The silence after the hollow hymn's collapse was not silence at all. It was the echo of something that had been cut short before it could finish devouring us. My lungs burned like I had swallowed ash, my skin stung with a thousand invisible cuts, and every heartbeat felt like it was breaking through chains that had been fastened too tightly.
The Psalmists were gone. The Wraith Knight's husk had dissolved into a smear of iron mist, drifting into the cracks of the stone floor. Yet the void it left behind still gnawed at my ribs. Dahlia knelt in the broken circle, blood threading down her arms where her nails had dug into her own skin in defiance. She looked at me, not with fear, but with something worse—certainty. As if she had seen through me, through the Oath, through the fragile barrier I had forced against the hymn's hunger.
The Chapel felt heavier now. Not from bodies, not from blood, but from the weight of unseen eyes. I could not tell if they belonged to the Order, to the dead Psalmists, or to something far older still lurking within the runes carved into this cursed stone. Dahlia's breath hitched as she pressed her palm against her chest. Her fingers brushed the faint glow beneath her skin, the brand that had begun to surface ever since the hymn had touched her.
A brand I knew was not mine.
It shimmered faintly, like a buried ember straining against the dark. The Oath within me recoiled at the sight, snarling, retreating, as if recognizing a rival claim. My throat tightened. No blade, no siege, no Order had ever unnerved me more than the realization that Dahlia bore a mark beyond my bond.
She trembled, but not from weakness. The brand pulsed as though it were listening, answering a call I could not hear. My hands closed into fists against the stone. I had chosen to burn deeper into the Oath, to hold the hymn at bay, but at what cost? The answer was carved beneath her skin, and its glow told me this battle had not ended. It had only shifted into her flesh.
And I, bound by my ruthless vow, might not be able to tear it free.
---
The hymn still droned like a poisoned lullaby, binding my veins with its patient venom. Yet beneath that endless tide, I felt something else—small, fragile, but undeniably mine. A pulse, faint and stubborn, hammering against the suffocating silence that the Psalmists tried to press over my soul. They thought me an empty vessel. They thought their hymn had claimed me. But the fire of the Oath did not bow to their cadence—it flared when pressed, it carved when cornered, and now, with every breath I wrested back from the void, it clawed its way higher.
The Knight's shadow bent closer, its helm splitting in the haze of ash and light, eyes burning hollow. It moved like inevitability itself, that blade raised not to strike Dahlia yet, but to erase me entirely. Its presence carried no hatred, no anger, only the decree of silence. But silence is not the law of wolves. We are oath-bound, blood-bound, ruin-born. Silence cannot govern me.
Through the fractured haze I heard her. Dahlia—her voice cracked, not from weakness, but from fury. She stood defiant with the Psalmists' wings circling overhead, their voices breaking against her like storms upon cliffs, yet she did not shatter. I saw her body tremble, torn by the hymn's venom, but her shadow stretched toward me as though it could drag me from the abyss itself. She refused to leave. She refused to yield. That refusal became a lifeline, more binding than any chain of gods.
I seized it. The fire answered. The hollow was not gone—the hymn still tore and clawed at my marrow—but I let the pain stand as proof I was still present. Still choosing. The Oath burned brighter in response, its fire cracking through the Psalmists' illusion like molten fractures through stone.
The Wraith Knight staggered, not from weakness, but from resistance it had not anticipated. Its blade came down, swift and final. Yet as steel met flame, the hymn faltered for the first time. And in that falter, my voice, ragged but unbroken, bled through the silence.
Not yet.
The ground quaked. The hymn recoiled, twisting in fury, searching for another hold. But it had lost its absolute claim. I felt Dahlia's gasp cut through the storm as her eyes widened—not in terror, but in recognition that something had shifted. Something impossible.
And yet, the cliff's edge still loomed. Because even as the Oath flared, the hymn's chorus multiplied, swelling like a thousand mouths desperate to drown me. Every step forward, every heartbeat claimed back, came at the cost of fire burning deeper into my core. If I faltered once, the hymn would not simply hollow me—it would scatter me into ash across their hymn forever.
