The Rift pulsed like a dying heart, its veins cracking wider, bleeding ashfire light that burned the air. Winds screamed out of the wound in reality—black and silver, colder than death. I staggered, Red Flame crawling over my skin, flickering wild as if the Rift itself tried to snuff it out.
The corpses answered first. Both Ironsworn and Hollow Order bodies littering the ground began twitching, their fingers clawing the mud, their eyes dripping black fire. The Rift's corruption slithered into their flesh, twisting broken spines upright. They rose without sound, and yet I felt the chorus of them inside my head.
Sareth hissed beside me, his sigil-scarred hands cutting through air, marking wards that flickered weakly. His voice broke into the Forgotten Tongue, low and urgent:
"Veyr'khath ossun, tal'thar rekshuun… bind them, bind them, bind them."
Ash coiled, black shackles gnawing around the twitching dead, but the Rift tore them apart as if mocking him.
I pressed my palms into the dirt, Red Flame sputtering, my voice cracking into a whisper I didn't recognize until it burned through my teeth.
"Shaeloth dravven, esh'ra kiin… hold, hold the fire."
The Flame recoiled, then steadied, clinging tighter to me, but I felt its defiance, as if it too wanted to be consumed by the Rift's hunger.
The battlefield itself began to shift—ground sinking, stone screaming like bone splintering. The Rift pulled at the valley, dragging everything inward. Even the sky warped, constellations bending like broken glass.
A chorus answered from nowhere and everywhere—the Hollow Order's surviving Choir. Their voices bled through the storm, chanting in unison as they pressed their hands against their throats, carving words into flesh:
"Ka-thyr velan, ossuur drelth, aneth… rise, rise, rise."
And the reanimated corpses surged forward, no longer men or women but hollowed heralds, vessels for the Rift's first breath.
---
The ground beneath Shadow Rift cracked open, a sinkhole yawning wide, and I realized the battlefield itself was collapsing into the Rift's hunger.
---
The ground kept collapsing, a groan of stone and soul beneath my boots, when another sound rose to meet the Rift's howl—voices. Dozens of them, raw and burning, not sung from mouths but torn straight from marrow. The Bloodsong Choir.
Their throats bled music, their harmony a wound stitched shut by fire.
"Ul'therak… shial moren… ashthyran vel dos…"
("By ashes we bind, by silence we stand, by blood we endure.")
Each note pressed into the air like nails hammered into the Rift's skin. The cracks quivered. The corpses thrashing around me froze mid-spasm, held half-breath between life and decay. I clutched my head as their hymn split my skull open, each syllable carving runes across my thoughts.
Whispers clawed the inside of my mind:
"…Erylthos… varithan… su'ren khoros…"
("Through dust we chain, through night we seal, through pain we hold.")
I stumbled. It wasn't only sound—it was command. Their voices felt like iron hooks dragging on my blood, trying to draw me into their rhythm. My Red Flame flickered and hissed, pulsing against the intrusion, caught between fury and obedience.
Sareth's shadow lashed beside me, splitting a rising corpse in two, his voice cutting sharper than steel. "They are bleeding themselves into the Rift," he growled. Then louder, turning toward the Choir:
"Varu'threl! Nethor ashaal!"
("Your chains weaken! The wound widens!")
The Choir did not falter. Their unison only grew more violent, their chant thick as black oil in my veins. Still, I saw it—the cracks of exhaustion bleeding down their cheeks, the trembling in their hands. Their strength was ebbing.
Sareth's warning reached me as a lash of certainty. "They cannot hold much longer. When they falter, the Rift will birth horrors beyond this Behemoth."
The Rift pulsed like a heart about to explode. And the Choir's song was breaking.
---
I felt the hymn begin to falter, a single discordant note unraveling the fragile chain keeping the Rift from devouring us whole.
---
The Rift convulsed like a living wound, light bleeding out in shattered pulses. From its gaping tear surged not one terror—but three.
The first slid forward in coils of glass-bone and molten veins, its body humming with a sound like shattering crystal. Its hiss carried syllables that scraped the marrow: "Ish'thal veyrath… suul drann…"
The second lumbered through, a colossus of ash and iron chains, each step dragging the battlefield down like gravity itself. The clang of its restraints was a dirge, and from its hollow throat it thundered: "Kor'thaan… evir'run tal…"
The third unfurled wings stitched from shadow and silvered edges, its face a shivering mask of mirrors that reflected a thousand warped versions of me. Its voice was not a voice but an echo inside my skull, whispering in forbidden chorus: "Dahlia… Moon… Thorne…"
My breath caught. It spoke my name.
