Darkness pressed against me, not the kind that simply blinds, but the kind that swallows sound, memory, even breath. For a long, shivering heartbeat, I thought I had died beneath the Knight's blade. Then came the pulse—mine, thunderous and erratic, drumming like a war chant inside my ribs. Each thud felt louder than the silence surrounding me, as though my own body betrayed me to whatever prowled the void.
A whisper cut through, faint but sharp, not words exactly, more like the echo of language before it's spoken. I turned—or maybe the world turned around me—and I caught the briefest glimpse of a face in the dark. Not Damon. Not anyone living. Hollow eyes glowed where skin should have been. A smear of shadow lips moved, shaping syllables I couldn't grasp. The moment I reached toward it, the vision snapped back into the black, leaving only the drum of my heart.
The air thickened. I couldn't tell if I was still lying on stone, or floating weightless in some cavern between thought and nightmare. The Knight's presence lingered. I could feel the cold press of its blade, not against my flesh but deeper—resting against the fragile cage of my soul, poised. Every beat of my heart sent shivers of dread through me, like the blade vibrated with my blood.
And then, the rhythm changed. My pulse began to echo with something not my own. A second beat joined mine, darker, slower, yet impossibly strong. It didn't steady me. It threatened to replace me. My heart wanted to sync to it, surrender to it, collapse beneath its gravity. I pressed my hands to my chest, desperate to hold onto myself, but my fingers brushed skin fever-hot, slick with phantom heat.
The shadow's whisper returned, now a low chant, layered like multiple voices speaking from one throat. The sound coiled through me, not entering my ears but blooming beneath my sternum. My knees buckled though I wasn't standing. My breath hitched though I had no air. For a moment, I believed I was being hollowed out, made into an echoing vessel where that other heartbeat could live.
Still Damon didn't come. Still the world kept me alone.
---
The darkness didn't just swallow me—it climbed inside. My skin felt stretched too tight, every vein pulsing as though another rhythm had been braided into mine. Cold fire licked the back of my throat, and when I tried to draw breath, it caught like glass splinters, scraping all the way down.
My chest heaved, but the air carried weight, as if I was inhaling liquid shadow. The first shiver struck at my spine. Then another, sharper, pulling my bones against each other as though something beneath my flesh wanted to rearrange me into its own shape.
I clawed at my arms, at my collar, at nothing. My nails sank into skin I swore wasn't mine anymore. The world tilted, pressure thrumming behind my eyes. And beneath it all—a second heartbeat. Not mine. Heavy, arrhythmic, pounding against my ribs from the inside.
The Knight hadn't vanished. I felt it near, its presence slicing across my nerves even if its outline blurred. Every movement it made reverberated in my marrow, as though my body were a drum played by its advance. My knees buckled. The stone beneath me trembled, or maybe it was just me, shaking hard enough to fracture.
And then came the taste—ash and iron coating my tongue, bitter, thick, wrong. I spat, but the flavor only deepened. My stomach lurched, and a heat roared up my throat as if something else tried to crawl out through me.
I staggered, pressing both palms to my chest, desperate to hold myself together. My heart no longer beat in a steady rhythm—it stuttered, skipped, and then hammered too fast, as if trying to sync with that foreign pulse swelling inside. A war of rhythms, one flesh, two wills.
And the Knight, waiting. Blade tilted. Shadow leaning. Patient.
Because it knew.
It didn't need to strike. Not yet.
I was already breaking myself open.
---
The whispers swell until they are no longer whispers but velvet threads sliding through my skull, stroking the softest parts of my mind. They don't rage or scream. They coax. They persuade. The Knight's shadow becomes a chorus, and that chorus begins to sound like me.
You've never belonged among them.
The words drip like honeyed venom, curling into my bones. I can almost taste their sweetness, a relief in surrender.
Even Damon sees it—why else does he keep you caged in oaths and chains? Why else does he burn your name into vows you never chose?
My heartbeat staggers, skips, claws at my throat. The darkness seems to pulse with it, each throb stitching their voice deeper into my blood.
The fire inside you was never his to tame. It was ours. It always was.
A vision splinters across my mind's eye—Damon's face not as it is, but hollowed, wolf-pale, his mouth shaping my name as if it were a command, not a devotion. His hands dripping with ash, reaching for me not in love but in claim.
I try to shake it off, but the voice coils tighter, wrapping me in soft suffocation.
He fears you. That's why he keeps you close. That's why he swore the Oath. To bind you. To chain the thing beneath your skin before it wakes.
The words land too easily, like they've been waiting inside me all along. For a moment, I cannot remember where my thoughts end and theirs begin.
The shadows lean closer, whispering not threats but promises.
Let us show you the truth. Let us strip him from your ribs and teach you what you are without him. You will not shatter—you will rise.
And gods help me—I almost believe them.
---
The whispers braided tighter, no longer a chorus but a single mouth pressed to my ear. Each word slid into me like hot wax, hardening beneath the skin.
He never swore for you. He swore for the Throne. You are the coin paid for his crown. You are nothing but an oath's afterbirth.
My chest burned as if my ribs had been hollowed and filled with embers. My hands clawed at my own arms, nails drawing blood to prove I was still there. But even the sting felt stolen, claimed by something else.
I staggered forward, yet the ground shifted like a warped reflection. Walls folded inward, corridors twisted upon themselves, and I could not tell if I walked or sank.
The Shadow pressed again—sweet, low, patient.
You have always belonged to us. The brand was never his gift. It was ours, buried in your flesh long before his hand touched you. Let go of his name. Let go, and the silence will cradle you.