---
The Knight's advance was not a march but a shuddering quake that rattled marrow. His blade, long as a funeral banner, came down in an arc meant to bisect my defiance. I caught it on the edge of my clawed hand, sparks screaming out like stars flayed alive. The pressure drove me to one knee, the soil collapsing beneath as if unwilling to hold us. My arm trembled, not with fear but with the weight of something older than battle. He was not simply striking me—he was dragging the very judgment of the Hollow Psalmists into the marrow of my bones.
Each blow carried the resonance of a thousand voices, a hymn of ruin that tried to overwrite my heartbeat. My pulse faltered, skipped, surged back with rage, only to stagger again under the burden of that chorus. My body screamed to fracture, to yield. But instinct clawed deeper—Shadowblood instinct, primal and relentless. I lashed out, meeting steel with fury, and the air ruptured in shockwaves that tore banners of earth and ash skyward.
His helm turned ever so slightly, as if studying me not as prey but as mirror. My claws carved black scars across his plate, and where the wounds landed, runes flickered—binding glyphs that repaired themselves before my eyes. He was no mere foe but a forge-born warden, tempered by forgotten vows. Every strike I landed was stolen back, every wound erased as though history itself bent to his favor.
The ground between us was no longer battlefield but furnace. The soil boiled into glass under the heat of our collision, shadows writhing with every impact. He pressed me back, and the hymn swelled—an ocean of sound drowning my breath, each note a nail driven through my skull. I staggered, nearly split open by his blade, the weight of it dragging me down toward final silence.
Yet even as the hymn sought to bury me, a deeper thrum rose inside, not Dahlia's voice, not the Psalmist's—it was the marrow-song of my own blood. My rage sharpened into clarity. If his hymn was a script of endings, then mine was the unwritten defiance, a wordless refusal etched in flesh and will. I roared, shoving against him, the sound tearing sky and soil alike. For the first time, his footing faltered—only an inch, but enough to fracture the illusion of inevitability.
The clash had become something larger than survival. It was contest of wills, hymn against marrow-song, silence against roar. The battlefield itself became our scripture, each strike another line carved in stone and shadow.
And in that instant, I realized: neither of us would leave unchanged.
---
The floor beneath me split open as if the manor itself could no longer endure the weight of our clash. Damon's roar filled the cavernous ruin, guttural and primal, yet cut short by the Wraith Knight's silent strike. His blade was not of steel but of unlight, a weapon that drank flame, drank life, drank hope. It carved against Damon's arm, and the Alpha staggered, his blood smoking like ash where the wound spread.
I wanted to scream, but the air left my lungs as the shadows swarmed closer, twisting around the Knight's form until he loomed impossibly vast. The walls buckled, the ceiling sagged, every surface thrumming with a cadence not of this world. My heartbeat was no longer my own—it pulsed to that rhythm, drowning me in dread.
I reached for Damon, but the darkness coiled tighter, forcing me back until the broken pews pressed into my spine. My skin seared. My veins burned. Something beneath the brand on my wrist clawed awake, the same hidden fire I had begged to silence. It throbbed in answer to the Knight's presence, and for the first time I understood: he wasn't only here for Damon. He was here for me.
Damon's voice thundered through the suffocating dark. He bared his teeth, torn and bloodied, but unyielding. His claws shimmered with a crimson edge, his breath ragged yet burning. Still he planted himself between me and the abyss made flesh.
But the Wraith Knight did not hesitate. His gaze fell upon me, hollow sockets spilling rivers of shadow, and with a slow, dreadful inevitability he raised his blade toward my heart.
The mark beneath my skin screamed, every line of it igniting with furious light. I felt it split me open from within, as if my own body might shatter against the weight of the prophecy sealed in my blood. I staggered forward without willing it, pulled toward the Knight's void as though bound to him by a chain no one else could see.
Damon snarled, and in his snarl I heard both rage and terror—the terror of losing me.
And in that instant, I realized the truth: no wall of his strength could hold back what had already been called to me.
