Night weighed heavy over the Black Barrens, the land itself exhaling the stench of ruin. Ash clouds crawled across the moon, smothering its light until only Dahlia's branded glow lit the path—a faint silver pulse from beneath her skin. It wasn't a torch. It was a warning flare. Every time her pulse beat faster, the mark responded, burning like molten wire through her veins.
Damon kept their pace brutal. Every step cracked over slag, every breath dragged the metallic tang of broken sorcery down their throats. Behind them, the corpse of the Red Spire still belched smoke into the night sky. Ahead loomed something worse—the Black Barrens. No wolves hunted here. No birds dared nest. Even the wind seemed poisoned, carrying faint whispers that tugged at Dahlia's bones.
Two Ironsworn warriors trudged behind them, survivors from the chaos at the Spire. Veyra, broad-shouldered and scarred, had lost her entire pack two nights prior but carried their axes like vengeance itself. The other, Jareth, was young, his hands trembling each time the shadows moved, yet his loyalty to Damon made him follow without question.
"Varkis Gate," Damon said at last, pointing ahead.
It rose from the ash like an ancient wound: an arch of obsidian taller than any fortress, runes veined across its surface like glowing cracks in basalt skin. The air around it buzzed with static, charged with old spells. Dahlia could feel it—something in her mark answered.
"That's no road," Veyra muttered. "That's a graveyard's throat."
"It's both," Damon replied, voice sharp. "The Ash Road starts there. Shortcut through the Barrens—if we survive the toll."
Jareth swallowed. "What toll?"
Damon's eyes glinted as the Nullstone disc shimmered in his palm. "The Shades. They feed on blood and memory." His gaze cut to Dahlia. "Cloak us. Hide us from their eyes."
Her heart thudded. "I'm still learning."
"Then learn now. Or bleed."
The Gate hummed as they approached. Damon tossed the disc into the air, glyphs spiraling. The air tore open with a howl. Four Shades materialized—void figures rimmed with faint stars, faces as blank as black water. They spoke as one, a sound like dry leaves hissing:
"Name the tribute."
"Forged sigil. False key," Damon growled. "Let that suffice."
The Shades reached for the disc, claws of liquid night stretching.
Dahlia raised her hand. Silver light spiderwebbed from her skin, weaving into a shimmering cloak around them. For one blistering second, her veins burned as though fire ran instead of blood—but the Shade's gaze slid past them. Damon moved first. She followed, Veyra and Jareth close behind.
They sprinted beneath the arch.
The Shades screamed. The air fractured with a sound like breaking mirrors.
But the fugitives were already gone—swallowed by the Ash Road canyon.
---
The canyon pressed around them, glass cliffs fused by forgotten wars. Sparks of static buzzed with every step, making Jareth flinch with each pop. Veyra spat on the ground. "Feels like walking inside a storm's grave."
After an hour, the gorge widened. A battlefield sprawled before them, a graveyard of iron giants. War machines lay shattered and rusted, their husks looming like corpses of gods. Wind moaned through broken cannons. Metal bones jutted like ribs, casting shadows that looked too alive.
Damon stopped beneath the wing of a fallen mech. Blood seeped through his shoulder bandages. Dahlia's heart clenched.
"Let me see it," she said.
He didn't flinch as she drew her dagger, sterilizing it in a thread of moonfire. She dug silver shards from his flesh, the heat of her glow searing shut torn muscle. His jaw tightened, breath sharp.
"Feels like frost and lightning," he muttered.
"Better than infection," she replied, pressing her palm firm until the bleeding stilled.
For a heartbeat, silence stretched. Too raw. Too close.
"Why help me?" she asked finally, eyes refusing to leave his.
He looked past her, lost in memory. "Because they've done it before. The Order raided my pack's crypt. My father gave his life to save mine. I swore I'd burn them for it." His gaze sharpened. "So yes. I bought you. I expected leverage." His lips curved in a bitter smile. "I didn't expect Moonblood."
Her chest tightened, heat blooming—not just from anger. "Fate's an ass."
Lightning ripped the sky open. Shadows flickered along the canyon rim. Damon stiffened.
"Scouts."
Arrows hissed down. Veyra roared, her axes flashing silver as she deflected the first wave. Jareth ducked behind a broken engine, loosing bolts from a hand-crossbow. Damon shoved Dahlia forward, teeth bared.
"Run!"
They weaved between wrecks. A collapsed bridge blocked their path, its span broken and dangling over the void. Damon vaulted it clean. Dahlia leapt—too late. Metal shrieked, the bridge collapsing beneath her weight. She fell—
His hand caught her wrist. Muscles flexed. He hauled her up just as the bridge plummeted into the abyss. For a second, their faces hovered close. Her breath hitched.
Shouts echoed. Scouts closing in.
"Move!" Damon snapped, dragging her into a maintenance chute. They slid through darkness, crashing into a chute below. The chute spat them into a hollow pipe slick with rust and filth. Damon landed crouched, dragging Dahlia beside him. Above, the shouts grew louder—scouts swarming, steel on stone. We can't hold here, Jareth hissed, blood streaking his jaw. There's too many. Veyra pressed her back to the pipe wall, blade trembling in her grip. If we stand, we die. Then we don't stand, Damon snarled. His eyes burned in the dark, wolf-bright. We move.
