Blood still seared beneath my skin, each glyph burning brighter than my veins could bear. The Rift's shriek wasn't just around me—it was inside me, folding thought into hunger. Damon's roar tore across the chaos, savage and grounding, but the voice that followed gutted my resolve.
"You are not fighting me, little flame," Veyrathuun whispered, each syllable dripping into my marrow like venom. "You are finishing me."
My body convulsed. The lattice of Red Flame within me cracked, then flared as if it no longer belonged to me. Glyphs spread down my arms in jagged rivers of fire and shadow, pulsing in rhythm with the Rift's beat.
The air fractured. My flesh fractured. Half of me was blood and bone, the other half abyssal glass that reflected nothing but hunger.
The Heralds froze in their climb from the Rift. Those colossal forms—half-born, half-wraith—turned their eyeless faces toward me, and I felt it: they weren't reaching for Veyrathuun anymore. They were waiting.
Words I didn't recognize, but that my tongue knew too well, spilled from my lips—hot, sharp, and final.
"Serrathuun... kael vorath... en'kara thren…"
The Bloodsong fragments rolled into the storm, and the Rift shivered like flesh struck raw.
Damon lunged for me, hands desperate, but the instant his skin brushed mine, his cry split the air. Smoke curled from his palms. The bond between us flared, agonized, alive. He didn't let go.
"Dahlia—stop—" His voice was broken stone, more command than plea.
But I couldn't stop. The Rift was in me, through me, speaking with my lungs, burning with my veins.
"Thyrenn vakar… os'drathuun… velmorr shaii…"
Each word felt like a blade I was unsheathing from my own ribs. The Heralds bowed, their hulking silhouettes bending in reverence.
And in that instant, I knew the terrible truth.
I wasn't just the vessel.
I was becoming the voice.
---
The Heralds froze as though the abyss itself held its breath. Their half-formed limbs twitched in the Riftlight, awaiting the next syllable from my lips. My mouth trembled, shaping another curse before I even realized it—
"Velasthuun… dor'kai en'thir… shae'varr thalos…"
The words clawed out of me, black honey dripping from my tongue.
"Stop!" Damon's voice ripped raw, but when his hand closed around my arm the glyphfire seared him back, flesh smoking. His snarl broke against my name, desperate, furious. "You're still mine, Dahlia. Fight it!"
But another voice cut through the flames—bright, absolute, intolerable.
"Enough." Serathion descended through the rift's haze, his armor catching what little light was left of the sky. Celestial fire coiled along his blade, a sun burning in his grasp. His eyes locked on me as though already reading my death. "She is no longer yours, wolf. She belongs to the Rift. To him."
Damon bared his teeth, half-shifted, half-beast, blood streaking down his arm. "She belongs to no one. Least of all your cursed prophecy."
Serathion's blade lifted, haloed in fire. "Then I will unmake her before she becomes the Rift itself. Better ash than his vessel."
The ground splintered when Damon leapt forward, claws slashing sparks against Serathion's burning steel. Their collision ripped the battlefield open—bloodrage against celestial flame, savage fury clashing with divine judgment. The Heralds shuddered in the Rift's edge, torn between masters, while the whispers coiled tighter around my heart, urging me to finish what I had begun.
"Shae'thunn vorakai… veltharion na'kaless…"
The chant bled from my lips again, and the Rift screamed with me.
---
The air split with their fury. Each strike—Serathion's celestial fire against Damon's bloodrage—did not just shatter stone and shadow, it tore the sky itself. A new fracture yawned wide above us, jagged as a wound, bleeding violet storms into the world. The Rift was listening. Worse, the Rift was answering.
The Heralds swarmed closer, their forms dissolving and reforming in the stormlight, drawn like carrion to fire. Their mouths split too wide, their eyes burning with endless hunger as they drank in every clash of power.
Dahlia's scream cut through them all—yet it was no longer only hers. The glyph-scars carved into her skin pulsed like living chains, twisting, binding her voice into something not of this world. Her cry fractured into layered tones, a hymn not her own, bleeding from her lips in cruel harmony with the Rift.
"Altherak… voress… maethrien dal…" hissed the Bloodsong Choir from within the tear, their whispers echoing through marrow and soul. Through her blood, the unmaking breathes.
Her glyphs writhed hotter, the black-red lines searing until smoke rose from her flesh. The Choir's whispers sank deeper into her lungs, forcing another hymn through clenched teeth:
"Veyrathuun… kahr'eshai… vel drithien…"
(Veyrathuun claims me—his shadow coils eternal.)