Myrrath's shadow wrapped around me, his scales shimmering with fractured flame. "Stay behind me, child," he growled, smoke dripping from his fangs. "Even dragons cannot strike at all three."
The Choir staggered under the mounting weight of the Rift. Blood ran from their mouths as they forced the hymn through split lips: "Ul'therak… shial moren… ashthyran vel dos…" Their voices wavered, breaking against the howls of the Heralds.
Sareth's warning seared across the link we shared. "Their eyes are not for the Rift, Dahlia. One of them hunts you. Do not answer if it calls again."
But I couldn't ignore the truth—the mirrored horror's gaze pierced through every shield, every chant, every heartbeat. Its glass face shifted, and behind its fractured surfaces I thought I saw a reflection that wasn't mine at all.
Something inside me whispered back without my consent: "Veyrath shal'nor… siluumen drahthyr…"
The words weren't mine, but they bled out of me like I had always known them.
The Herald paused, tilting its head toward me—as if the words were a door I had just unlocked.
---
The mirrored Herald recognizes Dahlia's voice in forbidden tongue, and the battlefield bends in response.
---
The ground split beneath the Heralds' weight, molten glass hissing in the serpent's veins, chains dragging like thunder behind the ash-colossus, and the winged horror's mirrored face fracturing the air with reflections of impossible skies. My breath rattled as their presence pressed against me—too vast, too wrong. Even Myrrath's wings quivered as he drew a line of fire between us and them.
Serathion's voice broke through the storm, sharp as iron—"Thyren ka'shath, na'vel ossorah!" Flame not as fire, but as thread—bind the rift, child.
I flinched. Weave the Rift? My pulse spiked with panic. Fire was meant to destroy, not to stitch. The Red Flame within me surged violently, eager to lash out, eager to burn. My vision swam red, and I swore I could hear whispers riding on its heat. "Velthran ossa, velthran ossa…" Burn it all. Burn it through.
My hands shook, the glow too much, spilling from my fingertips like molten lightning. It would consume me. I felt myself slipping.
Then Damon's hand touched mine. No words, no command—just weight. Steady, grounding, pulling me back into my body. His eyes burned like the first dawn after endless night, fierce and unyielding.
I swallowed hard and lifted my arms toward the Rift. My skin seared as flame gathered—not a weapon, but a strand. I forced the heat to bend, to soften, to unravel into threads of scarlet light.
"Ethra'shan vel ka'thun, nael issorah, nael issorah…" Bind, not break. Hold, not consume. My voice cracked as I spoke the weaving tongue, an instinct that wasn't mine yet poured through me.
The fire became silk. Burning silk. Pain lanced through my palms as strands of Red Flame stretched out, curling along the Rift's jagged edges, hissing as they touched the wound in the sky.
And for a breath, I thought—maybe it was working.
But the Herald with the mirrored face turned its gaze toward me. Its surface rippled, and my reflection bled out of it—skin peeling, eyes hollow, mouth chanting words I hadn't spoken yet.
The fire-thread in my hands writhed.
---
Dahlia's weaving has begun, but the mirror-faced Herald is warping her reflection—twisting her flame into something alien.
---
The rift screamed against my weaving, edges hissing as the Red Flame bent into threads instead of fire, shimmering between my trembling hands. For a heartbeat, the Heralds staggered—those colossal shapes of void and hunger faltering against the seal. I felt it. The world itself seemed to lean toward hope.
Then the shadows stirred. A dozen cloaked figures rose from the fractures of the obsidian plain, their faces hidden, their mouths already moving. The sound slithered across the battlefield, low and venomous, a tongue that was never meant for mortal ears.
"Veyrathuun na'resh… ulth'ma koreth… sa'dryn vehl."
The forbidden chant rippled through the air like smoke set aflame, each syllable dragging with it a weight that pressed on my chest. I felt my weaving snag, my threads warping as the Heralds convulsed. Their hollow frames brightened, not with retreat—but with grotesque renewal.
I screamed against the pull, trying to bind tighter, but their power surged, clawing at the edges of the rift, fueled by the traitorous whispers. The Heralds no longer waned. They rose higher, wings unfurling, their bodies swollen with the unholy hymn.
