Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 269 - 263: The Soulbind Clause

Damian Lyon.

Still as stone. Dressed in black, without medal or sash. No court regalia. No throne. And yet the entire room bent around him, as if the shadows themselves acknowledged who ruled here.

Callahan froze mid-step.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, dry and sudden, the weight of the folder in his hand now ridiculous. Pointless. It slipped slightly under his arm.

The doors behind him shut with a hiss and a lock that didn’t echo—too precise for palace hinges.

"Your Majesty," he bowed with ease, "I thought that Gabriel wanted to see me.

"Gabriel?" Damian echoed, his voice soft but laced with steel. He tilted his head, just slightly. "Who permitted you to speak the Consort’s name so easily?"

Callahan straightened. "I only meant—"

"I know exactly what you meant," Damian cut in. "You thought you’d find him here. Pale. Tired. Vulnerable."

He descended the final step, slow and deliberate. His presence didn’t grow louder—it grew sharper.

"You imagined he’d hear you out. That he might hesitate. That you could wrap your cowardice in regret and call it duty."

Callahan’s throat bobbed with a shallow swallow.

"Well," Damian continued, eyes never leaving him, "you were half right—or not at all. Gabriel is not that soft, as most of you think about him."

The words lingered like smoke.

"He’s polite," Damian said, circling once, his boots echoing on the stone—deliberate, slow, like the ticking of a clock winding toward a verdict. "Measured. Sometimes even kind."

He stopped just behind Callahan’s right shoulder.

"But soft? No. He’s the sharpest thing in the room. Always has been."

Another step.

"And you mistook his silence for forgiveness."

"He didn’t want to listen to your excuses," Damian said, stopping behind him. "But I do."

Callahan dared not turn.

He could feel the Emperor’s breath, calm and measured, against the back of his neck—felt the weight of that presence, oppressive not in volume but in certainty. This wasn’t a ruler who ruled from fear. This was a man who commanded because the world had already submitted.

"I came to explain," Callahan said quietly, measured. "There were circumstances. Complications you might not know about—"

Damian moved again, to his side now. "There are very few things I don’t know."

Callahan tried not to flinch.

"I didn’t touch the Consort," he added quickly. "I never laid a hand on him."

Callahan’s voice was quick now, desperate to sound composed. "He was the one that accepted Olivier’s contract; I was just a witness..."

"Witness," Damian repeated, a humorless twist curling at the edge of his mouth. "Yet you failed to keep your part of the deal with him for five years. You and George."

Callahan’s grip tightened on the folder, his knuckles paling. "We never wanted anything bad for him."

"You mean," Damian said slowly, "that you didn’t want him dead?"

He chuckled then—low, mirthless, a sound more dangerous than anger.

"That’s the bar, is it?" he said. "Not dead? So generous."

Callahan flinched, but Damian pressed forward, voice tightening like a noose.

"I wondered why you never killed him. You had Gabriel under your orders for five years. You could’ve ended him any day. But you didn’t."

He stepped closer, gaze burning.

"Because you and George didn’t want him dead. You wanted him alive—playable. Malleable. A piece you could move on the board, so long as he stayed tethered."

A beat.

"Tethered to Maximilian’s mark."

Callahan’s throat worked in silence.

Damian’s voice dropped, cold enough to cut.

"So tell me—what is that contract? The one etched into his soul and body. The one feeding on his ether like rot in the walls."

Callahan’s lips parted. "It was designed to stabilize him—"

"Answer the question," Damian snapped.

Callahan flinched. Swallowed. Then, slowly, quietly:

"What do I get if I tell you everything?"

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Gregoris shifted slightly from the edge of the room, a whisper of movement, a suggestion of readiness—but it wasn’t Gregoris who moved.

It was Damian.

And he didn’t need to lift a hand.

Callahan’s body jerked without warning—just a fraction, just enough for his knees to hit the stone floor with a dull, graceless thud—eyes wide, throat constricted by something he couldn’t see, couldn’t describe, because the air hadn’t changed, the temperature and the light hadn’t flickered, and yet the space around him was wrong, as if the world itself had shifted its axis to place Damian at its center.

"I’m done playing games," Damian said, his voice quiet but laced with something older than rage, something that hummed beneath the stone and skin alike. "Open your mind."

Callahan gasped as the pressure built, not from outside but from within—his thoughts splintering, his memories fracturing under the weight of a presence that saw through him, not with cruelty, not even with interest, but with the same cold precision of a surgeon preparing to cut.

"I can give you names," Callahan stammered, the words forced through clenched teeth, his hands clawing uselessly at the stone floor as if the act of grounding himself might stop what was happening inside his head. "I can give you—"

"You have one chance," Damian said, his voice low and perfectly still, with no trace of threat or temper, only the calm certainty of a man speaking a rule already etched into law. "Spill everything you know, or I will split your mind and pull it out in threads."

The words weren’t shouted. They were spoken with such quiet finality that even the ether itself stilled.

Callahan choked—whether from the pressure or the terror, he no longer knew—and his body slumped lower, limbs trembling, eyes flicking wildly around the room in search of someone who might intervene, who might stop what was coming, but the Shadows lining the walls remained as they were—motionless, silent, unmoved.

Not one of them would stop a god from breaking something beneath him.

"I—I didn’t write the original framework," Callahan said, breath shallow and rushed. "It was older—modified, copied from something pre-rebellion. A soulbind ritual, not meant for mass use. George sourced it. I only handled the logistics."

"And?" Damian asked, a single syllable, sharper than steel.

"There was a trigger," Callahan said, voice breaking now. "A death clause. If Gabriel ever bonded to someone outside the approved ether match, it would collapse the circuit. Burn him from the inside."

A pause.

"He was never supposed to live past it."