Damon roared her name and surged forward, but the Rift surged with him. Each blow he threw against Serathion widened the wound in the heavens, the battlefield itself convulsing under their struggle. The Choir fed on his rage as much as Serathion's flame, every clash a feast of unraveling.
"Altherak… voress… maethrien dal…" the Choir hissed again, louder, their chant now shaking the bones of the ruined ground. Heralds clawed forward, scraping their limbs raw just to be nearer, to taste the hymn as though it was sustenance.
Serathion's flame flared brighter, but his eyes flickered—not with triumph, but with dread. For every time his fire struck Damon's bloodrage, it was not Damon who faltered, but the world itself.
The Rift was no longer passive. It was hungry.
---
The Rift's hymns tore deeper into me, every word a blade sawing through marrow. Then suddenly, silence—no battlefield, no Damon, no screaming Choir. Only a throne—vast, forged of bone and star-ash, rising higher than any sky. My breath caught. My skin was peeling away like moth-paper, memories crackling into smoke.
And there he was. Veyrathuun. Not a man, not a beast—something vast, shadowed, wearing eternity like a cloak. His voice slithered through the throne hall, folding into my veins.
Veyrathuun: "Shyrren vael drakthuun. Ethiss maerith sul. Shed the cage of flesh. Rule as my mouth, my hand, my eternity."
The words gnawed me raw. Each syllable carried weight, pressing my bones hollow. I clutched my head, but even my fingers felt like they weren't mine anymore. My name, my past, Damon's touch—it all unraveled like brittle threads.
The throne pulsed, hungry, whispering my surrender. Stars fell into ash around me.
Veyrathuun again: "Kaelthuur… dhraven oss thal… Zhaerithuun voress. You are the seam. You are the tear. Through you, the Unmaking breathes."
I staggered closer, feet moving without consent. My tongue burned, ready to repeat his words. If I spoke them, I knew I'd be gone, no longer Dahlia—only his eternal vessel.
And then—Damon. His voice wasn't in the hall, yet it thundered across the void, fierce and broken: Dahlia—hold on to me. Remember my vow. You're not his.
The shadows recoiled, fracturing, but Veyrathuun's laughter shook the throne.
Veyrathuun: "Orrhaeth maevith dahl—listen, and the world bends. Resist, and be devoured whole."
I clutched that voice—Damon's voice—against the storm. Every heartbeat was war. My own lips trembled with betrayal, aching to answer the god with the same tongue that damned me.
The bone throne leaned forward, its arms outstretched, demanding.
And I—I screamed, not with my throat but my soul: Not yet.
---
The ground buckled under my knees as the Rift pulsed in rhythm with my own chest, each beat of my heart echoed by a thunderclap in the void. The Heralds, those spectral giants of ash and ruin, lowered themselves—not before Damon, not before Serathion, but before me. Their hollow visages bent in unison, skeletal hands pressed to the earth, as though the rhythm of my blood had become the law of their world.
Sareth's howl ripped across the chamber, desperate and furious. His arms spread wide, robes tearing under the pressure of the energy coursing through him. His voice split the silence into jagged fragments as he flung the seal against the widening maw of the Rift.
"Korra thren'vay, ehlthuun karas, et'mae vor!"
The words bled fire through the air, each syllable tearing reality taut, threads of molten glyphs stitching themselves into a lattice of light across the black wound. For an instant, the Rift convulsed, its scream swallowed under the choke of Sareth's defiance. The seal held—but only just, trembling like a cracked mirror refusing to shatter.
My pulse throbbed in my temples. With every beat, the Rift mirrored me, reshaping, reshuffling, forming not as chaos but as design—like a gateway folding into my heartbeat, aligning itself with the cadence of my very soul. I felt the whispers then, curling through my bones like cold smoke.
"Veyrathuun shae'kor, thalen morith, ahn-drae ilthuun."
A voice, not mine, not Damon's. A voice of creation and collapse. The Rift itself whispering my name in syllables not meant for mortal throats.
Damon's hand caught mine, but his grip trembled. I saw in his eyes not fear of me—but fear for me. The Rift was answering to my blood, my breath. The Heralds had already chosen their sovereign.
Sareth snarled, blood streaking his lips as the recoil of the spell gnawed at him. He turned on me, eyes ablaze with a fury that was half-prayer, half-curse.
