The battlefield still smoked around us, every breath tasting of ash and bone. The Hollow Psalmists were gone, dissolved into ruin, but their hymn clung to the air like a sickness. My skin burned where the glyphs had flared alive, faint embers pulsing beneath my flesh. Each step sent a tremor of fire racing through me, and still Damon's arm braced my weight, dragging me forward.
His grip was iron, jaw clenched as though fury alone could hold me together. I knew what he was hiding. Fear. He wouldn't let it show, not even now. The smoldering earth crunched beneath our boots, skeletal remains crumbling at our passage. Silence pressed in from all sides—too thick, too unnatural.
I tried to lift my voice above the hush, to prove I hadn't been swallowed by what had just touched me. I'm still myself. The words cracked, barely more than a whisper, but I forced them out. The sound felt false in my own throat, hollowed, almost not mine at all.
Damon didn't slow. His eyes, cold as steel, cut to me only once. Walk, he growled, the word more command than comfort. Stay awake. If you close your eyes now, you won't come back. His tone bit, but it was the only thing keeping me upright.
The ground seemed endless, broken black stone scattered with the bones of the Order. A ribcage jutted from the ash like a warning. The scent of charred flesh and iron rode the wind. I wanted to stop, just for a heartbeat, but Damon yanked me onward as though time itself was hunting us.
The embers under my skin flickered brighter, rising, threatening to open me to something I couldn't name. My body swayed, breath shallow. For one awful moment, I thought I felt the hymn again—inside me, not around me.
Damon's hand tightened at my side, sharp enough to bruise. His voice cut through the fog. Stay here, Dahlia. Do you hear me? Stay here with me. It wasn't a plea. It was a demand, forged in the same fire that had burned this battlefield down.
And in that suffocating silence, with ruin closing in from every shadow, I obeyed. I kept walking.
---
The fire had eaten its fill, leaving the battlefield in a silence that felt heavier than any hymn. Damon dropped to one knee, easing me down onto a slab of half-burned stone. My skin was fever-hot, every breath scraping like shards of glass. I didn't need to look to know the glyph burns were still there—etched across my arms, crawling toward my collarbone. They pulsed, faint as dying embers, but alive.
Damon's hands—calloused, blood-slick, unyielding—gripped my wrist. He tore the charred fabric away from my sleeve, exposing the burns in their obscene geometry. The lines moved. Not like healing wounds, but like worms beneath flesh, twisting, trying to spell themselves deeper into me.
His jaw tightened. The mask of fury he wore couldn't hide the flicker of fear in his eyes. "These are not scars," he said, his voice iron flat. "They are claims."
Something cold knotted in my chest. I wanted to spit, to laugh, to shatter the weight of his words with defiance. "I won't be branded like cattle." My throat was raw, the words breaking against it, but I forced them out.
Damon's gaze locked with mine, sharp enough to cut. "Survival always demands a price. You don't get to choose what it costs."
The silence that followed wasn't empty—it burned hotter than flame. His fear had teeth, hidden beneath his dominance. My desperation had claws, masked as defiance. Neither of us was willing to yield.
The sound came then—soft, deliberate—branches whispering as someone stepped out of the treeline. Damon's hand went to his blade, but the figure did not raise a weapon. Sareth emerged, bone staff leaning against his shoulder, eyes shadowed, unreadable. He had been watching. Waiting.
His gaze fell on me, and it was not hunger I saw in him, nor pity, but something stranger—reverence tinged with dread. He lowered himself slowly, staff pressed into the earth.
"These are not just marks," he murmured, voice carrying the hush of ritual. His words settled into me like cold ash. "They are awakenings."
Not a blessing. Not a curse. Something worse.
---
We left the clearing with the brands still searing beneath my skin, the ache alive like a secret heartbeat. Damon set the pace, silent and merciless, his shoulders hard as stone. Sareth trailed us, bone staff tapping against roots, whispering into the little sack of relics he carried. His lips moved to words I could not hear, but the bones seemed to rattle in response.
The forest bent around us like a wound refusing to close. Trees split down their spines as if struck by lightning but left smoldering, rivers running black with ash instead of water. Even the wind carried a low hum, steady, insistent—like voices drowned in soil. I was the only one who heard them. Each step made their murmurs clearer, weaving into the burns under my skin until it felt like they were speaking through me.