---
The chains snapped in silence yet thunder roared inside me as the surge ripped the circle apart. Runes dimmed to ash, the last of their light swallowed by the storm uncoiling in Damon's veins. The Wraith Knight convulsed, armor fracturing in bursts of spectral dust, each fracture echoing with the scream of something too ancient to die. Its sword fell, dissolving mid-arc, and the whole weight of its presence buckled under Damon's unleashed fury.
But what surged free was no victory. The ritual no longer bound him, nor me. The power shuddered wild, a storm tearing at its own container. I felt the backlash clawing through marrow, searing across the brand beneath my skin until my vision blurred crimson. The Hollow Psalmists glyphs did not fade—they multiplied, crowding the air with shapes that twisted like mouths gnashing around us.
Damon staggered forward, his eyes glowing with the hollow blaze of something not his own. He looked less like a savior, more like a wound torn open, spilling a darkness even the knight recoiled from. Yet still he pressed toward me, one hand outstretched, desperate to pull me from the circle's ruin.
I wanted to move, to reach, but my body was caged in fire. The brand under my skin pulsed in sync with his every step, as if tethering me to whatever he had just become. The closer he drew, the stronger the pull grew, until my ribs felt as if they might crack. The glyphs responded in kind, whirling faster, binding us into a spiral neither of us could stop.
The knight rallied once, a broken husk of fury clawing at the shadows Damon cast. It lunged, shrieking, yet Damon didn't flinch—he caught the strike in his bare hand, crushing steel as if it were brittle glass. The knight fell apart, dissolved into a mist that the storm drank whole.
The silence that followed was worse than battle. Only the whisper of the glyphs remained, sinking into the stone, into our flesh, into the black that gathered above. Damon reached me then, his palm hot, trembling, searing my skin as it touched mine. For a heartbeat it was only him and me—our breaths tangled, our blood echoing in a shared storm.
Then the ruin answered. The glyphs lit once more, not fading but converging, fusing into a single sigil above our joined hands. It spun with unbearable weight, a seal or a curse, I could not tell. My heart stuttered as the air broke open, revealing something vast and waiting, something older than gods.
I knew then—what had ended here had only been the beginning.
---
The scream still hadn't faded when the ground split beneath us, a jagged wound in the stone that bled with shadow instead of fire. The glyphs scrawled across the broken temple floor erupted in a frenzy of violent light, warping and twisting into runes I didn't recognize. They no longer spoke of protection or banishment. They sang of binding, of sacrifice, of blood.
The Wraith Knight—already a storm of jagged metal and starless flame—lurched forward as if summoned by the runes themselves. Its skeletal helm split open, revealing not a face but an endless void where voices cried in a thousand tongues, their grief rising in harmony with the growing quake. Damon roared his defiance, but the shadows coiled tighter around him, dragging him toward the rift yawning beneath his feet. He was being swallowed, consumed, claimed by something far greater than even the Hollow Order.
I felt the pull too. My veins burned as if my blood were not my own. My skin seared where the mark beneath my ribs pulsed, alive and furious, syncing with the rhythm of the runes. Every instinct screamed at me to resist—but another voice whispered deeper still, telling me this was what I had been born for. Not to resist, but to open. Not to escape, but to unleash.
Damon's eyes found mine through the chaos, wolf-gold blazing with fury and despair. His lips moved, forming words I could not hear, but I understood them anyway.
Do not follow.
The ground gave way. He plunged into the rift, torn from the world like a soul dragged screaming into the void. The shadows slammed shut behind him, sealing as if he had never been there at all.
I collapsed to my knees, breath stolen, chest aching like a knife had been twisted into me. The silence that followed was not peace. It was a threat.
The runes still burned. The Wraith Knight still stood. And I was alone.
For the first time, the hollow voice within my chest rose, clear and undeniable, breaking the silence with a truth that froze me to the marrow.
He is not lost. He is bound. And only your surrender will bring him back.
---
✨ Damon has been ripped into the rift, bound by something older than the Hollow Order, while Dahlia is left facing both the Wraith Knight and the terrifying truth of her own mark.