They tore through the tunnels, weaving past dead rails and fungus-lit chambers. Shadows hunted their heels, claws scraping, hymns rising. Every turn tightened the noose. At the last fork, Damon veered hard. This way—out! The pipe split open into night. Cold rain slammed their faces as they tumbled into the woods beyond. Behind them, the tunnel howled with pursuit. They ran until their lungs broke, until their legs threatened collapse. Only when Valemont's spires clawed the horizon did Damon slow, chest heaving, fury simmering beneath the sweat.
Veyra stumbled into the courtyard first. Her twin, Marlow, rushed from the steps, arms flinging around her. "By the gods—Veyra!" His voice cracked, half-scolding, half-relieved. You shouldn't have gone. I had to, she rasped, clutching him tighter than pride allowed. Damon dragged Dahlia past them both, bloodied, silent, eyes always scanning the treeline. He didn't believe the danger was done.
And he was right.
That night, the manor walls quaked. A new presence stalked the storm. Sareth himself had come, leading a host of Hollow scouts who dared trespass Valemont's soil, their hymn already seeping through the stone.
---
The manor itself seemed alive that night, walls breathing with faint pulses of red as though the heart of something vast beat beneath the stone. Every torch guttered, shadows rising longer, sharper, and hungrier. Even Sareth faltered mid-step, his staff trembling as if the wood remembered ancient flames.
Dahlia clutched her arm where the burning brand spread, the veins glowing faintly with molten crimson. Damon's hands hovered, uncertain whether to touch her or restrain her. His eyes flickered with that ruthless wolf-light, torn between fury at the unseen hand behind this curse and fear of breaking her completely.
The twins, Marlow and Veyra, scrambled from the hall—Marlow muttering counter-charms, Veyra sketching protective glyphs in the air with a dagger-tip. Yet each mark fizzled, erased by some greater unseen will.
Then came the first whisper. It did not echo in the air but in bone, marrow, soul. A thousand voices braided into one, hissing through every corner of Valemont: Hollow Psalmists… hollow psalmists… blood sings, gates open. The manor doors slammed shut as if nailed by invisible iron. Windows blackened. The storm outside collapsed into silence too sudden, too complete.
Sareth roared a spell that shattered stone—yet even his power was swallowed. The runes on Dahlia's skin writhed into a spiral that pulsed once, twice… then lashed outward. The wave knocked Damon and the others sprawling, driving them back with a force that tasted like smoke and iron.
And Dahlia… she rose. Not by her own strength, but as though unseen hands had lifted her into the air, hair writhing like a living veil. Her lips moved, but the voice that came out was not her own.It was older. It was layered. It was the sound of a forgotten choir drowning in its own hymn. … one vessel… flesh unbound… the blood of Shadow, the blood of Moon…
Every flame died. Every soul in the hall froze. Even Damon, ruthless Alpha, unflinching in battle, felt the weight of a presence that did not belong in this world pressing down on his chest.
And Dahlia's eyes opened—glowing with twin crescents of pale fire.
---
The chamber quaked as Sareth's chant bled through the air, a hollow hymn grinding against marrow and soul. The runes flared, bleeding pale fire that stank of ash and void. My lungs constricted, my pulse fracturing into a rhythm not my own. Damon's grip clamped around my wrist, steadying me, yet the ground itself felt like it would give way beneath us.
From the center of the circle, the ritual answered. Shadows spiraled, a cyclone of broken echoes, until they clotted together into a form both knightly and blasphemous. A helm without a face, hollow eyes burning with inverted flame. Armor blackened and cracked, yet wreathed in smoke that wept the screams of souls. A sword too large to wield in mortal hands dragged itself into being, scraping across the stones, carving grooves of lightless fire.
The Wraith Knight had risen—an abomination, forged not of flesh or steel, but of hunger itself. Each movement of its colossal frame carried a sound like chains dragged across a graveyard.
My veins sang in protest. The Mark beneath my skin pulsed, hot, alive, as if the Hollow Psalmists themselves were clawing to break through me. Damon's aura flared, his shadow rising with the fury of his oath, but even his iron-wrought calm faltered as the Wraith Knight stepped forward. Sareth's voice tore through the roar of collapsing air. "You will not leave here alive, Valemont. This is the last chamber you'll ever breathe in. The Hollow Order claims her blood tonight."
Damon's growl rattled the walls, low and thunderous. "You'll find I don't share my possessions. And she is mine."
The Wraith Knight lifted its sword, smoke boiling off the blade in waves. Damon moved before it could fall, dragging me into the fracture of shadow his oath conjured—yet even the dark bent beneath the creature's weight, bending like warped glass. My heart hammered. The air tasted of soot and lightning. And I realized, in that moment, this wasn't just a battle. It was the unmaking of everything I thought safe. The Hollow Order had shown us their hand—ritual, blood, abomination—and we had barely begun to bleed.