I faltered. Damon noticed. His gaze cut like a blade as he hissed—Do not listen.
I clenched my fists. But the harder I tried to shut the hum out, the more it pressed into me.
Behind us, Sareth finally broke the silence. His voice was low, yet it carried weight, like a verdict already written. "She walks with the hymns. The brands are not shackles—they are keys."
Damon spun on him, fury flashing. "Stay behind us, carrion priest. You've played both sides long enough."
Sareth did not flinch. He planted his staff into the soil, the bones clattering against one another like teeth. His gaze fell on me, unyielding. "The Hollow Order believes they marked her as theirs. Fools. They awakened what no chain can bind. I was blind before, bound by their lies—but now I see. She is not theirs. She is the voice the Choir fears."
The hum within me surged like fire through veins. Damon's hand went to the hilt of his blade, instinctive, protective—or perhaps defensive. His jaw locked tight, a storm boiling behind his eyes.
I said nothing. The forest itself seemed to hold its breath.
Sareth lowered his head, then bent the knee in the ash-strewn path. His staff lay across his palms, a soldier's surrender twisted into devotion. "I pledge to you, Dahlia Moon. Not as priest, not as servant, but as witness. My oath is ash, and my life is yours to burn."
The humming stopped. Silence dropped heavy, unnatural, as if the whole poisoned land awaited my answer.
---
The path was narrow, choked with bramble and ash, every step a reminder that this was not a world meant for the living. Damon set the pace, his shoulders squared like stone, while I followed in the echo of his silence. But silence never lasts with me. My skin still burned faintly where the Knight's touch had branded something into me, invisible yet seared into bone. The question clawed its way out before I could stop it.
When the Knight had me—what did you see?
He froze mid-step, and the pause was worse than an answer. His head tilted, the faint light catching in his eyes like a blade. For a long moment he said nothing, and I almost wished I hadn't asked. Then, through teeth tight enough to cut, the truth broke free.
I felt you slipping. You were already gone—dead, but not. I dragged you back, but I don't know what came with you.
The words hit me like a blade driven between ribs. Dead, but not. Something inside me recoiled, and something else leaned closer. My chest ached with both violation and gratitude—he had entered me, forced himself into my unraveling. And yet… he had refused to let me go.
I staggered for breath, my voice raw. You had no right—
His glare cut back, sharp, feral. I had no choice.
The air between us snapped taut, words like wires cutting deep. My pulse throbbed against the phantom brand beneath my skin, and I hated how much his nearness steadied me even as it suffocated me.
Then Sareth's voice seeped through the silence, dry as bone dust. She did not return alone.
The bones on his staff shivered like teeth in a mouth that shouldn't exist. Damon turned on him at once, eyes flashing like stormlight.
Hold your tongue, necromancer.
But Sareth only smiled, pale and weary, as if he knew something neither of us could bear to name. My life is bound to her survival now, Alpha. You may distrust me, but you cannot silence me.
Damon's growl carried the promise of blood, yet the path beneath us thrummed, the ash-hum rising higher in my ears, and I knew the fracture was no longer between them. It was inside me, splitting wider with every step.
---
The ruins greeted us with silence, the kind that clung to bone. Burned wagons rotted half-sunken into the dirt, their wheels split like broken jaws. Shrines leaned drunkenly by the crossroads, their gods faceless, their prayers blackened. Even the air tasted of ash long settled. Damon halted before me, his hand lifting like a barrier. His eyes narrowed on the leftward path, where shadows seemed too sharp, too purposeful.
Hollow Order patrols. I could feel them too, faint as a poisoned breath in the dark. Damon's voice carried iron. We take the right. My way.
The leash again. I lifted my chin, throat tight but unyielding. If I walk into fire, Damon, let it be my step, not your leash.
The words hung heavy between us, blades unsheathed but not swung. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. You won't survive that way.
Then let me burn by my own choosing, I fired back, heat threading my veins. The Knight's hum stirred then, not outside but inside, a low vibration threading the cracks of my mind, confirming Sareth's warning: I had not come back alone. It was like a hymn remembered from a dream, alien yet intimate, coaxing me toward the forbidden path.
Damon saw my falter, his gaze pinning me as if he sensed the pull too. But before his words could bite again, the shadows moved.
