My whisper hung inside the Rift like a blade pressed to its own throat—
Velthra… kaen dorrael…
The syllables dragged out of me, tasting of blood and burning ash. The chamber split at the sound. Walls bled shadow, mortar unraveling into rivers of black flame. The very air curdled, shuddering with a pulse that wasn't mine but had already begun to answer to me.
Marlow's cry cut the dark. He seized Veyra and pulled her small frame into his arms, wrapping her in desperate protection as tendrils of shade reached like claws. Veyra whimpered, clutching her brother's sleeve, eyes too wide, too bright against the collapse.
Mira planted her heels in the stone, trying to drag Jareth back from the edge, but Jareth only wrenched free. His blade gleamed, raised against phantoms that hissed in a language no man was born to understand. He shouted into the chaos, veins straining in his neck, and I saw madness—no, resolve—etched into his face.
Lucian pressed forward, his sigils searing across the floor in blazing lines. Each flare became a shield of light, holding back waves of collapsing shadow. "Hold your ground!" he barked, his voice cracking but unyielding. The Ironsworn obeyed, closing ranks, forming a circle of steel. Their oath-bound swords hummed, ancient promises vibrating like harps of war.
And then the Drakhen answered.
Zorathion roared, a storm given throat, and wings of lightning cracked open from his shoulders. Sparks leapt from every scale as he carved a barrier of storm between the shadows and us. "Come then, Rift-born! Taste thunder!"
Beside him, Myrrath's voice was steadier, low and resonant. His crystals pulsed, embedded deep in the ground, feeding his words. Kel'varess thynor… His draconic tongue rippled through the air, a command heavy as mountains. Translation burned unbidden in my head—Hold the line of form. The Rift quivered against it, like a beast denied a meal.
But it was my whisper still hanging in its veins, bleeding into its marrow, binding it and unbinding me.
And the Rift had heard me.
---
The Rift shuddered like a living wound, its edges seething with light too cruel for mortal eyes. My blood burned as though molten chains had threaded through my veins, glyphs igniting one by one beneath my skin. The marks pulsed in rhythm with the Rift's own heartbeat, and I could feel the abyss lean closer, waiting to see if I would command or collapse.
A chorus rose from nowhere and everywhere, curling like smoke through my ears.
Saal veyrathuun, naelth drae velhora, kaen isthrael…
The Bloodsong Choir. Their whispers were ash and thunder.
Blood-born, rise unbroken, the gate obeys…
My knees nearly buckled, but I forced myself upright. A scream ripped from my throat, not in pain but in defiance, twisted into words not mine yet pouring from my mouth—
"Vael'thorak, draem'shaal veyra'thun kor!"
("By blood's dominion, the gate shall yield!")
The Rift obeyed—halfway. Its light bent to me, writhing in serpents of fire, then resisted, clawing against my command. My body convulsed, glyphs blazing hotter, as though I had reached for a crown too heavy for my skull.
All around, the Heralds of the Hollow froze in hesitation. Their hollowed masks tilted, their blackened banners shivered. For the first time, they bowed—not to the Rift, not to the Choir, but to me.
Sareth's voice cut through, ragged as bone scraping stone.
"Naen velthra korrah… draen'vay unkaar…"
("The blood-choice is not whole… the fracture consumes.")
His sockets burned with embers of warning, but his words were swallowed by the Choir, which surged louder, pressing into me, branding deeper:
"Veyra'shaal… koruunth drael… malith raen sorraethuun…"
("The chosen vessel… the wound divides… the shadow binds eternal…")
The Ironsworn, proud blades unyielding even before death, collapsed to one knee. It wasn't loyalty. It wasn't choice. The sheer resonance of my blood thrummed through the chamber, forcing their submission.
I staggered under it, breath shallow, skin a battlefield of flame. Half the Rift bent to me, half resisted, as though daring me to either break or become something unrecognizable.
---
The light from my skin flared, molten sigils crawling higher, searing Damon's palms as he tried to pull me back into him. He refused to let go even as the glyphs burned him raw. His voice shook with rage, and desperation.
"She's still mine—still herself! Don't you dare take her choice away."
Serathion's blade crashed against the stone, the air splitting like glass. Azure runes spun upward, weaving into a barrier that hissed against the collapsing Rift's pull. His armor whipped in the gale as his eyes—cold as starless void—fixed on Damon.
"She is already lost! End her, or watch the world drown in her veins."
The words carved across the chamber like a blade, but the dragons stirred before I could answer.
Kaelthys the Dreadscale reared his horned head, scales glinting like fractured obsidian. His roar rattled the ground as smoke curled from his jaws.