"Hold your breath, girl! If it hears you, it will claim you whole!"
But it was already too late. The Rift pulsed again, and I felt the threads binding flesh and soul beginning to thin. My veins burned with something older than fire, older than stars, and I heard the echo of that throne of bone and constellations waiting for me to sit.
The seal groaned, cracking at its edges.
The next choice loomed like a blade at my throat.
---
The seal Sareth had carved into the Rift pulsed once—then began to fray like rotted silk. Dahlia's chest heaved, every heartbeat striking the air with tremors that made the Heralds bow deeper, their bodies contorting as though her pulse was law. The Rift leaned toward her, a vast wound of light and shadow reshaping itself to her cadence.
She staggered, clutching at her arms as the Brand beneath her skin burned hotter than fire. And in that agony, the truth unfurled: there were only two paths left.
Either she yielded—let Veyrathuun fully claim her, body and soul—and the Rift would obey her, bending to her will. Or she resisted, and her fragile flesh would shatter, leaving nothing behind but a hollow corpse while the Rift bled wide enough to swallow Damon, Serathion, and the world beyond.
Her throat ached, and yet the Rift hissed to her, shaping words from its abyss:
"Zha'rethuun maelth korra, vieth dalthra, eln'vorrha."
(Give yourself, vessel of shadow, and you shall command eternity.)
Damon's roar cut through it like steel. His voice trembled, but it did not break. "Dahlia—you are not theirs. You are mine, ours. You are more than a vessel." His hands, bloodied and shaking, reached through the warping currents, trying to anchor her.
Then Serathion's voice slammed into her like thunder, rough and merciless. "Girl, do not falter! If you yield to him, you undo us all! Stand, damn you—stand against it!"
Their faith and fury pressed against her, colliding with the Rift's seductive command. And in that storm of voices, her body convulsed. Black fire spilled from her veins, searing the ground.
Her lips parted, a whisper barely formed—yet in that ancient tongue that was not her own, it came:
"Ehlthara… koran veyrathuun, na'shrael dal veythra."
(If I bow, Veyrathuun, I lose the last of me.)
The Rift shuddered violently, half in answer, half in defiance. Heralds screeched, clawing their own faces as if her refusal tore through them. The Bloodsong Choir chanted as one to drown her out, their voices weaving chains of syllables:
"Thrael kun'dorr! Ethna varuun! Krath mae'elthuun!"
(Bind the vessel! Silence the will! Chain the heartbeat!)
Dahlia dropped to her knees, every choice jagged with agony. Damon's love dragged her one way. Serathion's fury hammered her the other. And through it all the Rift whispered, promising eternity if she only surrendered the last of her humanity.
Her next breath would decide whether the world burned or was saved.
---
The Rift shuddered, every fissure of black light trembling as if waiting on the rhythm of my pulse. Glyphs burned beneath my skin, climbing my arms like living flame, their glow answering something deeper than blood—something ancient, something boundless.
Damon's voice broke through the storm, rough, desperate, laced with a fury that was only a mask for fear.
"Dahlia—choose me, not the abyss. Don't let it hollow you out."
Serathion's command cut like steel against that plea, his presence towering, sovereign, cold.
"End this, girl, or you will damn us all. Stop fighting destiny and wield it!"
The Rift roared in both their voices, as though it wanted me to hear them as one, as though it wanted me to fracture beneath their war. I staggered forward, my hand rising of its own will, each finger glowing with the sharpness of runes carved into me. The air bent when I moved, shadows bending with it, the Rift trembling to my gesture.
Damon tensed, claws half-sprung, ready to tear down fate itself if I slipped. Serathion lifted his blade, but the blade bowed to me, humming like a chained beast sensing a new master.
The power threatened to consume me—yet it was also mine.
A whisper unfurled in my throat, not in English, not even in thought, but in the forbidden tongue of the Bloodsong Choir. It carried through the Rift like a death knell, every syllable a brand across reality itself:
"Velthra… kaen dorrael…"
(The choice is mine.)
The Rift convulsed as though I had struck it with a whip. Damon roared my name. Serathion's sword sang. But I did not look at either of them.
I only raised my hand higher—letting the next breath decide if I would save us, damn us, or crown myself queen of the abyss.
And then—silence.
---
📌 If you're trembling at this cliffhanger, you know what to do, my beautiful readers. Smash that POWER STONE button! Let's push Dahlia's fate to the very top of the charts. Every stone is a blade, a kiss, and a heartbeat for this story.
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