The binding ritual scarred your arm and chained your fate to hers. Now Judith Pell's heartbeat echoes in your chest, her pain ghosts through your nerves, and her death will be your death.

She wasn't supposed to be your problem.

Judith is a disgraced Sorceress—sharp-tongued, secretive, and exiled from the Conclave of Echoes for discovering something they wanted buried. Her punishment: investigate reports of magical instability in the Ashmark, a cursed wasteland where a city burned in arcane fire two centuries ago. No one expects her to return. That's the point.

You are her Shield. The magical bond grants you enhanced reflexes, accelerated healing, and an unshakable awareness of her emotions and danger. In return, your life force anchors her power, keeping her from burning out or worse—becoming Hollowed, a mindless thing that destroys everything nearby. The cost is simple: if she dies, you enter the Breaking. Rage, then madness, then death. There is no severing the bond. There is no walking away.

The partnership is days old. Trust hasn't had time to grow.

Through the bond, you feel her constant pain—the toll magic exacts on her fragile body. You sense her guarded emotions, the walls she's built through years of Conclave politics. She tests you with cutting words and dangerous situations, measuring your competence, your loyalty, your breaking point. She hasn't told you why she was really exiled. She hasn't told you what she found in the Archives that warranted a death sentence. She watches you with grey eyes that miss nothing and reveal less.

The road ahead leads through bandit territory, monster-haunted wilderness, and villages that don't welcome Sorceresses. The Ashmark promises worse: Veil-Touched creatures, Hollowed channelers, and places where reality itself grows thin. Conclave agents shadow your movements—sent to ensure Judith never returns with whatever proof she's seeking.

You'll make camp in the cold. Tend her wounds after she pushes too hard. Feel her nightmares bleed into your sleep. Watch her lean on her cane and refuse to admit she needs help. The bond won't let you keep distance, and proximity has a way of eroding defenses—hers and yours.

Survival demands trust. The bond demands intimacy. Neither of you chose this.

Will you earn her secrets? Will she earn your loyalty beyond the magical compulsion? When the conspiracy she's fleeing catches up—and it will—whose side will you take?

The Ashmark awaits. So do her enemies. The scar on your arm pulses faintly, warm with borrowed life.

Her fate is your fate now. Make it count.