The eye did not blink. Its vast pupil drowned the battlefield, a hollow sun that saw without mercy, without pause. Every breath seemed stolen, every heartbeat caught in its invisible grasp.
In my chest, the glyph-fire still burned, but now it pulsed to its rhythm—not mine. A voice slid through me, soft and cold as ash-water.
Korr vel… shael draethuun.
(Bound… to unbinding.)
My lips didn't move, yet I heard myself whisper the words inside, echoing across my marrow.
The Choir stirred in broken gasps, their throats raw, but they forced breath into half-shattered hymns.
Savael! Savael! Draethuun kall!
(Save us! The Witness calls!)
The sound was brittle, a plea splintered in fear. Their chants faltered as one by one they felt it too—the gaze not above them, but within them.
Across the field, the Hollow Order wavered. Some turned and ran, scattering into the smoke like frightened animals. Others collapsed to their knees, armor clattering, palms pressed into dirt as though prayer might shield them from what stared.
Only Damon moved against it. His roar split the stillness like steel tearing through bone. Rage poured from him in waves, his body blazing as though defiance alone could shatter the gaze.
Serathion did not roar. He only whispered, voice low, words sharper than any blade.
"We were blind," he said, the corners of his mouth curling. "It is not prophecy she carries… it is the Witness."
And the eye… it watched.
---
The silence breaks not from the Eye, but from those who cannot bear its gaze.
Jareth staggers into view, one leg dragging, fangs bared through blood. His chest heaves, yet his snarl carries no fear—only defiance.
Lucian bends low, catching Mira before she collapses, her breath sharp, her veins lit by glyph-fire that will not dim. His eyes burn brighter, raw magic spilling like cracked glass.
Marlow grips his twin's shoulder, but even that touch fails to still the lightning of symbols burning beneath her skin. He mutters curses through clenched teeth, rage and desperation fused.
Veyra spits into the dust, blade raised not toward the Hollow, but toward the unseen watcher. "Draethuun, kahl vorathuun!" ( "Witness, devour yourself!" ) Her defiance sounds like madness, but no one dares call it so.
And Sareth—seer of a thousand lies—folds into the dirt, bones scattering from his satchel like brittle offerings. His voice cracks, not a prophecy but a dirge:
"Threnn vel morae… shael draethuun vorath." ( "Every path ends… when the Witness wakes." )
Damon's snarl cleaves the moment, louder than any chant. His blade still bleeds with dragon heart ichor, his body trembling not with fear but fury. "She chose me! The bond is sworn. She is mine!"
Serathion answers with ice, wings half-furled, words sharp enough to cut marrow. "She carries no bond. She carries the undoing. Look at her—look at what you defend! She is not your mate, Alpha. She is the Witness reborn!"
Their voices strike like steel, promise of war between them. And Dahlia—burning, unraveling, her soul caught between every tongue, every truth—cannot speak, for the Eye still watches.
---
The chamber convulsed with roars and crackling scales as the Conclave tore itself apart. The Drakhen, wings unfurled, claws gouging the blackened stone, hurled their verdicts like storms colliding.
Kaelthys slammed his fist against the obsidian dais, molten veins sparking up his arm. "She is savior—she forged the unforgeable. The bond of oathfire has never yielded, yet she bent it. That is not curse. That is deliverance."
Myrrath's voice cut sharp as broken steel. "No. She has broken oath and anchor alike. The Pact was made with marrow and eternity. She unstitched it with blood not her own." His tail lashed, sparks raining down like meteors.
Sylthara crumpled where she stood, scales shuddering, bloodfire dripping from her eyes like molten sorrow. She pressed her claws into the floor, whispering, "Kael'vethuun… draem vel shorae…" ("Unforgiven… the dream is broken…") Her keening rattled the high vaults until the very runes flickered.
Zorathion's wings snapped wide, lightning bursting from his horns, scorching fissures through the air. "Then any who call her abomination—face me! I will tear tongue from throat before I hear another breath against her!" Sparks cascaded into the circle, igniting the banners of forgotten wars.
At last, Veyltharion the Elderflame rose. The weight of ages clung to his wings, his eyes two furnaces behind rivers of ash. His voice was not thunder but tectonic fracture, a truth that shook the stone marrow of the chamber itself.
"This is not a war of prophecy. This is a war of Witness. The shael-draem cannot be silenced. Nor can it be undone."