For a heartbeat, I wanted to. To slip beneath the tide, to stop tearing myself raw against an endless storm.
And then—thin, faint as breath through a crack in stone—another sound brushed me. Not the Shadow's honeyed venom, but something rougher, frayed, familiar.
Not words. Not even a voice, fully. Just an echo of warmth. A memory of heat against my palm. A sound that might have been my name, dragged through distance.
It was gone before I could seize it.
The Shadow laughed, the kind that curled into marrow. Hear nothing but us, Dahlia. He is not here. He was never here. Only we remain.
I clutched my chest where my heart should have been hammering and found instead a silence so deep it nearly split me open.
And beneath that silence… something stirred, vast and patient, as if waiting for me to break.
---
The whispers fused into one, a chorus of knives. They pressed into me from every angle, each word not spoken but carved into bone. You were never his. You were always ours. My legs buckled, and I collapsed into the black mire, only to feel it surge upward like hands—cold, unyielding—clutching my ribs, prying me open as if I were no more than parchment.
I clawed at the unseen grip, but my fingers passed through shadow that was not shadow, heat that was not fire. My chest burned, lungs twisting inside out, as though my breath belonged to someone else. The Knight loomed above me, its helm splitting apart—not to reveal a face but a pit of endless teeth, gnashing as they sang my name in tones both tender and cruel.
The blade lifted again, heavy as judgment, its edge gleaming with the light of all the false tomorrows it swore belonged to me. My body convulsed, arching as if the steel had already found me. And beneath the roar of the voices, another sound seeped in—wet, rhythmic, intimate. A heartbeat. Not mine. Not anyone's I knew. Too loud, too steady, threading into my own chest until I couldn't tell where I ended and it began.
The voices hushed, soft as silk, seductive as sin. Lay down. Let us finish what was written. You were never meant to carry this. Why fight the shape of your soul? We can unmake the burden. We can end the ache. All it takes is one cut, one surrender. Close your eyes, Dahlia.
The Knight's blade came down in a blur of black flame. I screamed—not in defiance, not in hope, but in raw, naked terror.
---
The Knight's blade fell again, a silver arc splitting through the fog of my delirium, and I had no strength left to run. My knees buckled, skin crawling with glyph-burns that writhed like living chains beneath my flesh. My heart stuttered once—then again, ready to give itself over to silence.
But in that silence, a warmth cut through. Not words. Not light. A heat, fierce and searing, pressed against my lips.
The kiss struck like lightning—familiar, merciless, anchoring. Damon. His mouth against mine, not gentle but claiming, as though tearing me back from whatever abyss had swallowed me whole.
The Knight's form faltered at the edges, its armor warping, its blade stuttering mid-strike. I gasped into Damon's kiss, the taste of blood and ash between us, and the world convulsed.
Shadows screamed. My body convulsed with them. But his arms were iron, his hand clutching the back of my neck, pinning me to something real, something solid. His voice, not spoken but felt, roared through the fractures of my mind— You do not belong to them.
The Knight staggered, sword clattering as its body came apart in sheets of smoke. Black fire poured from the rifts in its helm, and the whispers tried one last time—seductive, pleading, promising me release if I just let go.
But Damon's kiss deepened, and the shadows shrieked as if burned. The Knight dissolved in a storm of ash and ink, unraveling like paper in a flame until only the echo of its laughter remained.
When at last I tore free of the kiss, I was shaking, my throat raw, my lungs filled with air that tasted real. Damon's eyes were fixed on me—stormfire, dangerous, furious, but mine.
And the silence that followed was worse than the chaos, because I knew what it meant: I had almost been taken.
---
The silence after the Knight's dissolution is worse than the clash of steel. I lie against the cold stone, chest heaving, the phantom heat of its blade still seared across my ribs. When I blink, I expect to see it looming again—but all that lingers are faint burns across my skin, glyphs etched like brands beneath my collarbone, glowing and fading in a slow pulse.
Damon's shadow spills over me, kneeling close, one hand braced against the floor, the other hovering as if afraid to touch. His gaze is sharp, unreadable, but there's something in it that rattles me more than the Knight's whispers—worry, tightly caged, as though he'd rather cut his own throat than let me see it.
"You should not carry their mark," he murmurs, his voice low and flint-edged. "The Order doesn't brand the living unless they've already claimed you."
My throat is raw, every word an effort. "Then… what does this mean?"
"That you are not safe. Not from them. Not from me." He finally lays his palm against my collarbone, just where the glyphs burned. The contact makes the symbols flare faintly, then sink back into silence. He doesn't flinch. I do.
The dread in me crawls deeper than bone. "It was speaking to me, Damon. It knew things. Things about you. About me. What if it wasn't lying?"
His jaw tightens. "The Hollow Order always laces truth into their poison. That's how they bind. You'll learn to resist them—or they'll eat you alive."
His words hang between us like smoke. I search his face, hoping for reassurance, finding only the ruthless certainty of someone who's lived this too long.
"Tell me one thing," I whisper. "If it ever comes down to me… to me turning into one of them. Would you stop me?"
The silence stretches. His hand doesn't leave my skin. Finally, in that dark, ruinous voice, he says, "I would burn the world before I burned you. Do not ask me to promise more than that."
The glyphs pulse once, then settle into an aching throb. I close my eyes, not sure if the comfort I feel is real or just another cruel trick.
And in that uneasy quiet, as the ash settles and the battle's roar finally dies, I understand one thing with horrible clarity—this was not the end of the war. It was only the beginning.
---
The nightmare almost claimed her. Damon's return ripped her back—but at what cost? Dahlia's scars are not just inside anymore. Keep reading to see the mark the shadows left behind…