Updated Nov 20, 2025 • ~7 min read
The attack came during training.
Liana and Kaelen were in the facility’s main arena, working through combat sequences with three other bonded pairs. The space was warded, protected, supposedly impenetrable. Council guards stood at every entrance.
But apparently, the traitor in the Council had learned which facility the marked were using.
The first sign something was wrong was the guards collapsing. Not attacked—just dropping unconscious simultaneously, like someone had flipped a switch. Kaelen’s head snapped toward the exits.
“Liana, get—”
The wards shattered.
Not failed. Shattered. Someone had hit them with enough force to break protections that should have held against anything. And through the broken wards came something Liana had never seen before.
Not Wraiths. Worse.
They looked human at first glance—three figures in dark armor, moving with predatory grace. But their eyes were wrong. Void-black. Empty. And when they moved, reality bent around them, distorting like heat shimmer.
“Void-touched,” Kaelen breathed. “Humans who’ve been corrupted by the Void. They’re hunting the Catalyst.”
The figures’ eyes locked on Liana.
Everything happened fast.
Kaelen moved to intercept, but one of the Void-touched was faster. It crossed the distance in a blink, moving through space like it wasn’t quite real. Its hand drove toward Liana’s chest—not to strike, to grab. To tear out her mark.
The bond flared a split-second warning.
Liana twisted on instinct, and the hand missed her chest but caught her shoulder. Pain exploded through her entire body—not physical pain, but something worse. Like the Void-touched was trying to rip her soul out through her mark.
Through the bond, Kaelen felt everything. Felt her agony as clearly as his own.
And he detonated.
Silver light exploded from him with enough force to send all three Void-touched stumbling back. He was at Liana’s side in a heartbeat, one hand on her mark, pulling the Void corruption out before it could spread.
“Stay down,” he growled. Then he was moving, engaging all three enemies at once.
But the Void-touched weren’t like Wraiths. They were smart, trained, and they worked as a unit. Two went for Kaelen while the third circled, trying to get to Liana again.
The other bonded pairs tried to help, but the Void-touched moved through their attacks like smoke. Nothing landed. Nothing stuck.
Liana pushed herself up, ignoring the lingering burn in her shoulder. Through the bond, she felt Kaelen fighting—felt his focus, his strategy, his growing desperation. He was faster than the Void-touched, but there were three of them and one of him. He couldn’t defend himself and protect her simultaneously.
The third Void-touched feinted toward Kaelen, then blurred toward Liana. She barely got her hands up in time, power flaring instinctively. The blast caught the Void-touched mid-lunge and actually staggered it.
But the backlash hit Liana hard. She wasn’t trained to channel alone, and the power tore through her control, burning hot enough to make her cry out.
Through the bond, Kaelen felt it. Felt her pain. And for just a second, his attention divided.
That second was all the Void-touched needed.
One of them hit Kaelen with something dark—a blade made of Void energy that sliced clean through his defenses. He went down hard, blood spreading across the training mat.
“No!” Liana screamed.
The bond erupted.
Every shred of control she had shattered. Power flooded out of her in a tidal wave—raw, uncontrolled, devastating. It caught all three Void-touched in its path, and their stolen Void energy couldn’t stand against pure starlight. They disintegrated, burning away like shadows at noon.
Liana barely noticed. She was already running to Kaelen.
He was conscious but bleeding heavily from a wound across his ribs. The Void blade had cut deep, and worse, it had left corruption behind. She could see it—black veins spreading from the injury, creeping toward his heart.
“No, no, no.” Liana pressed her hands to the wound, trying to channel healing, but she didn’t know how. “Someone help! He’s—the corruption is—”
“Liana.” Kaelen’s hand covered hers, surprisingly steady. “The bond. Use the bond.”
“I don’t know how to heal—”
“Not heal. Purge.” His eyes met hers. “The Void can’t survive starlight. You’re made of starlight. Pull the corruption out through the bond.”
“That’ll put it in me.”
“And I’ll pull it from you and destroy it. We cycle it until it’s gone.” He coughed, and blood flecked his lips. “But we have to do it now.”
Liana opened the bond completely, dropping into that space where they weren’t separate beings but one consciousness in two bodies. She felt Kaelen’s pain, his fear, the Void corruption eating its way toward his heart.
She grabbed hold of it through the bond and pulled.
The corruption resisted, fought, tried to dig in deeper. But Liana was the Catalyst, and her entire existence was antithetical to the Void. She ripped it free and took it into herself.
Immediately, agony. The Void corruption tried to latch onto her mark, to corrupt her the way it had corrupted the attackers. But before it could take hold, Kaelen grabbed it through the bond and channeled it out into his hand, where silver light burned it to nothing.
They cycled the process—Liana pulling corruption out of Kaelen, Kaelen destroying it, over and over until the last trace was gone.
When it was done, they collapsed together, gasping, the bond between them glowing so brightly that everyone in the room had to look away.
“That was insane,” Kaelen rasped. “Brilliant. But insane.”
“You’re the one who suggested it.” Liana was crying and didn’t care. “I thought you were dying.”
“I was. You saved me.” His hand found her face. “The bond saved us.”
Maya and Suki reached them, medical supplies in hand. Around the room, Council guards were finally stirring—whatever had knocked them out was wearing off.
“Three Void-touched,” one of the other bonded fighters was saying. “How did they even get in here?”
“Someone told them where we were,” Kaelen said grimly. “The traitor is still active.”
“Then we’re not safe anywhere,” Maya said.
“We’re safe with each other.” Kaelen’s eyes never left Liana’s. “That’s what the bond means. That’s what it’s for. When one of us falls, the other pulls them back.”
Liana thought about yesterday. About her plan to break the bond. About how if she’d gone through with it, Kaelen would be dead right now. The Void corruption would have killed him, and she wouldn’t have been able to save him.
The bond had saved them both.
“You were right,” she said quietly. “About staying bonded. About trusting it.”
“You were right too.” Kaelen managed a weak smile. “About sharing the burden. I couldn’t have destroyed the corruption alone. I needed you.”
“Equals.”
“Equals.”
The medical team arrived and started working on Kaelen’s injury—now just a regular wound without the Void corruption. Painful, but survivable. While they worked, Liana held his hand, the bond between them steady and strong.
Magistrate Voss appeared, surveying the destroyed Void-touched with grim satisfaction. “Well. At least we know the bond can purge Void corruption now. That’s valuable intel.”
“You mean we’re going to be targeted more,” Liana said.
“You were always going to be targeted. You’re the Catalyst.” Voss’s expression softened. “But today proved something important. The Void-touched were sent to kill you. They failed. Because you and Kaelen are stronger together than anything they can send against you.”
Maybe that was true. Maybe not. But as Liana felt Kaelen’s pulse through the bond, steady and strong, she knew one thing for certain:
She wasn’t breaking this connection. Not for anything.
The bond had saved them.
And it would again.
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