"Coward. If she is flame, then let her burn against the dark!"
But Sylthara the Embercoil slithered her neck low, her voice a furnace whisper, venom sharp as the hiss of molten rock.
"Your love blinds you, Damon, as much as his prophecy binds him. Look at her—she is no longer only herself. She is a vessel, a fracture. If you hesitate, she will unmake you all."
The Hollow Order's shadows rippled at the edges of the barrier, whispering in a tongue that stabbed against my skull:
"Veyrathuun rha'thiel, korvas suul, thren'dael morrik…"
(The Rift drinks, the chains rust, the soul-threads fray.)
And beneath it, I felt the hum of the Bloodsong Choir clawing at my ribs, waiting for me to echo them, waiting for me to surrender the final syllables that would turn the chamber into their altar.
Damon's grip only tightened. His hands blistered, but his eyes begged—choose me, not them.
Serathion lifted his blade again, a killing arc forming in his stance. "Now, before her humanity is ash!"
The glyphs across my skin pulsed—one more heartbeat and I knew they would answer someone's call, whether mine, Damon's… or the Choir's.
---
The clash of Damon and Serathion's voices tore through me, but the Rift had already claimed my sight. A haze, thick and writhing, swallowed everything in black flame and white static. My breath hitched as the Choir's whispers became a flood.
"Seryth vel drakhaal… omnir threnos… dal vehrith aeluun…"
(We sing the broken flame… we crown the drowned… your marrow shall choose the throne.)
The haze parted.
In the first vision, I sat on a throne of bone and shadow, the Rift bowing around me like a living sea. My hands dripped with glyph-light turned to pitch. My mouth opened and the Choir's hymn was mine, their language shaping my lips as if I had always known it.
"Aeluth naris, shaedrum vorath, elyss drakhaal—sytherionn!"
(All crowns fall, all stars burn, and in the end—only shadow reigns!)
Damon was at my feet, his head bowed, his chest scarred with runes that chained his soul. His lips moved, but no devotion remained—only hollow obedience. His eyes were empty wells, and still, he called me beloved.
I recoiled—yet the Rift dragged me deeper.
The second vision ignited like a scream. My body dissolved into ash and glyph-fire, each spark a letter torn from my blood. Damon's roar shook the sky as Serathion shielded what remained of me, his blade anchoring the fragments that could not be saved.
The Bloodsong Choir keened.
"Vorath en drakhaal… eiraen suthriss… corvath daluun… aris navren…"
(The end is written… the flame devours… the heart betrays… all threads unravel…)
Both visions collapsed into ruin, neither offering mercy.
Around me, familiar faces bled through the Rift's visions like drowned echoes. Marlow and Veyra appeared as shadows chained in silver hooks, their laughter distorted into serpents' hisses. Lucian's wards shattered like glass storms, his symbols falling into dust. Jareth's death came twice—once impaled on a blade of shadow, once consumed in a torrent of fire that turned his scream into silence.
I tried to wrench free, but the Rift's hand clamped tighter around my mind. My own voice betrayed me, joining the forbidden chorus.
"Velkaar isthum… shayren daluun… kyrith esshael…"
(Choose the ruin… seal the flame… crown the void…)
The visions snapped shut like jaws, leaving me gasping in the choking dark between Damon's grasp and Serathion's command.
---
The haze split and I crashed back into my own body, lungs burning as though I had drowned in ash. The Rift pulsed inside me, not above or around but within—a voice carved into my marrow. Its words struck bone before meaning reached my mind:
"Veyrathuun drael, velh kaen shorr…"
(Every choice demands its blood…)
Glyph-light erupted beneath my skin, coursing like molten rivers, veins of living scripture that threatened to burn me from inside out. My scream dissolved into sparks, the Rift's chorus rising in harmony with my unraveling soul.
Sareth's hands locked over my chest, his own voice ripping through the storm:
"Thorrakai ven'dral, kaesshun varr'ethun!"
(Break the fracture, bind the hollow flame!)
The Rift shrieked against him, a thousand unseen throats screaming in laughter. The ground beneath our feet splintered like shattered glass, black light spearing upward.
The Conclave staggered beneath the backlash. Myrrath braced his staff against the earth, ward-light flickering, then groaning like an old chain. Zorathion snarled through fangs bared, his scales fractured by the Rift's glow.
"The Rift wants her blood," he spat, wings snapping wide. "Whose will she give?"
Behind them, the Choir's whispers stirred the haze like oil over flame:
"Korr'vel naesh drakthuun, saer'kai veyrethun…"
(No crown without ruin, no path without blood.)
