Free Web NovelChapter 113: Soul Bind [FIXED!][17/06!]
Jason stared into the minion’s black eyes.
The creature’s body was still pinned beneath his grip, its throat crushed, its limbs twitching uselessly against the cracked stone. The crater around them smoked faintly, dust still settling in the air.
Their eyes met.
And the minion began to experience visions of its death.
Not memories. Not warnings. Visions—vivid, absolute, inescapable. It saw itself impaled on roots. Saw its scales flayed from its body. Saw its essence consumed by the very lord it served. Each death was more horrific than the last, each one shown in excruciating detail.
The minion’s black eyes widened. Its mouth opened, but no sound came out.
"This should be impossible," it whispered, its voice cracking. "You are not... you cannot be..."
Jason’s expression did not change. His grip did not loosen.
The minion’s heart gave out.
Its chest seized. Its eyes rolled back. Its body went limp in Jason’s grasp, lifeless before it even hit the ground. The trauma of those visions—the sheer weight of witnessing its own death a hundred times over—had been too much for it to bear.
Jason released his grip. The corpse slumped to the stone.
"Hm," Jason said, tilting his head. "So that’s how that works."
He turned to face Ylva and Mae. His smile was cold, and disconnected. Like he was looking at them from a unfamiliar lens, through a fog that they could not penetrate.
Ylva opened her mouth to speak but quickly closed upon realizing it would be pointless.
Mae kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Her hooves scraped against the stone. Something told her—something primal and instinctive—that silence was for the best.
The ant king lay in Mae’s arms, his tiny chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. His missing arm had not regrown but that must be because he didn’t have the energy to, his hibernation was still deep.
Jason stepped past them, his boots crunching against the broken stone. He did not look back.
"We need to move," he said. "I have to reach the lord before he finishes eating those souls."
Ylva finally found her voice. "Jason—"
"If he absorbs them completely, it won’t matter that the Marrow is falling apart." Jason’s voice was flat. Empty. "Nothing will restrict him from using his full power. And when that happens..."
Jason paused for a second, there was no reason or way for him to know this. frёewebηovel.cѳm
How did he know about this information despite not being told, he proceeded to look at the corpse of the thing he had just killed.
It was easy to kill it without guilt because they weren’t humans so it was the same justification one would have killing a bug.
He paused. Turned his head slightly.
Luckily, they weren’t questioning him because they could now trust Jason with their safety which meant it came with that respect to follow his lead.
"We won’t survive if he does," Jason said.
Did the lord establish some kind of link to Jason were information flowed both ways?
Ylva’s ears flattened. Her claws retracted. She wanted to question what he was talking about, to reach out, to pull him back from whatever edge he was teetering on.
But she didn’t.
Because she saw it in his eyes. The weight of everything he had done. The watcher. The lord. The minion. The power that was pouring into him, changing him, making him something that she didn’t fully recognize.
She trusted him enough to protect them now.
It didn’t need to be the other way around anymore.
Jason continued walking, the roots parting before him, the darkness swallowing his silhouette.
Ylva and Mae followed in silence.
-
Maldred felt the change the moment it happened.
His senses, sharp as they were, registered the absence. A void where there had once been a connection. His minion—the creature he had sent to track the intruder—was gone.
"Dead."
The realization struck him like a physical blow. He had felt his minion’s fear, its confusion, its desperate attempt to flee. And then nothing. Complete, absolute silence.
"This should not be possible but it has happened" He noted calmly.
That minion was one of his strongest. A creature forged from the marrow of the Marrow itself, immune to most forms of harm, capable of regenerating from wounds that would kill lesser beings. For it to die—to be killed—meant something had changed.
Maldred’s eyes narrowed. His claws dug into the armrests of his throne.
"The lord was not put to sleep."
The realization cascaded through his mind like an avalanche. The Marrow was unstable because the lord of vines had found a way to remain awake. Not by overpowering Maldred, but by circumventing the barrier entirely.
And now, his minion was dead.
Maldred’s jaw tightened. He had lost time—precious time—believing he had won. But he had not won. The battle was still raging, and he was still vulnerable.
"I need to consume this soul. Now."
The Marrow was no longer trying to force him into slumber. The barrier had destabilized, its attention divided, its focus scattered. That meant he could consume the soul at a much faster pace. No more sluggish digestion. No more resistance.
He reached into the void of his consciousness and grabbed the fragment of Tauriel’s soul.
It dissolved instantly.
The elven witch’s essence was stripped away, her memories, her power, her very existence erased. Maldred felt her fade, felt her become part of him, felt the small boost of strength her soul provided.
It was done in an instant.
But when he searched for Thalion’s soul—his son’s essence—he could not find it.
"Strange."
He knew it was still inside him. He could feel the faint pulse of it, the distant echo of his son’s consciousness. But it had hidden itself. Burrowed deep into the recesses of his mind, beyond his immediate reach.
"He is hiding from me."
