The forest erupted around us. Shadows twisted into forms sharper, darker, more threatening than before, as the Hollow Order scouts pressed forward despite the chaos I had already sewn. Each step I took, glyphs along my arms and chest flaring, rippled through the environment, bending branches, lengthening shadows, and shifting the ground beneath them.
I whispered another fragment of the hymn, testing rhythm and resonance. Roots shot up like spears, snagging boots and catching blades. Air rippled in waves, carrying the Choir's fragmented voices, confusing direction and balance. The scouts staggered, eyes wide with fear and disbelief, some faltering into each other, others tripping over the unnatural growths I conjured in seconds.
The pack moved with me but not completely in step. Mira's protective stance never wavered, shielding my flank, while Lucian's arrows struck true where the forest's manipulation left openings. Jareth barked commands that were half tactical, half warning—they were learning to adapt to my new influence, yet none could fully anticipate it. Damon's presence loomed, a taut wire of fury and fear, as he realized he could no longer dictate the flow.
Even as the skirmish reached its peak, signs of the Hollow Order's greater plan were undeniable. Ash-stained runes crawled along the trunks and stones, faintly glowing with silver, like veins feeding toward a central point. Every mark pulsed with ritual energy, tethered to me whether I wanted it or not.
A low hum curled through my consciousness—an insistence from the Choir, urging action, not defense. They weren't demanding, but the pull was undeniable: to step forward, to take an active hand in shaping what was coming. I swallowed, glyphs flaring in acknowledgment, feeling the threshold looming ever closer. The minor skirmish had ended, scouts retreating—but the storm, and my role in it, had only begun.
---
The forest ahead pulsed with an energy that felt alive, almost sentient. It wasn't just the trees or the shadows—the air itself shimmered, faintly distorted, carrying a heat that tingled against my skin. I knew without seeing it: this was the Hollow Threshold, the convergence point of the ritual, a place where the Hollow Order's power coalesced into a shape I could neither touch nor fully comprehend.
The Choir's whispers grew insistent, threading through my thoughts like needles of fire. Step forward, they urged. No—wait, they corrected, the pull shifted, guiding, testing. Every syllable of the hymn carried weight, tugging at my pulse, bending my heartbeat toward a choice I could not deny.
I glanced back at the pack. Mira's eyes were wide, protective hands hovering over my shoulders, ready to defend but powerless to intervene. Lucian's arrows were notched, fingers tense, though his gaze flickered toward the threshold in awe. Jareth's posture was stiff, a sentinel on edge, and even the twins stared with mouths slightly agape, caught between fear and fascination.
Damon stepped closer, jaw tight, claws grazing the earth as if he could dig a wall between me and what waited. His voice was a low growl, threaded with desperation: "Don't—don't let them take you, Dahlia. Not like this. Step back—step away from it!" But the truth in his words clashed with reality; there was no stepping away. The glyphs beneath my skin pulsed in rhythm with the Choir's heartbeat, tethering me to forces far older and larger than his protection.
I could feel the threshold calling, a resonance that hummed through bone and blood, teasing glimpses of power that were intoxicating and terrifying. One step forward, and the forest would bend to me fully—but it might also bend me, reshaping what I thought I knew about myself. I swallowed, glyphs flaring, as the Choir's collective voice threaded through my mind: you are the Gate. The Threshold waits. The Hollow watches.
The air thickened with tension. Every breath, every heartbeat, carried the weight of a choice that could unleash forces beyond the pack, beyond the forest, beyond anything I had yet survived.
---
The moment my foot grazes the Hollow Threshold, the forest screams. Not with sound—but with a pulse of shadowlight tearing through the marrow of every tree. Their trunks split and weep liquid black fire, roots writhing like veins beneath fractured glass. The air itself shudders, a broken mirror rattling against invisible hands.
My body convulses before I can breathe. Heat and cold spiral through my veins, and in that spiral—glyphs ignite. They crawl beneath my skin like molten script, glowing faintly, etching lines I don't recognize yet feel carved from my birthright. Every heartbeat is an explosion, scattering fragments of vision into my skull. I see too much—Damon's voice distant, the pack shouting—but their faces flicker like torn frames in a reel I can't steady.
This isn't another ripple. Not one of the Hollow's whispers we've endured before. No—this is the Threshold Event itself. The point where the Hollow doesn't reach for me. It claims me.
The pack feels it too. Even the strongest warriors stagger back as the ground convulses beneath their claws, eyes wide, not in defiance but recognition. The air thickens until every breath tastes like ash and prophecy. Damon grips his blade tighter, but his gaze is fixed on me—because he knows this isn't something steel can stop.
And inside me, something deeper begins to hum. A chord that doesn't belong to Dahlia Moon. A chord that belongs to the Daughter of the Hollow Song.
---
The surge didn't fade. It deepened. My skin felt as if it were stitched with fire, and then—there they were. Not whispers anymore, not echoes curling at the edge of my skull. Shapes rose out of the air, black silhouettes carved from the sound itself. Every note of the Bloodsong Choir seemed to etch a mark in the space around me, symbols spiraling like embers caught in reverse, glyphs hanging weightless and alive.
Threads unspooled from them—veins of lightless silver—snaring my wrists, ankles, and throat. They didn't drag; they pulled with the inevitability of tides. My body jerked against the force, and I realized this was no suggestion, no temptation. This was contact. The Choir was reaching through me, using me.
