The ground split with a soundless roar. Trees convulsed as though wrung by invisible hands, birds fell dead mid-flight, and the forest floor swelled beneath my boots like the earth itself was struggling to breathe.
The hum rose through my ribs, deep enough to rattle marrow. Even in my wolf form it felt wrong, too alien, too vast, as though some hidden throat beneath the roots of the world had finally cleared itself to sing.
The Ironsworn broke formation. Runed blades hissed as they were gripped tighter, the sigils etched into steel shuddering against the resonance. One soldier spat to the dirt and muttered, voice quaking, "The Voice Below. Saints preserve us… it was never meant to be real."
The hum thickened into a rhythm, half heartbeat, half chant. The soil exhaled dust clouds as if the land itself was sighing. My vision blurred—shadows bending, trees leaning toward the unseen pulse. Dahlia staggered, her hand clutching her chest where the mark burned. Her lips parted, and before I could stop her, she whispered into the trembling air:
"Kael'vorynn… shaethra'mor… Veyrathuun thros'kaar."
The ancient words slid from her tongue like molten silver, swallowed instantly by the vibrating dark. The ground answered her. Roots split, soil bled ash, and the hum deepened until it was no longer a sound but a command thrumming inside us all.
Even Sareth's face lost color. His staff clanged against the dirt as the vibrations tried to tear it from his grip.
Then came the whisper beneath the hum. Countless voices layered as one, not spoken but inhaled, the choir's echo pressing against the inside of my skull:
"Neythral… ush'tor… Avelra'n kaiiith…"
The Voice Below was no legend. It was awake.
---
The hum did not fade—it deepened, sinking like iron chains into marrow. The Ironsworn shifted uneasily, their shields trembling in their grip. Sareth's gaze narrowed, his lips moving with the precision of one who knew the sound far too well.
"Kharon'veth rhae… sael drathuun…" he muttered, voice low as if naming the sound might summon it. Then, louder, to Damon—"It is a precursor. The Bloodsong Choir. Their hum always comes before the throat is opened."
Damon's jaw locked. "Throat-opening?"
Sareth's hand hovered in the air, fingers rigid. "When something chained… something buried… begins to stir. The hum is the warning. The Choir sings because a prison is breaking."
A soldier broke rank, panic cracking his discipline. "I heard this before! Before my clan was swallowed by ash and black rain. This same hum—this exact curse—was the last sound they ever breathed!" His voice shook. "We are already dead men."
Whispers broke through the pack like a fissure in stone.
"Run."
"Break the Oath."
"Nothing stands against the Choir."
One by one, their iron discipline fractured, steel shuddering against leather. The Ironsworn—those who were supposed to be unyielding—were turning hollow under the weight of a sound.
Damon shifted Dahlia's limp weight in his arms, her brand glowing faintly beneath the skin, its light answering the hum with a pulse that should not exist. Rage burned hot through his veins.
He stepped forward, his voice like thunder splitting night. "You dare whimper beneath a song?" He snarled, eyes flashing. "You swore your Oath to me. And I tell you this—better you die on your knees in battle than live to crawl as cowards."
The Ironsworn stiffened, caught between fear and fury. One spat in the dirt, shame cutting deeper than terror. Another slammed his blade to the ground in oath-renewal.
Still, the hum rose, threading into bone. Damon felt it tearing at the edges of sanity, at the brittle cord that bound these men to him. He knew the truth—he was holding them together with nothing but his fury, and fury was a thin shield against prophecy.
Above them, the hum twisted into a phrase. Ancient, writhing, almost language:
"Veyrathuun… kael drashii… vohrae sath…"
The Ironsworn flinched, ears bleeding, eyes rolling white as if the words were not sound but hooks tearing at their souls.
Sareth hissed the translation through clenched teeth. "The First Dragon turns in its sleep."
---
The forest did not fall silent after the first clash. It shifted. Twigs snapped in unison, a sound too precise to be accident, and the shadows began to arrange themselves into terrible order. From between the trunks came the Hollow Order once more—not retreating, not broken, but reforming, their ragged silhouettes weaving into a vast sigil carved upon the earth itself. Their heads tilted in unison, bodies moving with mechanical precision as if pulled by the strings of some unseen puppeteer.
The ground answered them. A low subterranean hum rolled beneath the soil, thrumming in perfect rhythm with their steps. Each throb was a pulse of dark life, ancient and wrong, making the marrow in my bones feel like it might splinter. Their boots struck in cadence, their limbs folding into angles too sharp, each position feeding the expanding circle.
