The Rift doesn't collapse. It doesn't obey. It breaks. A fracture of existence tearing wide, jagged shards of reality spinning like glass in the dark. Fire bled through one wound, shadow through another, and starfire ash poured in burning flakes. The battlefield stilled, swallowed by a silence so suffocating it screamed louder than any war cry. Even the dying paused, staring into the birth of something unmade.
The roar was gone, replaced by a ringing void that thrummed in bone marrow. Jareth staggered, clutching his bleeding side, eyes wide not from pain but from what he could not comprehend. Beside him, Mira dragged Veyra from a collapsing shard of ground that disintegrated into silver dust. Her twin, Marlow, screamed her name but his voice broke into echoes as if torn apart by the Rift itself, his body shaking under phantom chains of light and shadow.
Lucian gripped his bow as though it anchored the last tether of reality, his knuckles white, lips drawn back as the runes carved into its length trembled. Sparks spat from it, streams of dying symbols unraveling into threads of un-language. His breath came ragged, each word half-prayer, half-defiance: "Ut valen... corath... feran ulthir..." — a plea for order that the Rift devoured with mockery.
The Drakhen Conclave faltered. Kaelthys knelt first, whispering fragments of prophecy that slipped like water through his tongue, syllables breaking apart before they could finish. "Thyraen vel'kos... na'dhural..." His eyes bled light as he clawed at the soil, as if something beneath the battlefield demanded he remember. Myrrath shuddered, muttering about an oath unbound, his claws dragging bloody furrows into his own arms, chanting, "The Ash unmoors, the Choir unchains."
Sylthara collapsed, her body spasming as her bond to the Choir cracked wide, blood streaming from nose and ears. Her scream wasn't her own—it layered, three voices at once, one human, one draconic, one hollow with Choir resonance. "Xyran-thal... Vei'shorr... Ren'alith..." The names of something that should not be spoken. Her eyes rolled white, but her body didn't die. It just emptied.
Even Serathion faltered. The warlord's blade, steady even in carnage, lowered for a breath. His shoulders rolled like a predator unsettled, and his eyes narrowed as if glimpsing prey he had no hunger to face. Damon's sword, by contrast, sang—its edge vibrating in a blood-song so sharp it cut the silence itself. Crimson whispers circled him: "Valemont… drak'mora… aethyr'na…" The sword knew the Rift, recognized it, beckoned it closer.
And Dahlia—she stood alone at the epicenter. Her glyphs pulsed like a wound in the air, black fire leaking from her veins, symbols crawling across her skin faster than they could burn away. They flared, not as wards but as doors, hungry to open, to release something older than war. Each line of her body screamed not of weakness but inevitability.
Marlow dropped beside Veyra, clutching her as if shielding her from light that wasn't light at all. His tears evaporated into sparks before they touched her skin. He shouted at Dahlia, words swallowed by the Rift, until only the cadence remained: rage, desperation, devotion. His lips shaped her name, but what answered was not her—"Dahlia Moon. Vessel of fracture. Keeper of the glyph eternal."
Sareth, the bone seer, rose from among the wreckage, robes torn, his eyes clouded white and bleeding at the corners. He lifted his hands, trembling, and the Rift bent toward him as if recognizing kin. His voice was frail, breaking into many voices at once. "I warned you. The Ash has no end, only turning. The Rift remembers what the world chose to forget. Na'shyr vel korath… Xyrrhos vel An'ther." Each word burned through the silence, etching scars into the very air.
The soldiers around him fell to their knees, not out of faith but out of reflex, as though the body obeyed truths it could not resist. Damon's gaze locked on Dahlia, fury and need and oath colliding. Sareth's hood shadowed his face, but even he trembled, and when he spoke, his voice cracked the silence like a blade. "The Rift is not closing. It is rewriting."
And the battlefield, once drenched in war, bent.
---
The silence cracks, not with steel or fire—but with her voice.
Dahlia raises her chin, eyes hollow yet burning, and from her lips spills a tongue older than any court or choir:
"Ishael draen orathuun… Korr velthra!"
("The path undone… the choice broken!")
The glyphs flaring across her skin ignite, winding upward into a lattice of impossible light. They cocoon her, threads of ashfire knitting into wings that are not wings, a shroud that is not veil. Every shard of reality tilts toward her, drawn as if she were the pulse holding them together.
Damon surges forward, blade alive with blood-song. His growl is not just Alpha—it is desperation breaking into prayer. "Dahlia—don't!"