Thalion had managed to escape his father’s notice, even if only temporarily. He knew it would not last. He knew his father would eventually find him, root him out, and consume him completely.
But for now, he was safe.
For now, he had a little more time.
Thalion drifted in the darkness, holding onto the fragment of his own existence. The sibling’s words echoed in his mind—the brother who had found a way. The brother who had been consumed but had retained a piece of his consciousness.
There is a way to trap him, the sibling had said. But I do not know where I will go when I am free.
Thalion clung to that hope.
Even if his body was gone, even if his soul was trapped, he would find a way.
He had to but Jason had a mountain to climb because Maldred had sent over thirty of his minionw to watch the perimeter around them.
-
Chapter Continuation – The Severance
Tauriel’s eyes rolled back.
The screaming stopped. The convulsing ceased. Her body went limp, collapsing onto the marble floor like a puppet with its strings cut. The fragment of her soul—the piece she had carelessly embedded in Thalion’s neck—was gone. Consumed by something ancient and hungry.
And Tauriel had never known such magic existed.
She had assumed the spell was a simple monitoring charm. A way to watch, to track, to control. She had used it countless times before, on lesser creatures, on disposable subjects. Never once had it backfired.
But this was different. This was the Marrow. This was a lord. And the connection she had forged was not a leash—it was a doorway.
And now, the lord was pulling at the main source of that soul.
Her soul.
Souls were linked, even in fragments. The magic that allowed her to watch through Thalion’s eyes also bound her essence to his. And when the lord consumed the fragment, he did not just sever the connection.
He pulled.
Tauriel’s body lay motionless, her breath shallow, her pulse weak. But her mind—her consciousness—was elsewhere. Trapped in a void of darkness and pain, screaming silently as her very essence was tugged toward something vast and hungry.
The female elves around her panicked.
"My lady! My lady, wake up!" One of the elf screamed at the top of her lungs, clearly panicking and who could blame her?
This was not something one sees everyday.
"What do we do? The healers—" Another elf panicked as they knew there was nothing they could do for Tauriel deep down.
"Healers can’t fix this! This is soul magic!" One of the more experienced elves called out.
They milled about, their pale faces twisted with fear, their hands wringing uselessly. They had never seen Tauriel like this. The all-powerful ruler who had commanded them for decades, who had tortured and bred and killed without hesitation, now lay broken at their feet. On the verge of death as her pulse weakened with every second, this was one of the strongest creatures in existence or rather, encountered.
But the queen remained calm.
Her silver hair cascaded down her back. Her white robes brushed the floor. Her pale eyes—cold and ancient—studied Tauriel’s convulsing form with something that might have been pity. The queen was cold, she looked at Tauriel and knew she didn’t have long before her body gave out.
She knew exactly what was happening,.the look in her eyes said just that.
She had seen this before. She had done this before. The magic that connected souls, that bound fragment to source, was not unfamiliar to her. It was the reason she had disappeared for twenty years.
Not because she didn’t wish to return.
But because she couldn’t.
The queen raised her hand. The elves fell silent, their fear palpable.
"Stand back," she commanded.
They obeyed.
The queen knelt beside Tauriel’s body. She drew a small blade from her robes—ancient, bone-handled, etched with symbols that predated the elven kingdoms. She pressed the blade to her palm and sliced.
Blood welled up, dark and thick. The queen did not flinch. She pressed her bleeding hand to the floor and began to draw.
A circle. Intricate. Complex. Lines of blood that wove together, forming patterns that seemed to shift and writhe as she drew them. Symbols that had not been used in centuries. Runes that had been forbidden by every elven council that ever existed.
One of the elves gasped.
"D-Dark magic," she whispered, her voice trembling. "That is... that is..."
The queen did not look up. Her hand moved with practiced precision, tracing lines that would sever the connection between Tauriel and the lord before it could consume her entirely.
Dark magic was the worst of the worst. Even among those who had been rejected by the main house—even among the exiles and the outcasts—this was considered taboo. The kind of magic that left scars on the soul. The kind that could never be undone.
The elves stared at their queen like she was a monster.
She did not care.
She began to chant.
The words were old. Older than the Marrow. Older than the lords. They came from a time when magic was not divided into light and dark, but into necessary and unnecessary. And this was necessary. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
"Soul torn from flesh, I call thee back.
Thread severed, I break thy track.
From vessel to source, from source to void,
This bond I shatter, this link destroyed."
The blood circle flared. Crimson light pulsed around Tauriel’s body. The queen’s voice grew louder, more insistent, the words layering upon themselves like waves crashing against a shore.
"By blood I bind, by will I sever,
The fragment returns, the whole lives ever.
No more shall the void lay claim to thee,
This I command: so mote it be."
Tauriel’s body arched off the floor. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. The blood circle blazed so brightly that the elves had to shield their eyes.
The connection was being severed and the queen was pouring everything into saving Tauriel, an act that didn’t go unnoticed by the other elves around her.