The words slid into me, tempting, binding. My body knew their weight even as my mind rebelled. Damon's name echoed somewhere beyond the roar—but the Rift drowned it, insistent.
The choice was mine. Yet both paths reeked of ruin.
---
The Rift claws deeper into me, its voice a thousand knives whispering through marrow and memory. My skin burns, veins molten with glyph-light, the prophecy tearing itself alive beneath my flesh. I can't hold it back anymore. My throat rips open with the scream the Rift drags from me:
"Velthra… draen velh… thorrakai!"
("Mine… yet not… forever bound!")
The words don't belong to me—they belong to something older, something chained in the hollow before time. The chamber convulses, and with my cry, the very bones of Shadow Rift groan and split. Pillars crumble into dust, their shadows devoured mid-collapse, swallowed whole by the Rift's gnashing mouth of lightless flame.
The Heralds surge, no longer afraid of the storm but hungering for it. They pour closer, skeletal wings stretched wide, their claws dripping with black fire. Each beat of their advance slams against me like a verdict: choose—or everything dies.
Around me, chaos fractures the world. The Ironsworn scream as the ground unravels under their boots, half their number plunging into the abyss with no sound but the tear of reality closing around them. Marlow throws himself in front of Veyra, his shield taking the brunt of a Herald's strike, sparks leaping as the steel bends in his grip. Mira, teeth bared, locks her twin blades and pushes back against the tide, dragging Lucian into her rhythm of fury just to hold the line.
But it's Jareth's cry that cuts deeper than the Rift—his sword arcs high, only for a Herald's claw to rake down his chest. Blood bursts in a fountain, and his knees buckle. His oath dies in his throat as the shadows surge to claim him.
The Drakhen Conclave answers in fire and blood. Kaelthys roars, his draconic form half-breaking through his mortal shell, and charges headlong into the Herald swarm, his great blade cleaving bodies that refuse to stay dead. Each swing buys me a heartbeat, each heartbeat another wound on him. Sylthara, eyes blazing like twin suns, keens in anguish. Her scales ripple in and out of existence with my pulse, as if my choices hammer her very soul into splintered shards. She screams into the Rift, her voice both dragon and woman:
"Veyrathuun valkaar, thorrakai drael!"
("Take me instead, break me first!")
But the Rift doesn't answer her. It answers only me.
Its voice hisses through my veins, sharper, hungrier:
"Velh drael, Dahlia… velh kaesshun… velh thorrakai…"
("Your blood… your binding… your forever…")
And in that instant, I realize—there is no saving anyone until I choose what to give.
---
The Rift screamed, a wound of black fire splitting the heavens, bleeding ash and silence across the battlefield. Jareth lay crumpled, coughing blood, his gauntlet burned half through. Mira and Veyra clawed their way back from the edge of that endless abyss, their armor torn, faces pale. Lucian's voice cracked as he tried to bind the breach with wards, the glyphs faltering, his body trembling with strain. The Ironsworn broke rank after rank, their shields eaten alive by the Choir's fire, steel dissolving into smoke.
Drakhen Conclave faltered. Some roared loyalty, blades raised against the impossible. Others shouted warnings of prophecy, begging retreat. A few wept, tethered to Dahlia as though her choice were the last thread holding their souls together.
And there she stood—gutted by firelight, glyphs carved in her skin now blazing, brighter than any star. Rift's howl filled her veins. The Bloodsong Choir thundered in her ears:
"Velraith… dael kunnith… aresh dravoon…"
("Sing the bone-fire… bind the flesh… shatter the name…")
Damon unsheathed his blade, eyes locked on Serathion. Every line of his body screamed one thing: he would kill the Archon if it meant saving her. The Ruthless Alpha's oath burned in his chest, more feral than any war cry.
Serathion raised his blade, runes igniting in spirals of stormlight. His voice cut the air, heavy as judgment:
"Zhaerun kor… ithraal veen… shorath iluun!"
("By shadow's root… by oath undone… strike the vessel true!")
The battlefield stilled. Every heartbeat held its breath.
Dahlia staggered forward. She should have collapsed. She should have screamed. But instead she lifted her hand—trembling, defiant, blazing with every shard of glyph-fire the Rift had forced into her.
Rift shrieked in rage, in hunger, in demand.
But she chose neither.
Her lips parted. The words came not from her throat, but from something older, something that remembered before gods, before Choir, before Hollow Order or Blood. Her voice ripped through the veil:
"Korr velthra… ishaal draen orathuun!"
("The choice is broken… the path undone!")
The Rift convulsed.
It did not collapse. It did not obey.
It shattered into something new.
The world broke with it.
---