Then I saw it. The pattern was not military. It was ritual. A calling.
Dahlia's hand tightened on my arm with surprising force despite her pallor, her voice breaking into a whisper that scraped across the air like frost. "Nai'theras ul'korien, sevrath tull, vohr-drenakai."
The words slithered through me, binding the truth into shape: their circle was no battlefield strategy. It was an invocation.
And then—he appeared.
A figure unlike the others stepped forward, draped in a heavy cloak that swallowed light, its face hidden beneath a veil of nothingness. No features. No eyes. No mouth. Yet authority bled from him like venom into water. He raised a hand and the Hollow Order froze mid-step, awaiting command. The hum deepened, cracking the bark of trees, spilling veins of shadow into their roots.
Sareth's staff hissed faintly at my side, runes glowing faint green, as he exhaled words older than empires: "Vey'thuran ossai, mirokh daranthiel, korrath ves'rein." The chant carried defiance, a ward against what was rising, though I saw the fear in his eyes—he knew this was not merely soldiers before us.
The faceless herald lowered its hand. From every Hollow throat came a unified murmur, layered and hollow: "Anrakth vorru, zhaenith ull'ka—Veyrathuun, vekh nar."
The name burned the air.
The trees themselves recoiled.
And for the first time, I realized this battle was no longer a struggle of steel and blood. It was the beginning of a summoning.
---
Sareth's eyes blaze as he steadies his trembling staff, his voice cutting through the ringing silence Dahlia's fractured prophecy left behind.
—You don't understand. That was no echo of the old song. What you spoke was a new verse. And a new verse means dominion has shifted.
The words coil around us like smoke, suffocating in their implication. Dahlia clutches her palm, blood trickling between her fingers, but it isn't just blood—glyphs sear beneath her skin, faint and flickering, as if trying to brand themselves into her very marrow. They hum, alien and hungry, pulling at the air.
Her lips part without her will, voice slipping into a cadence not her own. The language is ash and thunder, neither mortal nor wolf-born.
"Veyraeth ondras, kalum viresh na, sevrath'ion dal—shorraeth um veyrrhal!"
The sound rakes across the chamber, and the walls answer with groaning vibrations. For a heartbeat, I swear I hear a chorus answering from the dark between worlds—the Bloodsong Choir, whispering their claim: Vessel, vessel, vessel.
Sareth flinches but does not stop her. His hand lifts, as if to cage the air itself.
—This is it. The fracture. The Hollow Order has been clawing at the veil, waiting for the verse to break. They'll use it to drag something through the split in prophecy. Something that does not belong here.
Dahlia gasps, biting her lip until more blood runs down her chin, glyphs burning brighter, veins threading with molten silver. I want to wrench her away, to rip every symbol from her flesh with my own claws, but a dread certainty gnaws at me—if I tear her free, the verse may unmoor and devour us all.
Her voice trembles, half hers, half theirs, as she whispers another string of forbidden syllables:
"Ashra vel dron, issar kul-tha, maerith ven'ovrah—thrennos ahl korruum."
Each word is a blade of sound, cutting deeper into the chamber.
Sareth's voice cracks with urgency, but his eyes glint like a prophet staring into the void.
—She is not reciting. She is anchoring. Without her tongue, the verse would spiral uncontrolled, and all of Shadowland would already be ash.
And still, my wolf howls inside me, half in terror, half in defiance, wanting nothing but to snatch her away from every cursed syllable spilling from her lips.
---
The last flecks of burning ash vanish into the silence, leaving the battlefield veiled in gray. Then a figure at the Hollow Order's front raises its hood. Its face is not a face but a hollow veil, a trembling cavity where features should be. When it "speaks," no sound moves the air—yet every skull on the field thrums as though struck like a drum.
"Ul'veth maros. Nytha ven drakth. Olvoren shal'thuun."
The words crawl like iron filings across the inside of my head, sizzling, branding thought itself.
It is not declaring victory. It is declaring awakening.
The resonance deepens, pulsing like a black tide through marrow.
"The God of the Hollow stirs… not bound to shard, nor verse, nor fate."
The Ironsworn break formation, horror clawing their faces bare. One of their captains stammers, voice cracking: "No… no god exists outside the Verse—none!" His denial sounds like prayer more than protest.
