The Rift's scream had no sound—only pressure, a crushing silence that bent bone and thought alike. I hung suspended in the air, my body not my own, glyphs tearing free from my skin in molten script. Each sigil burned upward, spiraling into the dark, etching itself into the tearing heavens above. I could not move, could not breathe. I was both vessel and void.
Through that drowning stillness, I heard Damon. His voice, ragged, breaking, clawed its way to me like a rope cast into drowning waters. Dahlia— The syllables dragged at me, but distance warped them. He felt a world away, though I saw his figure wreathed in flame and fury, his eyes locked on me with terror unmasked.
Another voice broke the world apart. Serathion. He no longer moved like a warrior—he moved like a man undone. His oath-bonds bled light from his skin, his veins bulging black as he raised his arms to the void.
From the sundered ground rose a shape too ancient for mortals to touch: a spear, its shaft forged of bone-pale steel, its head jagged as if torn from the rib of a god. Black fire hissed along its edge.
"Vyrrakar, shoruun valeth, issahr tethraal—bind the Vessel, unmake the Prophecy."
The words bit into the Rift itself. The air recoiled, space curdled. The weapon—the Spear of Vyrrakar—gleamed like the promise of extinction.
Damon roared, fire bursting from his form as he lunged toward me, toward Serathion, toward salvation. But the loyalists of the Conclave were not yet broken. Their shadows stretched, elongating into chains, wrapping him mid-flight.
"An'thera vosh, tal'ruun shakar, bind the oathbreaker's flame."
Dark wards sealed around Damon, coiling like serpents. He ripped against them, his teeth bared, fire searing his bonds—but the shadows reknit faster than flame could eat them. His cry reached me, raw, blood-deep:
"Dahlia—fight it! Don't let him take you!"
But I could not answer. The glyphs pouring from me were no longer mine to command. They were scripture written by something older. My lips moved without my will, my voice fracturing into two tones, one mine, one not:
"Aesh varuun... kaleth druun... the breach is the beacon... the vessel is the void..."
The Spear rose higher, Serathion's hands trembling with both rage and awe. His eyes fixed on me as though he beheld both doom and deliverance.
And through it all, the Rift's gaze deepened. Somewhere beyond the ruin of sky, the pupil of Veyrathuun widened, drinking in the sight of me—his chosen breach, his vessel.
---
The Spear shrieked through the Rift-sick air, its shaft carved with burning hex-runes that writhed like living worms. A tail of spellfire trailed behind it, splitting the storm, turning ash to molten glass in its wake.
Damon's voice broke through the storm, raw, desperate— Dahlia!—but to me it was faint, like a tether dragged through water, tugging but too far. The glyphs still poured from my skin, each mark searing, binding me deeper into the Witness state.
Then—impact. The world became pain. White-hot. The spear's head drove through my side, bursting fire into my veins, and I screamed as my Moonblood sprayed across the altar.
The Altar of Threnody awakened with my cry. It drank my blood like a starving beast, its obsidian veins lighting red. The stone convulsed beneath me, groaning like the bones of a god. Cracks tore across its surface, spilling blinding radiance, every line a wound in reality itself.
The ground shook, and with it came the whispers—chanting, layered, inhuman—crawling through the air like smoke:
"Veyr'athul… shai'torakh… Threnodynn ul-vek marra…"
"Blood is the key… Moonblood the lock… the chained one stirs…"
Ashborne wraiths hissed in chorus, drinking the echoes as if it were nectar. Serathion staggered back, his eyes wide, the victory in his face unraveling into horror. Even he had not foreseen what this altar demanded.
The Rift ripped wider overhead, and for an instant I saw beyond it—endless eyes staring through, a mouthless hunger pressing against the veil. The altar wasn't freeing me. It wasn't binding Serathion. It was calling something else.
And it had answered.
---
The altar split apart, and from its heart came a scream that did not belong to mortal throats or celestial lungs. It was older—before stars, before flame—raw sound that shredded bone and memory alike. The Shadow Rift convulsed, spilling black fire into the night. It rushed like a tidal wave, consuming banners, breaking spines, scalding cries into silence.
"Veyrathuun Ka'vorahh… drossen viir athem…" hissed a thousand unseen throats, the sound searing through marrow as if the very battlefield had turned into a mouth of prayer.
The Conclave's shields melted in a breath. The Ironsworn's oaths shattered in their mouths as their armor dissolved like candle wax. Hollow Order zealots, once chanting triumph, were devoured whole by tongues of flame darker than absence itself.
The chains that had bound him—chains of silence, chains forged from the first dawn—snapped one by one. Kraen-thul… Kraen-thul… uverras drem-vyrr. The air cracked open, and through it rose a shadow so vast it erased the horizon, blotting out what little light remained.
