The Rift did not open. It detonated.
A sound like a thousand war-drums hammered the air as the barrier split wide, and the ancient stone runes surrounding it cracked, shattered, and rained down like meteors. Each fragment hissed with sparks of bloodfire, burning holes into the ground where they struck.
Through the widening wound in reality, the first horn of Veyrathuun forced its way into the world—obsidian ridged, longer than towers, dripping with a pale starfire ash that corroded the very wind around it. The battlefield collapsed into silence, then chaos. Mortals clawed at their ears, wolves buckled to their knees, and even the war banners of the Conclave smoldered to ash.
Dahlia screamed. No—she sang. Her body arched violently, caught between agony and rapture, as the glyphs beneath her skin blazed like molten brands. The light stuttered, unstable, crackling between crimson and white, a living storm etched into flesh. Her lips moved faster than her screams could keep pace:
"Vel draethuun… moraa korr shael… Ashemrathuun dael'vorr kriin—"
The words were not hers. The Bloodsong Choir had found a vessel.
Damon staggered against the gale, claws gouging into the dirt to anchor himself. The Conclave ranks around him were scattering, blinded and broken, but his focus did not leave Dahlia. Her pupils had dissolved into burning spirals of glyph-light. Her screams were harmonizing with the Rift itself.
"Dahlia—hold on," he roared, though his voice was drowned beneath the thunder of the horn grinding deeper into their plane. Another quake rattled the earth.
The horn pulsed, releasing a resonance that cracked bone and split stone. Damon's senses burned with the truth: Dahlia was slipping further beyond mortal reach, drawn into the same abyss that had once swallowed the Ashborne. And if he lost her now—there would be no bringing her back.
"Shael venorathuun… draem korrath shirael…"
Her chant rose, a song that was not meant for human lungs. It tore blood from her throat, yet the words still poured, unstoppable, the melody of a god waking.
Damon braced himself, summoning fire through his veins, forcing his body to rise against the storm. "Not you. Not like this." His oath rang like steel. "I'll tear the Rift apart before I lose you."
The horn twitched—alive—its shadow blotting half the battlefield as the first of Veyrathuun's breath pressed against the veil.
---
The horn's echo had not yet faded when another voice rose—not from beyond the Rift, but from within the Conclave itself. Serathion stepped forward, eyes burning with conviction, his blade lifted high as though to draw down the storm.
"Look at her!" he roared, pointing toward Dahlia, whose body trembled beneath rivers of living glyphfire. "The vessel is chosen! Damon is broken, unworthy! The Choir sings not for him, but for her!"
For a moment, silence held—shattered as the first Drakhen blades turned not upon Hollow forces, but upon their own kin. Armor clashed, steel met steel. Kin against kin, oath against oath. The battlefield fractured, loyalty splintering like glass beneath the weight of Serathion's cry.
Ashfire rained from the horn's crackling wound in the sky as the first traitor's strike split the air. Damon met it with fury, his claws shredding the rebel's blade into shards. His voice thundered over the battlefield.
"You tear our bloodline apart while the Rift yawns above us?!" His fangs bared, his rage sharp enough to cut through the storm.
But Serathion only laughed, the madness of prophecy in his eyes. "The Rift yawns because it must. It is her fate to ascend! Not yours. You were never the Alpha they feared—you are the leash they seek to break!"
He lunged, and Damon met him head-on. Claws against steel, their clash sparked like lightning beneath the horn's shadow. Every strike between them rang louder than the horn's wail, louder than the screams of dying kin.
And then the Choir's tongue bled once more from Dahlia's lips, unbidden, unstoppable, carried like a death-hymn through the madness:
"Eyr-vathuun… shai'nor vel drathis… kael'mor athuun dravash…"
(The horn breaks… the blood divides… the first kin devours the other.)
The words rippled across the battlefield, searing into every warrior's marrow. Some dropped their weapons, seized by trembling awe. Others howled and pressed deeper into slaughter, drunk on prophecy's poison.
Damon's claws locked against Serathion's blade, sparks biting the air between them. His eyes narrowed, voice a growl that was half defiance, half grief.
"You would burn the Conclave to ashes to crown her?"
Serathion's smile was jagged as broken bone. "I would burn you."
And with that, the civil war of the Drakhen Conclave erupted in full fury—kin drowning kin in blood beneath the light of a horn that should never have pierced the world.
---
The battlefield's roar muted into a single pulse—the heartbeat of the Rift, drowning every scream, every clash of steel. Dahlia's body was no longer her own. Lifted from the blood-soaked ground, she hung suspended as though the invisible hand of the void cradled her. Glyphs burst through her skin like burning brands, light shredding veins into radiant cracks. Her scream was swallowed, transfigured into the cadences of something older than any mortal tongue.
