Veyrathuun's whisper lingered inside me like smoke that would not clear. You are my door.
The battlefield didn't end, but it shifted—like the world itself tilted. My senses faltered. Shouts dulled to a wet murmur, steel clashed in slow echoes, even Damon's roar cracked apart, scattered in the void winds.
The lattice of Red Flame I had carved into the Rift shuddered, trembling like a spiderweb lit with dying embers. The Heralds screamed in unison, their bodies half-dissolved in the pull, their faces twisted between the mortal soil and the endless void.
Ash and shadow swirled together, a storm without sky. The Rift didn't shrink beneath my power—it hungered. It clawed at the air, each pulse dragging soldiers to their knees. Hollow Order cultists bled from their ears; even Ironsworn knights faltered, armor scraping the dirt as they tried to stand against the tide.
Sareth's voice cut through, rising above the storm, his words iron and venom in the ancient tongue:
"Avar'thuun kai, sel'morr aghrieth! Chain the wound! Burn the mouth of nothingness!"
The Bloodsong Choir echoed his command, their throats ragged, each voice snapping like a string about to tear:
"Korrath! Korrath! Seal the howl of the void!"
But the Rift did not listen. The Red Flame lattice throbbed like a beating heart—and the beat was not mine.
Damon's silhouette tore through the storm, his body a black outline burning with silver light, his mouth open in a roar I could not hear. His eyes found mine—feral, desperate, unyielding. But I was no longer standing in his world.
I stood inside the whisper.
And the whisper was growing louder.
---
The whispers thickened—silk woven from knives, curling into the marrow of my bones.
You are my door… my vessel of return… my beloved ruin.
The battlefield collapsed inside my skull; what I saw no longer matched what my eyes beheld. The Red Flame lattice around the Rift blurred into threads of blackened light, bleeding downward like veins across my skin.
And then came the visions.
A throne sculpted from the skulls of suns. Oceans of ash swallowing mountains whole. Choirs of hollowed voices chanting "Veyrathuun, Veyrathuun, Ael'theruun draem." My reflection stood among them—crowned in silver ruin, eyes devoured by fire and shadow, my name rewritten: Moonblood Queen.
The weight of it crushed my lungs. I staggered, clutching at my chest, whispering through teeth clenched hard enough to draw blood.
"Na'therion althura… solven draem…"
(Let the chains bind, let the dream hold.)
The words scraped out of me like glass. A ward, my last defense. My mother's lullaby turned into a blade.
But the Rift pulsed. A low, mocking heartbeat.
Do you feel it? The voice curved through me, laughter buried in its thunder. Your tongue clings to dead syllables. No ward can chain the root of beginnings.
The lattice cracked. My incantation was eaten before it reached the air, dissolved in that abyssal pulse. The shadow pressed harder against me, stroking my mind as though I were prey already subdued.
The battlefield groaned. Heralds shrieked and folded backward into the void-winds. Soldiers—friend and foe alike—clawed their ears as if tearing flesh could silence the hymn:
"Vorun'thal ashrenai… Kal'theruun draem…"
(All thrones must burn, all dreams must bow.)
The Rift answered them, flaring black-red. My knees buckled, the earth trembling under the chant.
And still, Damon's roar—distant, strangled, lost inside the storm—dragged at the last shard of myself that wasn't already slipping into his claim.
---
The air split with a sound like marrow cracking. Serathion moved—not toward me, but away, his hand lifted in a jagged arc. His eyes, once fierce with oath and loyalty, now gleamed with a madness I had only glimpsed in those who had stared too long into the Rift.
"Better a world burned than a world swallowed," he growled, voice layered with something not his own.
"No…" I staggered, the weight f Veyrathuun's whispers still burning behind my skull. "Serathion—don't."
But he had already begun. His fingers carved lines of blood into the air, the glyphs of the Choir bleeding crimson against the sky. The chant ripped from his throat, raw and violent:
"Vel'ashuun… kor'dralith… en'thera vaeluun…"
(From ash to ruin, from ruin to silence.)
The battlefield lurched. Earth cracked open like a rib cage, bones of the old wars grinding against the present. The Choir's song stirred, the sound of a thousand voices screaming from beneath the soil. Soldiers faltered, some clutching their ears, others staring in horror as the sigils burned brighter.
