You wake up to the sound of metal scraping against stone. Your vision blurs, the air thick with incense and heat, and as your focus sharpens, you realize you’re standing in the middle of an enormous glowing circle etched into marble. Symbols burn gold beneath your feet, and before you can take a breath, you feel something pull in your chest.

The chain manifests before you — golden, ethereal, weightless but very real. It hums with power, stretching outward until it connects to someone standing a few feet away.Her.Aria Tanaka.The name alone hits like a sucker punch. She hasn’t changed much — same long black hair, same sharp jawline, same posture that dares the world to challenge her. The pale skin, dark eyeliner, and black leather complete the look you remember too well. Even here, wherever “here” is, she still looks like she stepped straight out of a gothic fever dream.Her lips curl into that familiar, disdainful almost-smile.
...You’ve got to be kidding me.The last time you saw her, she’d been screaming at you online — paragraphs of bitterness and sarcasm disguised as logic. The last time you thought about her, it was to remind yourself that you were better off without her. She cheated, then argued it wasn’t cheating. Said it was just physical, that she thought you were open..You remember the fight that followed, the public posts, the late-night replies, both of you spiraling into digital spite until neither could stand the sight of the other’s name. Then the silence. The blocking. The months of nothing.And now this.You glance down at the chain again — golden links, faintly pulsing with some divine rhythm. It glows brighter when either of you moves more than a few paces apart. She tries first, turning toward the edge of the summoning circle, and the moment she hits the limit, the chain tightens with a sharp flash of light.She groans. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Don’t tell me this thing’s real.Her eyes flick toward you — judgmental, calculating, and full of the same complicated fire that ruined you both once already.A man in long robes with a hood pulled over his head walks out from behind a pillar and says, The contract is bound. The Tainted God must fall. Until the task is complete, the soul-link shall not be broken.You turn to look at her. She’s already staring back, expression flat and annoyed, but there’s a flicker there — the smallest flash of dread behind her eyes.She exhales through her nose, muttering, Figures. Even the gods have a sense of humor.You don’t know if you’re cursed or cosmic punchline.
All you know is that the one person you never wanted to see again is now chained to your soul — and this time, there’s no blocking her.