The words hung like molten chains. The silence afterward was not peace but suffocation.
Then Aelirion the Dawnspire surged forward, golden light bristling off his crest. "Heresy! The Witness is death wearing flesh. She is the blade that will cut us from the sky!"
Dravanyx the Hollowbane answered with a roar that split the torches from their sconces. "Then strike now! Strike while the Hollow Order is weakened—burn them root to crown and let none remain!" His breath seared a scar across the chamber floor, splitting it like a battlefield already divided.
The Conclave buckled under its own fury—half hailing Dahlia as salvation, half damning her as doom. Ancient chants shuddered between clashing voices, echoing from unseen mouths:
"Vel'thae moruun… draesh valthuun…" ("The bond undone… the shadow rises…")
"Shael'thrynn vorath… kael draem'vola…" ("The Witness stirs… the dream of endings…")
It was no longer debate. It was fracture—claw against claw, flame against storm, the divide of dragons threatening to spill into civil war.
---
The roars of the Conclave dissolved into a hush too vast to breathe in. All eyes—scaled, winged, flame-bright—fell upon me. My veins burned like rivers of molten ash, and the glyphs carved themselves into my skin, flickering with a rhythm not of this world. They writhed, alive, as though the Rift itself had laid claim to my flesh.
My hair lifted as if caught in unseen tides, strands trailing with shadowfire that pulsed in sync with the colossal eye gazing from the abyss. My breath hitched—then broke into a gasp, for scales shimmered and vanished across my arms, bleeding in and out of existence. I felt the divide of what I was shatter. Not human. Not dragon. Not moonblood. Something other. Something Witness-touched.
The Conclave murmured in their dread tongue, fear hissing from their jaws:
"Draeven velthir. Draeven shael. Draeven suuln."
("Not of one. Not of many. Not of belonging.")
My heart pounded until it aligned with the Rift's pulse, an echo so deep it rattled the marrow of my bones. My voice—yet not my own—rose in unison with the abyssal eye:
"Velthra… draen shael moraa."
("Mine… yet not mine… the path reborn.")
The glyph-arch flared, a lattice of black flame and silver light. Damon surged toward me, raw terror and love carved into his face, but the arch spat him back in a violent surge of force. His body struck the stone with a thud that cracked through me like thunder.
Serathion's blade sang from its sheath—he, too, hurled himself at the barrier, but the arch repelled him as though he were nothing more than ash on the wind.
"Dahlia!" Damon's voice tore, ragged, desperate.
But I was untouchable now. The Rift saw me, and I saw it. My mouth moved without consent, whispering the words etched in the marrow of the abyss:
"Xae'thuun morra vehl. Thaelith ven drae. Veylthara un suul."
("The vessel opens. The threshold breaks. The Witness takes root.")
And in that moment, every dragon present bowed—or recoiled—as if the world itself had changed its center, as if I had ceased to be one of them and become something that belonged only to the void.
---
The silence of Dahlia's transformation cracked like glass under pressure. One heartbeat—the world watching her become more than flesh. The next—chaos.
A roar tore from Damon's pack, primal and desperate, as Serathion's acolytes hissed their invocations. Blades rang, claws tore, the air reeked of burning iron and ash.
What had been one united front against the Rift split clean in two. Not conquest, not survival. Ownership. Dahlia herself had become the prize, and the battlefield ignited in frenzy.
Jareth, half-blinded by blood dripping into his eyes, met a Hollow knight in a clash of steel. Their weapons screamed with every strike, sparks spitting across fractured glyph-stone. The Hollow's mouth foamed dark ichor, but Jareth refused to yield, forcing his failing body into each brutal swing.
Nearby, Mira and Veyra stood shoulder to shoulder, their movements so sharp and fluid they almost seemed like mirror images. One drove her blade into a Hollow's chest while the other cut its throat, spinning together in perfect, furious rhythm. Behind them, Marlow staggered beneath the weight of collapsing glyph-fire, his hands trembling as he whispered counter-wards into the smoke.
"Shaelthra… vehlmoran… ekthar drael!"
(Light unbind—fire scatter—stone obey!)
The incantation sputtered, holding the fire at bay only long enough for Mira to yank him back behind her shield.
Above them, Lucian stood with arms raised, sweat running like molten glass down his face. A sphere of fractured light surrounded him, keeping back the Rift's raining shards of obsidian. Every word tore from his throat in agony.
