always had but this time, something else responded too. A soft scrape of leather on stone echoed from the far end of the room, and then she saw her. The girl. The first version. Subject 1.

She wasn’t what Camille expected. No tattoos. No armor. No sign of the violence that should have shaped her. Just a girl with pale eyes and a scar running down the left side of her neck, the kind of wound only someone who survived too long carried. She looked up slowly, her gaze locking with Camille’s, and then she smiled small, tired, knowing.

"I wondered how long it would take you," she said, her voice steady, aged by experience but still strange in its youth.

Camille didn’t speak at first. She stepped farther into the chamber, ignoring the heat building behind her ribs. Magnolia stood just behind, her presence a grounding weight, silent but unwavering.

"You’re real," Camille said finally, her voice soft but clear.

Subject 1 nodded. "As real as they made us."

The words echoed with more weight than Camille wanted to admit. She had always known she wasn’t the first. The cradle journals had hinted at it. The whispers in her dreams, the flashes of other hands, other screams, had confirmed it. But seeing the girl now alive, calm, purposeful it brought it all crashing into reality.

"I’m not here to fight you," Camille added.

"Then why are you here?" Subject 1 asked, tilting her head slightly. "To finish the story? To close the gate? Or to try and rewrite it?"

"I came to stop them," Camille said. "All of them."

Subject 1’s expression didn’t change. "You really think they’re still the problem?"

Camille hesitated. "Aren’t they?"

"No," Subject 1 said simply, stepping down from the platform she stood on. "Not anymore. The problem isn’t the ones who made us. It’s what they made us into."

The words sank deep. Magnolia finally stepped forward. "And what is that, exactly?"

Subject 1 turned toward her, her pale gaze sweeping the red bond mark visible on Magnolia’s wrist. "Weapons. Wombs. Vessels. Tools. Choose your favorite. They built us with purposes. Some of us fulfilled them. Others... rebelled." She looked at Camille again. "But none of us escaped." frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓

Camille took another step forward. "Then why are you still here?"

Subject 1 smiled faintly. "Because I stopped running. Just like you."

The tension hung between them, not as enemies but as reflections. Camille didn’t lower her stance, didn’t reach for her dagger, but she felt the magic begin to pulse at her fingertips. Not wild. Not unstable. Just... alert.

"They will try again," Subject 1 said. "They always do. They have the archives. They have the blood samples. Even if you burn this place down, they’ll build another."

Camille frowned. "Not if we end the line."

Subject 1 laughed, and there was something brittle in it. "You think this is about blood? About ending a chain? This isn’t a rope you can cut, Camille. It’s a root system that stretches through time. If you want to stop it, you don’t sever a root. You poison the soil."

For a long moment, no one spoke. The seal stone between them glowed softly, responding to the presence of both girls now, as if it too remembered.

Magnolia stepped forward, her voice calm but firm. "Then show us how."

Subject 1 studied her carefully. Then she nodded once and turned toward the far wall. A hidden door groaned open behind her, stone dragging over stone.

"Follow me."

They descended into tunnels neither Camille nor Magnolia had ever seen before. The air grew colder, damper, each breath heavier than the last. Ancient glyphs lined the walls none of them modern, none of them in the Keep’s archive. Camille ran her fingers along the stone as they walked, each rune humming faintly under her skin like it remembered her.

"This was the original cradle site," Subject 1 said, her voice echoing softly in the dark. "Before they built the Keep. Before the Elders. Before the High Circle rewrote the rules."

Camille glanced sideways. "You were born here."

"I was made here."

At the end of the corridor, the walls opened into a circular chamber, lined with cribs. Not beds actual metal cradles, cold and clean and terrifying. Most were empty. One wasn’t.

Camille approached it slowly, her breath catching.

Inside was a body.

Small. Preserved. Marked.

Magnolia looked away.

"She didn’t make it," Subject 1 said. "They tried to fix the bond flaw by fusing it with mimic marrow. It didn’t hold."

Camille’s hands curled. "Why keep her here?"

"To remember. To remind. And to wait."

"For what?"

Subject 1’s eyes met hers. "You."

The chamber pulsed.

Somewhere above them, the seal stones began to flicker.

Camille felt it ripple through her chest.

"They know we’re here," she said.

Subject 1 nodded. "Good."

Camille stared at the old cradle, at the broken bones beneath the metal. "What happens now?"

"You end it. Burn it. Take what’s left of this place and scatter it to ash."

Camille looked at Magnolia, who gave a short nod.

"You really want to destroy the last proof of who we are?"

"No," Camille said. "I want to destroy the proof of what they tried to make us into."

She turned, lifted her hand, and whispered the ignition phrase.

The cradle caught fire.

So did the room.

The glyphs along the walls burned red-hot, unraveling as Camille and Magnolia turned to run. Subject 1 walked calmly behind them, never flinching.

They didn’t stop until they were back in the seal chamber, flames licking the stairs behind them, smoke curling from the tunnels below.

Camille turned to Subject 1.

"What will you do now?"

"Disappear," she said. "I’ve been a ghost long enough to know how."

Camille nodded once.

And then Subject 1 stepped into the shadows.

Gone.

Camille turned toward Magnolia, her voice low.

"It’s done."

Magnolia shook her head. "No. It’s just begun."