But the Hollow Herald goes on, its skull-voice swelling:
"Karuth el'varn, nekristh oruul. A god unbound. A god of unmaking."
I feel Damon stiffen beside me. His eyes cut through the smoke and ash, not with rage but with the kind of realization that drains blood from the skin. He sees what I see now: the Hollow Order doesn't care about this battlefield, doesn't care about the clash of Ironsworn and Choir. They aren't fighting to win.
They're fighting to unwrite.
To tear Shadowland itself out of verse, out of prophecy—out of existence.
---
Her body slackens in my arms, and for a heartbeat I think I've lost her. Then her lips move, cracked and trembling, breath carrying words that do not belong to the world of men.
"Sahran vel threnn'akai… thros ven'nar… blood is the song, the Choir drinks the key."
The sound chills me more than her failing pulse. My heart seizes as I remember the Ironsworn scout's rasp before he died—that the Order wanted blood, not bodies. Blood was the fuel. Blood was the bridge.
Roots quiver around us like veins twitching under skin. Then one of the Ironsworn—hard-eyed, scarred, loyal—screams as he's wrenched backward into the dark. The sound cuts off in a wet gasp. His throat has been unmade, and I watch in horror as crimson pours into the earth. The roots lurch, greedily drinking, pulsing brighter with each swallow.
"Ihn-tarh velthran… kal'sohn verrid…" the unseen Choir hisses from the dark. The air carries their voices like a chorus of grave-dust, each syllable weaving with Dahlia's whispers.
The sworn panic, shields rattling, voices breaking as they scatter. The forest itself feels alive—no, hungering.
"Hold!" I snarl, my wolf tearing free in my voice, the sound cracking the air like thunder. "You are not soldiers tonight—you are my pack. And you will not break."
They freeze, fear clashing with instinct, but I see it catch: the command that binds wolf to wolf, iron to iron. They lock formation, backs to one another, blades raised—not Ironsworn anymore, but mine.
Dahlia trembles in my arms, her eyes half-lidded, and whispers again, weaker but clear:
"The roots remember the first spilling. The Choir feeds. And when the ground is sated… the god will wake."
Her words carve into me like blades.
The blood is not sacrifice. It's ignition.
---
The clearing heaved. The roots beneath our feet twisted like serpents, writhing against the pull of something deeper. A single fissure cracked open, splitting the ground like glass struck by a hammer. From it surged a column of blackened mist, coiling upward, not like smoke but like a throat—shaped, pulsating, straining as if to form words of its own.
The sound rose from that impossible hollow, a hum so low it crawled into the marrow of my bones. Every Ironsworn blade jerked violently, ringing as though caught in an unseen wind.
Dahlia staggered, clutching her chest. The scream that tore from her throat wasn't hers—it was as if the sound itself had reached inside her and ripped its way out. Her voice shattered into fragments of ancient syllables she hadn't chosen to speak.
Her lips moved, and I heard it—an invocation, unbidden:
"Veyrath'uun… shai'nor velkuth… Ahn-duriss… shaelthraah…"
The words weren't hers, but they poured from her mouth as though the mist-throat was using her as its vessel.
Sareth answered in that same cursed cadence, his voice steady where hers was fractured:
"Nythra vel'suun… chorai drakth'el… veyrathos nuum… Ahn-duriss rise."
The Black Choir didn't chant—they harmonized. Dozens of hollowed voices threaded themselves between his words, weaving a lattice of echoes until the air was more resonance than silence. Their whispers clawed at the edges of reality:
"Shai… shai… shaelthraah… nuum… nuum… nuum…"
The column pulsed harder. It wasn't summoning. It was birthing. The prophecy itself was being rewritten in that unholy chorus.
I reached for Dahlia, but the sound lashed against me like a wall of blades, and her eyes locked on mine—bright, terrified, already glowing with something that wasn't hers.
Her scream broke into words one last time, the Choir forcing itself through her throat:
"From beneath the roots of the world… Ahn-duriss shall sing."
The fissure split wider, earth peeling back like rotten flesh. The mist-throat roared its first note, and the world bent to listen.
And from beneath the roots of the world, the Choir began its new song.
---
🔥 The Hollow Order is no longer just summoning—they are unmaking prophecy itself. Will Damon and Dahlia stop a god being written into existence? Smash that power stone if you're hooked—I need your strength to keep the shadows singing.
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