At the same breath, Serathion lunges too, black blade sweeping in an arc meant to sever fate itself. His oath-blood whispers from his lips in harsh cadence:
"Veythraan korru, ishveil thoranth… Draem ulthos velkaar."
("Bound by ruin, fated in fire… I claim what the void denies.")
But neither reach her.
The Rift convulses—light folds back into shadow, shadow bleeds into starfire—and both warriors are flung aside as if by unseen hands. Damon crashes to his knees, Serathion skids in a storm of cracked stone, both staring at her in disbelief.
Dahlia does not look at them. She no longer stands at their sides—Alpha's mate, Prophet's key. She hovers at the threshold of something neither claim nor command can define. The battlefield itself bends, armies holding their breath.
From the Drakhen ranks, Kaelthys whispers, trembling:
"Oruthraen sel'korr… The Inverted Path."
Myrrath bows his head, muttering fragments as if tasting poison:
"She breaks the bind… she breaks us all."
Sylthara, blood pouring from her nose, shrieks through broken teeth:
"Ashun drael veythos! Ashun drael veythos!"
("The Choir unmade! The Choir unmade!")
The cocoon tightens, glowing with a heat that burns yet does not consume her flesh. Dahlia's lips part again, voice softer but terrible:
"Kel'tharuun ishael drae… Vorynthal korr ashenveil."
("I am no vessel of Choir… I choose the veil of my own ash.")
The ground itself quakes at her declaration.
---
The Rift shudders, its scream woven into the air, and the first to break are not Damon or Serathion—but the Choir itself. Their harmony splinters into jagged cries.
"Velk'thoruun! Savael, savael!"
("Unraveled! Save us, save us!")
Their throats tear under the strain of severed connection. Ash spills from their mouths like curses turned to dust, their tongues blackening as glyphs brand themselves into skin. Some collapse, twitching in the dirt, others erupt in pillars of red smoke as if consumed from within.
The cadence that once bound battlefield and Rift alike collapses into discord. Hollow Order soldiers stagger, clutching their ears as the melody that anchored them is ripped apart. Their discipline dies with the song, leaving only panic and madness.
A woman's shriek rises from the ranks—one of the Bloodsong maidens clawing at her chest as glowing sigils burn through her flesh, carving themselves outwards. She falls before she can finish the prayer. Another clings to her brother's arm, whispering broken fragments—
"Korr velthra… vae shuun… drael ithuun…"
("The choice broken… we are lost… the end consumes…")
Her words collapse into silence as her eyes burst into cinders.
The Choir's agony is not just death, but unraveling. Every note Dahlia rewrote tears them further from existence, their souls collapsing under the weight of a song that no longer holds. Each fall is a toll bell for what her defiance costs—every rewritten verse becomes another shattered throat, another husk burning to ash.
The Rift pulses in sympathy, its glow twitching as though the very fabric of the battlefield has been skinned raw. And in the silence that follows, the Hollow Order falters, their certainty crumbling with their Choir.
Dahlia stands cocooned in blazing glyphs, and the battlefield knows—she has severed their rhythm.
---
Damon's roar rips through the chaos, blade igniting in a storm of bloodfire.
"She chose!" His strike cleaves the air, red sparks spilling like burning veins.
Serathion raises his blade, spellfire blooming into a shield of fractured suns.
"No—she shattered the Choice! Do you not see what you've bound us to?"
Their collision detonates the space between them, shockwaves hurling corpses, banners, even chunks of stone aside. The Rift itself trembles with their defiance.
From Serathion's lips bursts a furious incantation:
"Veyr'thaliss drae! Korathuun vechrel!"
("Light unmoored! Chain the abyss!")
Damon answers with primal fury, his voice jagged with Alpha resonance:
"Velkorr shael'drath! Murh ven thoros!"
("Break the binding! Blood is the law!")
Their duel eclipses the battlefield. Spellfire lashes against bloodfire, turning the ground molten, the sky cracked. Both armies falter, unwilling to step between them.
The Conclave makes its desperate move, raising their staves in unison:
"Thryss vaelor! Esha drathuun! Savrelth kor!"
("Seal the wound! Hold the rift! Banish the fire!")
But the Rift reacts like a living thing, lashing out with claws of voidlight. A dozen Conclave fall in screams, their bodies scorched into silhouettes of ash.
Dahlia hangs between the realms, her body veined with glyph-light, unhearing, unreachable. Every spark of her defiance is now the fulcrum upon which Damon's rage and Serathion's desperation pivot, each clash threatening to split not just the battlefield, but the world itself.