Jareth. Scarred, limping, but alive. He stepped into the ruin-light with the calm of someone who'd already died once and decided not to stay. His sword was sheathed, but his presence cut sharper than steel.
You're still breathing, Damon said, but it was more accusation than greeting.
Jareth's eyes flicked to me, then back to him, hard as flint. Breathing, yes. And watching. The girl is marked, Damon. How long before she's not yours?
The hum in my skull swelled, almost gloating, as if Jareth's words had given it teeth. Damon's hand flexed at his side, torn between drawing blade or grasping me tighter.
And for a moment, standing at that crossroads, I knew we were not three but four. Damon, Jareth, myself—
and the Knight, humming softly beneath my skin.
---
The road stretched ahead, scorched and weary, yet it didn't feel empty. I could hear it again—the hum. Low at first, then climbing, threading beneath my ribs like a second pulse. Sareth's warning burned back into me: you did not return alone. Damon's shadow pressed close, but another presence rode inside me, whispering through the marrow.
That was when the others began to appear.
Lucian was the first—leaning against a shattered milestone, restringing his bow with trembling fingers. He didn't lift his head when we neared, though his ears twitched at the crunch of gravel. His silence was heavier than any wound. I saw it plain: the guilt dripping off him, sharp as frost. His arrows had flown true in the siege, yet too many had still fallen. His shame clung to me like smoke, and for a moment I wanted to take it from him, swallow it down so he could breathe.
Mira arrived like fire after frost. She stormed out from the treeline, blade still red along the edge. Her eyes snapped to Damon first, striking like lightning.
"You'd drag her through death just to prove you can keep her," she spat. But before Damon could answer, her voice softened toward me, fierce but unyielding. "She's more than your shadow, Damon. Treat her like it—or lose her."
The words stung him, I felt it in the stiffening of his shoulders. But I didn't reach to soothe him. I couldn't—not when Mira's truth had already planted itself in my chest.
Then came the twins, Marlow and Veyra, stumbling in with blood staining their leathers. They looked wild, half-ruined, but still sparking with that dangerous humor only survivors carry.
"I told you we should've gone left, idiot!" Marlow barked, a grin cracking his bloody mouth.
"And miss the fun? Never," Veyra shot back, clutching her ribs but laughing anyway.
Their banter didn't hide the weight of what they bore. In Marlow's hand, I saw a crumpled scrap of cloth inked with sigils black as ash. Hollow Psalmists—their movement, their chants—etched in bloodstains. They weren't scattered; they were coming together. Gathering.
The pack stood before me now. Scarred. Fractured. Not the same as before the siege. A weapon reforged with jagged edges, every shard sharper, every fracture dangerous. And through the hum gnawing at me, I realized something cold—maybe Sareth was right. Maybe I hadn't come back alone, but neither had any of them.
We all carried something back from the dark. And not all of it would remain loyal.
---
The night is restless. Fire crackles low in the circle, its light drawing lines across faces that have forgotten laughter. The pack gathers but does not speak. Every stare drifts to the shadows beyond the trees, listening for wings that no longer beat. We are together again, but I feel the fractures more than the warmth.
I lie awake beneath the cold sky, the glyphs beneath my skin burning faintly, their light pulsing like a second heartbeat. My arm feels foreign, as though something else has made its home there.
The question slips from my lips before I can swallow it back. What did you put in me? My voice is barely breath, unsure if I speak to Damon, to the Knight who branded me, or to the Psalmists who sing in my marrow.
The air trembles with the faintest reply, humming through my blood. Not put. Awakened.
I tremble, pulling the blanket tighter, but it does not soothe me. Across the flames Damon sits with his back to me, shoulders stiff, eyes lost in the fire. He sees the shaking in my hands, I know he does, but he doesn't move, doesn't reach, doesn't break the silence. His distance is a wall I cannot climb.
And yet, from the shadows, Sareth's whisper carries like a blade. His gaze fixes on the faint glow crawling across my arm. Spreading, he mutters. The song is not leaving her. The song is becoming her.
The words hang heavier than the night, and for the first time, I am more afraid of myself than of the enemy waiting in the dark.
---
🔥 If this chapter left your heart racing, don't stop here—Chapter 10 takes us deeper into the song that's twisting Dahlia's fate, and the fractures threatening to split her bond with Damon.