The sanctuary floor burned beneath us, Wraith Knight shadow stretching like an omen across the cracked obsidian tiles. My veins still pulsed with the echo of Damon's mark, binding me, branding me, making every heartbeat feel as though it belonged to him. Yet around us, the world tilted toward ruin.
Damon's beta, Lucian's bow sang again, another arrow of ash-fire slamming into the beast's eye. The Wraith Knight shrieked, and the air smelled of singed bone. Sareth staggered forward, robes shredded, muttering prayers in a tongue not meant for human throats. The sound alone made my blood taste like smoke.
The Hollow knights surged through the cracks in the sanctuary walls—black-armored wraiths, their visors dripping molten tears. One struck Mira down, another one of Damon's beta, her sword clattering as she cried out. Damon was already there, claws ripping the Hollow knight in half, his snarl echoing like a storm breaking through steel. For a heartbeat, the only thing I could do was watch him. Ruthless. Terrifying. Mine.
But then the Wraith Knight breath gathered—a furnace of soul-flame, ready to end us all. My mark burned. My body moved before thought could catch it. I threw myself forward, palms spread against the broken runes on the floor. The glyphs blazed, light pouring through my skin, and the Wraith Knight faltered mid-roar as if seized by unseen chains. The glyphs weren't only ancient carvings—they were veins of power, waiting for blood. My blood.
Damon's gaze cut to me, fury and fear locked together. Dahlia—stop! His voice thundered across the bond.
But it was too late. The sanctuary itself answered me.
The walls wept black fire, the ash-runes swirled, and the Hollow knights shrieked as if torn apart by invisible claws. The Wraith Knight buckled, one hand pinned against the ceiling, its heart exposed like a burning jewel in its chest. Damon leapt, silver flame sheathing his blade, and drove it straight into the creature's heart.
The explosion drowned the world.
For a moment, I thought we had died—swept into ash and silence. Then, through the haze, I felt him. Damon's hand crushing mine, anchoring me back to life. His chest heaved with blood and fire, his lips at my ear, whispering a vow that seared deeper than the brand beneath my skin.
You will not burn alone.
When the smoke cleared, the Wraith Knight's body was nothing but ember shards dissolving into the night. The sanctuary was a grave of firelight, every survivor collapsed or crawling through rubble. Mira coughed blood but lived. Lucian staggered, one eye blind, still gripping his bow. Marlow and Veyra collapsed, smiles in awe, they couldn't believed we just won the fight. Jareth sat in one corner breathing heavily. Sareth slumped by the altar, his prayers unfinished.
But the mark on my body pulsed brighter than ever, alive, as though the Wraith Knight's death had fed it. And when Damon's eyes met mine—red as stormfire—I knew the true terror had only just begun.
---
The night burned with an unnatural stillness, and I felt it before I heard it—low whispers threading through the trees, syllables that tasted of rust and bone. The Hollow Hymn. Their cursed litany. Every note seemed to gnaw at the marrow of the earth itself, and though I tried to steady my breath, the words clung to my skin like frost.
Figures moved in the shadows ahead, hooded, faceless, and swaying in unison. The Hollow Psalmists. Their voices were hollowed-out vessels, echoing not from lungs but from something older and hungrier that sang through them. The air trembled, and even the moon seemed to recoil, dimming behind a veil of storm.
Damon's hand caught my wrist—iron-hard, dragging me close as though the sound might devour me if I strayed. His eyes weren't on me, though; they were locked on the Psalmists as their hymn climbed higher, a spiraling chain of syllables that bled power into the ground. I felt the soil quake beneath our boots. Roots split. Ash rose in silent bursts, drifting like snow from graves long forgotten.
A torch flared, then another, revealing what they had circled: a stone altar, carved with runes that seemed to pulse with the beat of their voices. And on that altar lay a body—or perhaps what was left of one—bound in chains that looked forged from shadow itself. Its chest rose, shallow and desperate, and I realized with horror that it still breathed.
The Hollow Psalmists leaned closer, their chant bending into a crescendo that twisted the air. Damon's grip tightened, his jaw locked. This is no offering, his voice growled low in my mind, wolf-shadow bleeding through. It's a vessel. And suddenly, I knew: whatever the Hollow Hymn was summoning, it needed blood, breath, and soul. The Psalmists weren't here to worship. They were here to bind something that should never wake.
---
The hymn thickened like smoke, coiling around my ribs, my pulse. Damon's hand gripped my arm — harder than before, sharp as iron.
Don't listen.
But the words weren't spoken. They thrummed from his chest, low and warning, while the Psalmists' chant rose higher.
The Hollow Rite was beginning.
I tasted ash. My skin burned. Something vast — older than hunger, older than death — pressed against the thin veil of this ruined sanctuary.
Damon shoved me back as a circle of lightless fire flared at the Psalmists' feet.
The fight was inevitable. The hymn wanted blood.
I wasn't sure if it would be theirs… or mine.
---
🔥 Dear readers, if this chapter left your heart racing, don't hold back—drop your Power Stones now to keep this legend alive! Every stone fuels Damon and Dahlia's battle against the impossible, and your support is the fire that keeps the story burning.