"Shael draethuun… vorrenn naas… ka'thera veluur…"
The words tore themselves from her lips in a cadence that bent the air, each syllable trembling with starfire weight. Damon staggered back, chest pounding as though his own heart was chained to hers. Her voice was no longer Dahlia's—it was a conduit, jagged and alien, breaking every law of flesh and breath.
Her eyes ignited into void-flames, twin pits of burning absence. She saw not only Damon's bloodied figure, nor Serathion's claw raised high, nor the Conclave's kin still ripping one another apart. Her sight split across layers of existence—both battlefield and Rift, both the mortal plain and the prison beyond it.
"Naerrhun… vestrae… sha'valeth drachoruun…"
Each chant fractured the barrier. The air convulsed, stone spires cracked like brittle bone. Across the sky, the colossal horn of Veyrathuun pressed closer, reality buckling around its sheer presence. Ash fell in spirals, glowing as though caught between flame and ice.
Damon roared her name, but it no longer reached her. She was a vessel, every word a key, every breath a door opening into ruin. Her voice splintered the silence again, darker this time, its echo sounding from the Rift itself:
"Vorrenn… draethuun sha'korr vehlas… Naas vyrrhal…"
The Horn groaned as if answering her, pressing harder, forcing its edge deeper through the veil of the world. Each word she uttered was another fracture. Each fracture another heartbeat closer to his arrival.
---
The Rift screamed. A tearing howl of worlds colliding, a storm of black ash and molten light spilling into our skies. Wind like razors cut across the battlefield, flaying flesh and shattering steel. Wolves were dragged screaming into the air, their bodies snapping as they vanished into the storm's maw. Even Ironsworn knights—armor ringing like bells—were wrenched skyward, their cries devoured by the Rift's endless roar.
From the fissures of shadow, things crawled forth. Ashborne wraiths—serpent-shaped, their bodies made of smoke and bone, feeding on fear itself. They slithered across the torn earth, whispering in that same cursed tongue: "Veyrathuun sael dralh… shael morraeth unn." Each syllable was a claw, dragging minds into madness.
The battlefield was no longer ours. It belonged to the Rift.
Serathion's blades clashed with Damon's claws, sparks spilling against the storm. But even locked in combat, Damon's gaze kept darting to me—his mate, suspended in that void-light. Glyphs bled through my skin, burning me from within, my voice still echoing words not mine. I could feel the Rift pressing, pressing, trying to crack this world like glass.
Ash winds hurled men and wolves alike against jagged stone. Blood and ash mixed in rivers beneath us. The Drakhen Conclave fractured further—kin slaughtering kin as Serathion's loyalists screamed their devotion: "Dahlia saethuun, vessel of fire! Serathion naethuun, chosen fang!" Their chants rose like thunder, striking against Damon's roared oaths of war.
I saw the first of the Ashborne feed. Its smoky maw latched onto a warrior's throat, drinking the scream itself, leaving only an empty husk. Another coiled around a dying wolf, drinking the heartbeat out of its chest. Their whispers grew louder, joined by countless unseen mouths in the Rift: "Shael draethuun… vorrenn naas… Shael draethuun… vorrenn naas…"
The storm twisted tighter. The Rift's hurricane pulled me higher, glyph-light searing through my skin. Damon snarled, torn between holding Serathion at bay and shielding me from what was coming. His claws caught Serathion's throat for a moment—blood arcing across the storm—but Serathion only laughed, eyes bright with fanatic fire.
The Rift wanted me. And it would burn this world alive to take me.
---
The storm bent inward around her, Dahlia suspended like a crucifix of light and ruin. Her chest blazed, not with mortal fire, but with a glow that pulsed in rhythms no heartbeat could mimic. Glyphs clawed out of her skin—black and silver wounds curling into living script, folding and unfolding as though the Codex itself had chosen her flesh for parchment.
Every mark burned deeper, threading veins of ashlight through her body until she was no longer only Dahlia. She was a vessel, a codex made flesh, a second Rift opening beneath her ribs. The runes moved, alive, whispering their truth in tongues that curdled the marrow of every witness.
"Vorrhen dra'aleth… khaar velraethuun… shaem norraen!"
The words bled out of her mouth, not Dahlia's voice but a resonance of something vast, echoing across realms. The barrier trembled at every syllable, fractures widening, Riftfire dripping like venom from the sky.
Damon's heart clenched as he watched her body convulse beneath the burden of the glyphs. His mate. His anchor. His undoing. The truth cut deeper than claws—these marks were not random. They were rewriting her, strand by strand, turning her into something no bond could protect.
A gate. A keeper of void. A bridge to the god imprisoned beyond.
Serathion's laughter slithered through the chaos, each note sharpened with malice. "Do you see it now, Alpha? The girl you clutch to your chest was never yours to save. She was born to fracture, to unravel, to become the mouth through which Veyrathuun returns. And you—" his blade curved in a sweep of black fire—"you are nothing more than the chain that binds her from her true fate."