Sareth's voice broke over the chaos, fury sharp as steel. "Traitors! They feed the abyss—tear them down before the seal shatters!"
But it was too late. My threads unraveled like ash in a storm. The Heralds pressed forward, undoing every inch of progress, their howls rising in unison with the Order's chant.
I felt the truth crash into me—this wasn't just about me, not just about the Red Flame or my bloodline. The Hollow Order didn't want one Herald. They wanted all thirteen dragged through.
And my flame was the key.
---
The Red Flame trembled in my palms, caught between binding the breach and feeding it, as the Order's whispers clawed for dominion over my fire.
---
The chanting still clung to the air like rot: "Veyrathuun na'resh… ulth'ma koreth… sa'dryn vehl…" The Hollow Order's voices were threads feeding the Heralds, their shadow tongues weaving strength into the abominations. The Rift shuddered wider, and the air screamed with blood-colored light.
My fire cracked along my veins, hotter than my skin could contain. My palms burned, begging release, but Damon's shadowed outline across the chaos held me rooted in fear. One breath too deep, one flame too wild—and he would be ash.
Serathion's voice tore through me like chains breaking—feral, merciless: "Ilth'rev ka'roth, Dahlia. Let the fire take all. Burn the world if you must."
But Damon's whisper found me, softer than a prayer and heavier than any oath. "Burn only what you must, Dahlia. Not yourself."
The Rift screamed again. The Heralds surged forward, clawing against unseen barriers. The Hollow Order's tongues lashed sharper: "Veyrathuun'thral… meysh na'kurath… kal veyrathuun!"
I staggered, the choice splitting me in two. Hold it back and let them breach, or unleash everything inside me—knowing nothing, not even Damon, would be safe.
Tears stung but evaporated in the furnace of my breath. I raised my hands. The sigils carved into my veins ignited, searing me from within as if I was both the torch and the pyre. The words rose unbidden, spilling from me in the same forbidden cadence, but warped with my flame:
"Ashara vehl'rynn… thalos drak'mir… redem korath… FLARE!"
The battlefield turned scarlet. Fire leapt from my body like the world's last heartbeat, the ground cracking open beneath my feet as if the earth itself recoiled from what I had become.
And in that instant—I was both savior and executioner.
---
The battlefield is drowned in scarlet flame—the Rift itself shivers under her unleashed power.
---
The Rift screamed as if it were alive, its edges jagged with black fire and veins of lightning. My strike lashed through it, weaving scarlet into a trembling lattice of Red Flame. For one impossible heartbeat, it held. The battlefield stilled. The Heralds froze, their warped bodies caught mid-stride—half trapped within the mesh of my fire, half slipping through with claw and fang, their shrieks like glass ground into bone.
Sareth roared beside me, his own voice cutting through the storm, anchoring my flame with his spell. "Veyrathuun kahl drasth, ahrim vorah ulthuun!" The words twisted like barbs, shredding air itself. Damon's claws dug into my shoulders, his growl vibrating against my spine.
But then—silence. A silence too heavy, too precise. It wasn't the Rift. It wasn't the Heralds. It was him.
Veyrathuun's voice spilled into me, not thunder, not roar—whisper. A silk blade sliding into the marrow of my bones.
"Little moonblood… you are my door."
I staggered. My fire faltered. The lattice screamed with cracks of ash-light. The Heralds surged again, their shrieks echoing his hunger.
"No—" I gasped, pressing harder, my lips shaping forbidden syllables that scorched my throat. "Kael'thun vori, ashen drath ul'kaar—barrieth!" The Red Flame answered, but it wavered, trembling between my will and his.
His voice coiled tighter, curling around my ear as though he breathed from inside me. "You burn not to seal me, Dahlia. You burn to open me."
The lattice shattered. The battlefield drowned in scarlet and shadow. And as his voice curled inside me, I realized—I wasn't sealing the Rift.
I was unlocking it.
---
⚡If your heart raced with Dahlia's breaking point… if you felt the chill of Veyrathuun whispering in her ear… then my dear reader, drop a Power Stone right now! Your support keeps this fire burning and drives Dahlia's fight forward. Every stone you gift helps me forge the next chapter hotter, darker, and more irresistible. Don't hold back—Dahlia surely can't.
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