My breath tore ragged from my chest. Damon snarled my name, but even his voice sounded distant, warped, as though it too had to pass through their song before it reached me. The forest bent with it. Shadows lengthened into limbs, curling inward, not around us but into me. The pack staggered under the pressure, yet every tendril, every glyph, every thread locked onto me alone—as if I were the door they'd been waiting for all along.
And the worst part? For one searing instant, I felt the pull not as an invasion, but as recognition.
---
The silhouettes did not dissolve. They thickened, bled forward, their hollow mouths widening as if to devour the breath from my lungs. Threads of shadow coiled around my wrists and ankles, tugging with a hunger that felt older than any oath Damon could ever swear. My body jerked in stuttering movements, half-puppet, half-dreamer, and I knew—the Choir wasn't only speaking now. They were claiming.
But then the air cracked with a pressure that didn't come from them. The Hollow Order's glyph-net tightened, strands of pale fire lacing through the shadows, weaving a cage that anchored itself around me. Their ritual didn't fight the Choir—it bent the Choir toward me, redirecting the storm into my veins. I wasn't resisting destiny. I was being built into it, stone by stone, bone by bone.
Damon's growl cut through the collapse. He saw it before I could even name it—the trap. His eyes tracked the glyphs spiraling around my body, not random but deliberate, not an attack but an inscription. They weren't just watching me falter—they were rewriting me, stitching my pulse into the Hollow Threshold itself.
His voice broke through the Choir's murmur, sharp and ragged. Dahlia—they're binding you into the rite.
The world tilted. What I'd thought was a battle for my will was something darker. The Order wasn't trying to break me. They were trying to use me as the final lockpick, the last living key to crack open the Threshold.
And as Damon tore forward to cut through the net, I felt the weight of it: my body as battlefield, my blood as the blade.
----
I stood at the edge of the Threshold, heart hammering, glyphs flaring hotter with each passing second. The forest around me seemed suspended, waiting for me to commit. Shadows twisted unnaturally in the distance, ash-smeared runes crawling faintly along the roots and stones, signaling that the Hollow Order's ritual was nearly complete. The air tasted of metal and smoke, thick with energy that hummed against my skin.
The Choir whispered urgently, a chorus of overlapping threads, not commands but reflections of what I could become. Step forward, they urged. Or hold back, they reminded. I felt the dual pull as if two rivers of power were tugging at my soul. One promised control, influence, the ability to disrupt the Hollow Order before their final act. The other offered safety—for the pack, for Damon, for myself—though even that path carried its own danger: passivity could let the ritual unfold, unstoppable.
I glanced at Damon. His eyes burned with raw, desperate fury, every muscle in his frame taut with the need to protect me. And yet, he could not restrain the pull I felt, could not break the tether binding me to the Choir. Mira's hand on my arm was steady, grounding, reminding me I wasn't alone—but the whispering fire inside me demanded more than safety; it demanded action.
Fear surged, clawing at the edges of my mind. What if I lost myself in this power? What if stepping forward made me more instrument than Daughter? But then the whispers coalesced into something undeniably clear: you are the Gate. The Threshold waits. You are not its prisoner—you are its key.
I inhaled sharply, feeling the forest, the glyphs, and the Choir pulsing with my heartbeat, an echo of inevitability. Every fiber of my being resonated with choice. I could let destiny unfold around me, or I could step forward and shape it, even if the cost was everything I thought I knew about who I was.
And so I lifted my hand, letting the fire beneath my skin surge in harmony with the Choir. The first step into the Threshold would decide not just the battle—but the future of the Hollow, the pack, and myself.
---
I hovered at the edge of the Threshold, breath shallow, muscles taut, glyphs flaring across my skin like molten rivers. The forest itself seemed alive, trembling under the weight of the ritual's magic, roots and branches shifting as if to make way—or to warn me back. Shadows lengthened unnaturally, responding to my heartbeat, and I felt the Hollow Order's presence tighten like a noose around the clearing.
The Choir whispered insistently, threading through my blood, urging, guiding, reflecting every flicker of fear and resolve. Their rhythm pulsed outward, touching the pack in subtle waves. I could see the uncertainty in their stances—Damon's jaw clenched, fists shaking with a need to protect me, yet he could not cross the invisible line that now bound me to the Threshold. Mira's hands stayed firm on my arm, a tether to reality, while Jareth's eyes darted between me and the converging energy, calculating danger beyond comprehension.
From the shadows, the Hollow Order's scouts and enforcers began to stir, their forms flickering in and out like dark smoke, drawn toward the pulsing signal of the Threshold. Runic sigils etched in ash glowed brighter, converging along the forest floor and spiraling upward as the ritual began its final phase. The air hummed with anticipation, a vibration that resonated in my bones, demanding a choice.
Every nerve in my body screamed: step forward and seize control of the unfolding power—or hesitate and allow the Hollow to dictate the outcome. The Choir thrummed in my veins, alive and expectant, and I realized there was no turning back. The next movement would define the survival of the pack, the completion of the ritual, and the very essence of who I was becoming.
I lifted my hand, glyphs blazing brighter than ever, feeling the Threshold pulse beneath my touch. The forest held its breath. The Hollow waited. And I—Dahlia, Daughter of the Hollow Song—stood on the knife's edge of apocalypse, ready to choose.
---
✨ Will Dahlia confront the Hollow Threshold head-on, or hesitate and risk letting destiny—and the Hollow—decide for her?
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