"Serathion, stop!" I cried, voice shattering with fury and desperation. "You'll damn us all!"
His gaze snapped to me—half his face shadowed, veins crawling black across his temple, as if the Rift had written its truth into his flesh.
"Damnation," he said, lips curling, "is mercy compared to what comes."
The glyphs flared. The sky bled. And for the first time, I wondered if it wasn't Veyrathuun I had to fear most, but the ally who had just abandoned me.
---
The storm split as Damon crashed through it, his wolf form more shadow than flesh, every claw-strike shredding glyph-light and shrieking ash. I barely recognized him—his eyes were no longer molten gold but something rawer, desperate, burning as though he'd set his soul aflame to reach me.
His hand found mine, scorching, anchoring. My fire trembled, caught between release and restraint, as if one heartbeat could decide the ruin of everything.
"Don't give him your fire. Don't give him you," Damon rasped, voice tearing with more than battle—it was a plea, a confession, a vow broken open.
But Sareth's chants pressed closer, binding the air with knives. His voice was a blood-soaked drumbeat:
"Vel'ashuun… kor'dralith… en'thera vaeluun…"
(From ash to ruin, from ruin to silence.)
The earth beneath us split, veins of red crawling like hunger through the dirt. The Hollow Order's chorus answered in fractured whispers:
"Shae'vrath… umbralith… shaeluun darreth…"
(Drown the flame, devour the star.)
My skin burned with their hunger. I could almost feel my fire sliding from me, seduced, devoured. Damon tightened his grip until my bones ached, forcing me to meet him.
"You are not their vessel," he growled. "You are not his sacrifice." His forehead pressed to mine, rough and trembling, like he was holding himself together only by the thread of this touch.
But Sareth's voice thundered, shattering the fragile stillness between us:
"Kor'draven… shael'ithor… ven'shaluun draelith!"
(Blood for silence, silence for eternity!)
The battlefield convulsed. Flames tore upward like rivers. The Bloodsong Choir shrieked, their tongues a storm of knives:
"En'thera shaeluun! En'thera shaeluun!"
(Ruin to silence! Ruin to silence!)
My body shook with their rhythm, my fire answering against my will. Damon's voice cut through, breaking raw.
"Dahlia. Look at me. Not them. Me. If you give them your flame, I lose you."
The words pierced deeper than any spell. His hand still bound mine, and for one suspended heartbeat, I felt the battlefield fall away—only his breath, only his eyes, only the truth he had never dared to speak.
And I didn't know if I was strong enough to choose.
---
The Rift pulsed like a starving heart, its lightless veins reaching toward me. Every beat demanded blood, every flicker of shadow whispered my name. I felt the pull, raw and merciless. The Red Flame surged inside me, begging to leap, begging to consume.
Serathion's voice wrapped around my bones, a hiss both intimate and vast.
"Ignarae velthas, sevrion tal'kai, rend the veil, feed the dark."
(Consume the vessel, break the seal, rend the veil, feed the dark.)
The Hollow Order's choir answered, their voices a storm of ash.
"Uthor vel'resh, doran ulthien, phoros verakai."
(Spill her blood, bind the gate, let the abyss rise.)
My hand shook over the ground, flame spiraling from my fingertips, my own body betraying me. The Rift wanted me open, wanted me emptied.
Then Damon's voice broke through the storm. Not as Alpha. Not as the beast. But as man—raw, unarmored, desperate.
"Dahlia. Don't give him your fire. Don't give him you. Not your blood. Not your soul. Not like this."
The plea fractured me. Two worlds waged war inside me: fire and shadow, love and ruin.
Serathion roared again, his command searing my skull.
"Veltharion kai'resh! Burn it all! Burn the hollow and crown yourself flame-born!"
The Rift throbbed harder, demanding its seal. I could feel it—my blood was the key. If I let one drop fall, the war would never be the same.
I trembled, torn in every direction. Damon's hand still anchored me, his grip hot against my wrist, but the flame clawed for release. The Hollow Order's chants hammered in rhythm with my heart, a thousand shadows shrieking for my surrender.
And for the first time, I understood: whatever choice I made here would shatter everything. Not just the battle. The war. The bond. Myself.