Damon's claws tore into the earth, his body bowing under the weight of fury. Black flame seeped from his arms like molten grief, trailing from his fingertips in drops that hissed against stone. The Ruthless Oath surged in him, not as a vow but as a curse—bloodlust tearing at the edges of his sanity.
His vision reddened. His breath broke in snarls. For one moment, he nearly gave in—nearly let the flame consume him, to burn Serathion, Dahlia, the Rift itself. But the glow in Dahlia's chest kept him tethered, even as it tore him apart.
"Shael draethuun… korra vaelreth… nox ahruun vel'thir."
Her void-voice fell like a hammer against the Rift's walls. Cracks spidered wider. The Ashborne shrieked and surged, answering the call, swarming the battlefield in their millions.
And Damon—caught between bloodrage and devotion—realized the truth: if he lost control now, he would not save her. He would finish the work Serathion wanted. He would rip open the Rift with his own claws.
Yet even knowing this, his Oath coiled tighter, ready to snap.
---
The world split at its seams. The Rift shuddered like a wound forced wider, light bleeding into shadow and shadow into flame. Above us, the second horn of Veyrathuun—jagged as a mountain forged from bone—rammed against the barrier. The sky itself groaned, spiderweb fractures crawling outward with a sound like cracking stone and breaking stars.
The air screamed. Wolves were flung to the ground as gravity twisted, Ironsworn clutched their skulls as if unseen claws raked their minds. Even the Ashborne wraiths recoiled, writhing back into the ashstorms, unable to withstand the god's nearness.
Through it all, Dahlia's voice rose—not human, not mortal, not even wolf. It was the choir of blood itself. Her chest glowed brighter, the glyphs expanding, spilling across her throat, her arms, painting her like a living Codex. She raised her hands toward the collapsing barrier, every bone in her frame trembling with the weight of what she invoked.
"Vel draethuun… shaara vorrenn aelthuun!"
The words tore out of her throat in a scream that split the air. The glyphs on her skin flared crimson, then black, then white-hot, burning my sight. For a heartbeat I saw her as something unrecognizable—no longer just my mate but a conduit, a vessel shaped by prophecy and blood.
The Rift answered. It buckled, warped, then convulsed outward in waves of light and ruin. The second horn pressed again, harder, grinding against the barrier until sparks of broken reality cascaded like fire-rain. Through the cracks I glimpsed him—Veyrathuun.
Not a god. Not a beast. Something older. Something that eclipsed both. His silhouette rippled across the sky: wings vast enough to block the constellations, jaws yawning wide enough to cradle continents, eyes burning voidlight that pierced through every soul that dared to look.
The barrier screamed back, a keening shriek like glass stretched past breaking. My claws dripped black flame, my Oath raging against what it meant to protect. But all my strength, all my wrath, felt so small against that towering shape straining to enter our world.
And Dahlia—Dahlia kept screaming her invocation, her body arching like the song itself was tearing her apart, as if each word she sang was a nail hammered into her own bones to hold the barrier shut a moment longer.
The Rift pulsed. The cracks widened. Seconds. We had seconds left.
---
The ground gave way beneath us, Rift-quakes splitting stone and bone alike. Damon and Serathion's clash froze mid-strike—fangs bared, steel locked—both nearly swallowed by a yawning chasm that opened like the throat of the world. The Veil itself buckled, runes fracturing into ash.
Around us, the Conclave unity shattered in a single heartbeat. Ironsworn blades clattered to the earth as some fell to their knees, mouths whispering broken prayers—"Aelthuun… draem vorrhak, shael nuuthuun…" Others turned and fled into the storm, howling with terror. Yet some, still clinging to their oath, raised shields and fought on blindly against the Ashborne wraiths clawing their way from the Rift. The battlefield was no longer war but madness.
And in the center of it all—Dahlia.
Her body burned brighter than the Rift itself, threads of crimson and argent fire lashing out from her veins. She was both beacon and breach, a song made flesh, her scream rising into an invocation not learned but remembered.
"Vel draethuun… shaara vorrenn aelthuun!
Nael veyra… morrathuun shael draem!"
Her voice cracked the barrier's spine. Every rune in the sky bled, every shadow bowed. The Rift pulsed in answer, not resisting her but exalting her. And through it—through the shatter-song and bloodlight—the silhouette of the First Dragon pressed closer.
Wings unfolded vast enough to cloak nations. Jaws yawning, dripping with rivers of fire. And then—an eye, colossal, ancient, burning with hate older than gods themselves. The Rift tore wide enough for his gaze to pierce through unbroken.
That eye fixed on her. On Dahlia.
The earth stilled. Even the screams fell silent, as though every throat was stolen by his will.
The pupil narrowed, devouring the shape of her soul.
The First Dragon had found his vessel.
---