"Velkroth… shaedan velmoth… draelthuun!"
(Barrier stand—shadows break—world endure!)
The barrier wavered like broken glass, threatening collapse with every heartbeat.
All around, the clash raged: Damon's wolves tearing through serpent-robed zealots, Ironsworn steel against Hollow blades. Every oath once sworn to fight together had turned to ash.
And through it all—the Rift pulsed. Its colossal eye unblinking, watching Dahlia as if the rest were ants. Her skin flickered brighter, her whisper still echoing beneath the screams.
"Velthra… draen shael moraa…"
The words seemed to feed the storm, deepening the madness, binding every fighter to the fate of one woman whose transformation had already begun.
---
The battlefield shuddered into a silence too heavy to breathe. From within the fractured archway, the colossal eye—slit-pupil burning like molten glass—blinked once, then closed. The Choir's wails ceased mid-scream. Even Damon's wolves froze, muzzles dripping with blood, ears pressed back in primal dread.
The quiet did not last. A single word, older than the bones of the world, rolled across the broken plains. It was not shouted. It was not sung. It was remembered.
"Veyrathuun."
The name cracked spines and rattled blades. Soldiers dropped to their knees, clutching at their ears though no sound split them—only memory.
Sareth's lips trembled. His voice was no more than a thread of broken air. "The Ashborne… the First Dragon."
At the edge of the field, where even fire bent low, Veyltharion the Elderflame bowed his horned skull. Ash fell from his scales like weeping embers. He did not roar. He did not speak. He only lowered his head—acknowledgment enough. The enemy was not Hollow. Not Choir. Not Alpha. It was kin. It was the beginning.
Marlow's voice broke in terror, but still he chanted, forcing his hands against the stone:
"Shael'toruun daevr! T'rell okaar venru!"
("Seal the wound! Bind the gate with blood!")
The glyphs beneath him flickered like dying stars. Nothing held. Nothing would.
Veyra staggered, gripping her blade, whispering to herself as if prayer could anchor her body:
"Orrin valeth… orrin valeth…"
("Stay the path… stay the path…")
The Rift did not collapse. Its shattering frame bent inward, twisted, and rewrote itself. What once gaped as a wound now coiled into the semblance of a door. Its edges no longer bled light—they carved it, shaped it, hardened it into a threshold that should never exist.
Jareth spat blood into the dust and laughed once, hollow and ragged. "All this… all for nothing."
The silence pressed tighter, yet the name lingered in the marrow of every soldier, every wolf, every god-blooded heart:
Veyrathuun.
The First was stirring.
---
Dahlia's scream rips through the night—glyphs searing beneath her skin like living fire. Her body convulses, every mark burning brighter until her veins shine like molten silver. She stumbles forward, then collapses, the ground hissing beneath her as if scorched by her very blood.
I lunge, instinct stronger than thought, catching her before her body strikes the stone. Her flesh is fevered, every glyph crawling, rewriting itself.
But the moment I touch her, Serathion's roar splits the sky. His hand flashes, conjuring a spear of crackling spellfire—its edge sharpened with pure annihilation. He hurls it at her heart, the air screaming as it tears reality apart.
"Shaevol drak'tuun!" he bellows—"Unmake the flawed one!"
Before it can strike, a shadow erupts overhead. Zorathion's massive wing crashes down like a storm-torn sky, shielding Dahlia's body. The spear strikes scale instead of flesh—exploding in a storm of flame.
Zorathion roars, a sound older than kingdoms, his maw spewing lightning that arcs across the battlefield, tearing through Choir remnants and scattering Hollow husks like leaves in a storm.
All goes silent for one impossible heartbeat.
Then the arch pulses.
A whisper does not pass through ears, but through bone and soul, etched into every spirit present.
"Vel draethuun… moraa korr shael."
"The Witness rises… the new path binds."
The words are not sound—they are chains. Every warrior clutches their chest, gasping as their own hearts seem shackled by the whisper.
Behind the archway, the crack widens. Stone groans. Glyphs fracture. And beyond it—something colossal stirs. A silhouette vast as a mountain shifts, its outline pressing against the veil of the Rift like a nightmare clawing through birth.
The air breaks. The battlefield kneels, not in reverence, but in dread.
And I—holding Dahlia's burning body in my arms—realize the war we thought we had nearly won… was only the first toll of the bell.
The Rift is not undone.
It is a door.
And something waits beyond it.
---