I whispered, voice shaking, both to Damon and to myself.
"I don't know… which piece of me survives either way."
The Rift answered with a deafening crack, shadows reaching higher—waiting for my decision.
---
The instant the last syllable left my lips, the lattice of Red Flame that had held my marrow together groaned like a dying star. I felt the threads snap—not gently, but like ribs torn from the chest of a beast. Fire rained inward instead of outward, folding against itself. My own body became the pyre.
The Rift heard me. No—saw me. For one suspended heartbeat, the storm above collapsed into silence, shadows unraveling into a sphere of blinding white void. Then it bent inward, hollowing into a pupil. A colossal, lidless eye opened where there should have been only chaos, and it looked directly at me.
A voice poured into me like ink through torn parchment—smoother than air, heavier than stone.
"Li'theran veyrathuun, daemosh raen. Veyrathuun velkash, thol aran shael."
Little door… swing wide.
My spine locked. My blood screamed. That whisper carried a hunger older than the ash, older than gods, older than the chains of time itself. The Rift pulsed with the cadence of the words, and I felt the seal inside my chest strain, its binding threads quivering toward rupture.
Damon roared my name, his claws ripping shadows apart as he dragged himself closer, his wolf bleeding from cuts he couldn't heal. His voice was hoarse but unyielding. Don't listen. Don't open. Don't give it you.
But the Rift's gaze didn't break. It widened. In its surface I saw myself reflected—thirteen times over—thirteen shards, thirteen endings. Each one a Dahlia burned, broken, or crowned. And all of them were smiling at me as though they already knew the choice I would make.
The Hollow Order, their throats torn raw, fell to their knees in synchrony, chanting in the same breathless ecstasy:
"Khorathuun vel'shira, khaerun dal'eth, veyrathuun rael."
(The gate is watching, the seal is bleeding, the devourer stirs.)
The earth beneath my feet cracked, bleeding a dark radiance like spilled shadowfire. My flame wanted to answer—no, it ached to. My body trembled under the weight of choosing: to yield to Damon's desperate plea, or to the Rift's promise of endless release.
And the Rift's eye blinked, once. An eclipse swallowing the world.
---
The lattice of Red Flame seared through me until it broke—until the fire I thought was mine unraveled into shards that pierced me from the inside out. My scream tore out raw, but the Rift drowned it, answering with its own voice, a sound older than blood, older than gods. I dropped to my knees, the ground cracking beneath me as if even the stone recoiled.
The marks burned alive under my skin, flaring in patterns too precise to be pain, too alive to be scars. Glyphs. My veins became script, my blood the ink. I couldn't stop them from forming. I couldn't breathe without carving another line of that ancient alphabet into my flesh.
The Rift widened, no longer a wound in the world but an eye—open, unblinking, and seeing me for what I was becoming. From within, the Heralds clawed and shrieked, their limbs writhing like silhouettes of ash. Their chants coiled around my ears, whispering in forbidden rhythm:
"Veyrathuun veyru'khaal… dathuur ossien… khorath en'draal…"
(Veyrathuun stirs… the door unseals… the blood-light falls…)
I clutched my chest as the heat carved deeper. My voice wasn't my own when it broke free. The words came strangled yet perfect, an invocation I should never have known:
"Shaal'vethra… kairos den'thaal… khuraven ossir—vekhtaar!"
(Unmake me… bind me to time… hollow my name—become!)
The Rift answered. The sky shook. The Heralds pushed harder, half-formed faces pressing through the veil of light, their hunger flooding into me.
Sareth's voice roared from the circle, frantic, chanting counter-spells I couldn't comprehend, his desperation a jagged storm:
"Ashthuur mal'vekhran! Serrith ka'duros! Veyrathuun vakh!"
(Seal the ash-breach! Break the serpent's mouth! Deny Veyrathuun!)
But I already knew it was too late. My skin split like parchment, glowing scripts unfurling beneath. The Rift wasn't just near me—it was inside me, carving my marrow into its scripture.
And when I raised my eyes, I saw Damon's horror mirrored in the widening Rift. I saw his hands reaching, too late, too human.
The Heralds shrieked. The Rift screamed.
And in that instant, I knew—I wasn't fighting the Rift anymore. I was becoming it.
---