Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)
Chapter 398 - 392: The Shard’s World (1)

Chapter 398: Chapter 392: The Shard’s World (1)

Gabriel’s breath was steady only because he forced it to be. The dull thrum in his veins and the faint drag of weakness through his muscles told him this wasn’t a clean memory. It wasn’t a dream he could wake from with a curse and a breathless laugh.

He was drawn into something ancient and unfinished by the living shard.

Olivier’s gloved fingers lingered against Gabriel’s neck, brushing the skin just above the bond mark Damian had left. The touch was deceptively gentle, a drag of leather over sensitive skin, intimate in a way that did not belong to the man Gabriel had buried years ago. The pressure wasn’t enough to hurt, not yet, but it was enough to pin him in place, enough to tell him that whatever this was would not let him simply drift free.

Gabriel’s breath caught, sharp in his chest. The air here was heavy, tasting faintly of iron and incense, the shadows at the edge of the room too deep, too still. His senses felt muted, as though his body was wrapped in thick fabric, but every brush of Olivier’s hand landed like fire. His own pulse drummed hard in his ears, the sound of it louder than the subtle hum that threaded through the walls, a rhythm that didn’t match his heartbeat.

Olivier shifted effortlessly, a movement so close it stole what little space Gabriel had left. The mattress dipped under new weight as Olivier’s knee pressed between Gabriel’s legs, a steadying intrusion that locked Gabriel in place. Gabriel could feel the heat of him through layers of fabric, panic coiling in his gut.

His breath hitched again when Olivier leaned in, so close that the whisper of his breath brushed the shell of Gabriel’s ear, warm, intimate, and entirely wrong. The faint scent of him, leather, cold metal, and something floral that had no business surviving six years, curled around Gabriel’s senses like smoke, familiar and alien all at once.

"Did you think I wouldn’t get my revenge?" Olivier’s voice was low, threaded with a terrible softness that cut deeper than any shout. His grip at Gabriel’s neck tightened, fingers pressing directly over the bond mark Damian had left, possessive and bruising. "You were made for me, tailored to be the perfect consort... but you chose another man."

Gabriel’s chest rose sharply, breath catching as the pressure increased, sending a jolt of cold awareness down his spine.

Olivier’s smile was close enough to feel. "I was too good with you," he murmured, words spilling like venom wrapped in silk. "I waited for you to be of age, to be ready, to be... matured." His thumb pressed harder against the mark, and Gabriel felt the heat of it, a sharp ache beneath his skin. "I should have taken you when your first heat came."

Gabriel’s pulse spiked, each word threading through him like a blade twisting deep‑set scars. The shard’s hum grew louder, while the room itself seemed to contract, the air pressing in from every angle until his breath came shallow and sharp. For the first time in years, panic clawed at the edges of his composure, cold and jagged.

Olivier’s thumb dug in harder against the bond mark, his voice a low, reverent whisper that felt like a noose tightening.

"Now... in my world, you would be mine at last." His breath ghosted Gabriel’s ear, intimate as a knife’s edge. "Let’s take you back. Back before those betraying thoughts ever started to grow."

The floor beneath Gabriel’s bare feet seemed to ripple, the light in the room bending as if sucked inward. His fingers clutched at the bedding instinctively, but the fabric dissolved into shadow and sound. A rush of vertigo hit him, pulling him down through a current of ether that wasn’t his, dragging him deeper.

The walls blurred, colors breaking apart like shards of glass caught in a storm.

Memories flashed, chaotic, fast, bright, until they slammed into a single frame.

He was standing in a corridor lit by lanterns that burned steadier than his breath. The air smelled faintly of smoke and old paper. His coat sleeves were too long and too new, and his hands... they were smaller, his calluses faded. He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the polished glass of a nearby cabinet... young. His hair was shoulder length, just like it was when he was eighteen.

Olivier’s world had shifted around him, wrapping him in the skin of his younger self.

But Gabriel didn’t move, didn’t falter. Because Olivier, or whatever was left of him, had made a mistake.

He didn’t forget.

Gabriel’s fingers flexed at his sides, his mind cutting through the haze with the precision of a blade honed by years. He remembered being fifteen. He remembered the first unease, the first doubt, and the first time Olivier’s smile had felt like a trap instead of a promise.

And now, even as the shard dragged him backward, he stood very still in that eighteen‑year‑old frame, breathing carefully. Slowly, he raised a hand to the back of his neck, fingers brushing over skin that shouldn’t, couldn’t, bear any claim in this memory.

But it was there.

Damian’s mark.

Faintly warm, steady as a heartbeat, etched deeper than flesh, burned into his soul, his mind, his body. Something the shard couldn’t erase. Not something Olivier, or whatever this thing wearing his face had become, could touch.

Gabriel let out a slow breath, steadying the tremor in his chest. He could feel the hum of the shard trying to blur the edges of his will, trying to make him forget. But the mark anchored him, a reminder stronger than Olivier’s whisper, stronger than the false corridors and flickering lanterns.

’I know what I did,’ he reminded himself, pressing his palm harder against his nape until the sting sharpened his focus.

’I know exactly what this is.’

Hadeon’s shard of Olivier’s soul, this twisted echo, wasn’t free. It was tethered. Linked across leagues to the one buried deep beneath the palace grounds, fused into the Empire’s heart by Damian’s own ether.

Gabriel’s jaw tightened, his breath low and even as he pushed back the rising tide of panic.

That tether won’t hold forever. The palace wards are already eating at it. Time is running out.

He straightened, eyes narrowing on the flickering corridor around him, the false world Olivier’s shard was trying to weave tight around his mind.

"All you’ve done," he whispered to the silence, to the shard that pulsed like a distant heartbeat, "is remind me how little time you have left."