---
The clash fades to nothing in my ears—Damon's roar, Serathion's cries, the Conclave's futile chants all dissolving like smoke. What remains is silence, vast and aching, and within it a spiral of glass-like shards spinning around me. Each shard holds a vision, jagged and merciless.
In one, Damon stands crowned in blood and ash, his eyes a furnace, the world burning behind him. In another, Serathion sits upon a throne of hollow light, his hands folded in false serenity while shadows devour his feet. And in yet another, I see no thrones, no crowns—only myself, scattered like black dust across the void, voiceless, faceless, undone.
The shards turn faster, slicing my skin without blood. The Rift hums, a language older than the gods vibrating in its marrow:
"Threnn valis… vel morae… unshael draethu."
(Every path… every death… undone by one step.)
The whisper drills into bone, a truth too heavy for my lungs to hold. My defiance had not just cracked the Song—it had torn it open, cast the board into chaos where no Prophet nor Alpha could dictate the end.
I am not bound to their visions.
I am not bound to their prophecies.
I am not bound to their war.
The Rift leans closer, its voice coiling:
"Drenn shaelor… ithra velthuun… Korr valeth."
(Choose beyond choice… unmake the makers… claim the threshold.)
The shards tremble, threatening to collapse into me—or through me. And I know with a sudden, searing certainty: what I've opened cannot be closed.
---
The Rift convulses like a living wound, veins of fire splitting the earth beneath our feet. Glyphstone towers spear upward, jagged and burning with unearthly light, then crash down into pits that open without warning. Screams scatter through the battlefield—soldiers, Ironsworn, and Bloodsong Choir alike swallowed into spirals of collapsing shards.
I see Mira stumble too close, her body dragged toward the tearing maw of a shard-pit. Her fingers claw at empty air until Jareth, broken and bloodied, seizes her wrist. His blade arm hangs useless, crimson pouring down, but still he refuses to let her go.
Marlow's voice cracks across the chaos, heavy with desperation:
"Valeth'raan orae! Korr shael draen!"
("Stabilize the breach! Hold the path closed!")
His chant surges against the collapse, a net of luminous threads straining to bind the void. But the Rift doesn't yield—it snarls, tears, widens. His power can only slow the unraveling, never seal it.
The duel between Damon and Serathion shatters. Both are hurled back in opposite arcs as the Rift's eruption spits force across the ground. Damon crashes against a spire of fractured glyphstone, blood trailing from his mouth. Serathion slams into the soil, his blade shattering, his breath caught in a ragged gasp.
The battlefield no longer belongs to them—or to anyone. It belongs to the Rift, to the raw wound tearing the world in half.
And through it all, the whispers rise again, crawling through marrow and mind:
"Vor'thuun drae'kael… unshael vorraeth… Korr ishen valis…"
("The world unbound… the tether broken… the balance erased…")
---
The battlefield convulses, a broken heart of glyphs and blood. The Choir's song has died into choking silence, their throats torn raw, their souls smoldering. Even Marlow's counter-chant falters, his hands trembling as glyphlight gutters in his veins. The Rift does not close. It does not end. It bends.
At the eye of the storm, Dahlia staggers forward, her body smoking with ashfire, her veins glowing with script not her own. The prophecy should have consumed her—yet she remains. No voice guides her now. No command chains her fate. Only the silence of the void, and her own trembling will.
She raises her hand, fingers etched with light that bleeds into the collapsing air. A whisper leaves her lips, not forced by the Bloodsong Choir, not stolen from the Thirteen Shards, but born from within.
"Vel moraa shaelthuun…"
("Let the new path breathe…")
The words drip into the wound of the world like blood into water. The Rift shudders—no longer a gaping maw, but a reshaped wound, a colossal arch of burning glyphs and shadowlight. The script stretches, living, writhing, as if it remembers a language more ancient than prophecy itself.
The Choir, what remains of them, collapse to their knees, bleeding from eyes and mouths. Marlow claws the air in desperation.
"Xiraeth vel'thuun! Shaedra mor kall!"
("Seal it! Do not let it awaken!")
But the Rift does not listen. It answers only Dahlia.
Glyph by glyph, the arch breathes. And through it, something stirs. Something that makes even the broken glyphstone towers recoil, as though creation itself does not wish to bear its weight.
Damon, half-crushed beneath rubble, stares with bloodied defiance. Serathion, coughing black ichor, bares his teeth in terror and rage. Even the titans of this war cannot look away.
The arch splits.
A crack yawns wider than thought, and from within—lightless and merciless—a single colossal eye opens.
It does not blink.
It does not move.
It only gazes.
And that gaze is enough to make gods tremble.
---