I felt the weight of him in my chest, not just pressing but unraveling, as though my soul's script was being rewritten in ash. Damon's roar broke somewhere behind me, distant, strangled by the deluge. I could not see him. I could not see anything but the colossus that unfurled from the rift.
Its wings—if wings they could be called—were jagged expanses of nightfire, carved with shifting glyphs that burned as they moved. Its eyes were abyssal wells, each one reflecting the deaths of worlds we had never known.
Soldiers screamed. Then they didn't. Their bodies collapsed into drifting dust, scattered in the same instant by the winds of his arrival.
The war was gone. The battlefield was gone. All that remained was ruin—black fire, choking ash, and the unfurling of something that had never been meant to wake.
"Veyrathuun… Nael'coryss… thren-ashor vel draven…" whispered the air, the ground, the very blood dripping from my skin.
And in that whisper, I knew: the prophecy had never been about salvation. It had always been about opening a door no one could close.
---
I'm falling—my vision flooding with fire and night. Damon's hands close around me, iron and trembling, his voice breaking against the ruin as if the world might listen and stop.
The Conclave shatters. Their ranks split like torn wings: some sink to their knees before the chaos, whispering prayers, others scramble into retreat, their faith scorched from them. But not Serathion. Not him.
He staggers through the black flames, his robes in tatters, his face burned but his eyes blazing. Fury makes him unkillable. Blood runs down his jaw as he raises his hand toward me.
"Lythor'an veyrathuun, kyr'sha threnodyar!" — his cry rips from his chest, an oath, a curse.
His shadow stretches unnaturally long, pulling him deeper into the Rift, but his words cut through me sharper than any spear.
"You've written it in blood, Moonblood. A prophecy that never belonged to you. And for that—" his voice fractures into something darker, something hollow, "—you will die, or the world will."
The battlefield convulses, as if answering him. Soldiers scream and vanish in the collapsing flame. Damon shields me against the storm, his arms a vow even as despair claws at him.
Serathion's silhouette vanishes into the black maw of shadowfire, but his voice lingers, whispering like ash across bone:
"Athren'sha velthir, suun'ka draemal… A prophecy in crimson shall drown the dawn."
The Rift swallows him whole. And with his disappearance, the war changes—not ended, but poisoned, drawn into something far more dangerous.
Damon bows his head to my face, lips near mine, his fury shaking as much as his grief. "Don't leave me. Not like this."
But I feel the altar's tremor beneath my blood, the whisper of a script rewriting itself in my veins.
And I know Serathion was right.
I've written something I don't yet understand.
---
The world tilts, collapsing into screams and shadow. Dahlia's weight drags against my arms, her pulse weak, her breath ragged, her blood still whispering its own prophecy into the torn earth. Around me, the battlefield is gone—no longer a place of armies, but the furnace of a god awakening.
Veyrathuun roars again, a storm of fire-black wings unfurling across the torn Rift. His voice is the language before creation, burning through marrow:
"Veyrathuun Velmorrah! Kaesh dra'tuun vohr!"
(I return, I unchain, I devour.)
The land answers him with collapse. Mountains fold into rivers of obsidian flame. The wards of the Ironsworn crackle, glowing faintly against the endless dark.
Sareth's voice carves through chaos, blood spilling from his mouth as he kneels, palms pressed to the scorched earth:
"Ashura vel'thaan! Orrak-dai! Orrak-dai! Orrak-dai!"
(Hold the veil! Hold the breach! Hold the breath!)
A crimson wall of ward-light flares upward, trembling. Beyond it, the Hollow Order screams as their forms unravel under Veyrathuun's shadow tide.
The Conclave falters above—half the dragons bow to Serathion's madness, their eyes glowing with the new god's fire, while others flee, wings torn and dripping cinders.
Then the sky splits.
Serathion, burned but unbroken, rises again from the ruin, his eyes locked on Dahlia in my arms. His voice cuts deeper than the flames:
"Vel'kharaan! Draehl nuumir Dahlia! Draehl nuumir sael!"
(She writes a new fate. She must die, or all is undone.)
His blade of shadow forms as he lunges—straight for her heart.
I barely turn, teeth bared—yet his strike is faster than my rage.
And then—light.
Mira.
She collides with Serathion in a scream that shreds the air. Their blades crash, but her body is the true offering. Blood erupts from her chest, turning to radiant fire as she channels the last of her bond.
"Velorrim! Saethuun! Orras kaii drael!"
(Take me. Spare them. Seal my flame to the gap.)
Her light detonates, burning through Serathion's shadow-arm. The force hurls him back into the maw of fire, shrieking curses in tongues that blister stone.
The blast tears open a rift in the collapsing battlefield—an escape.
I reach for Mira—but she is already gone. Only ash in the wind. Only her voice lingers in the cinders:
"Run… Alpha… guard the Moonblood…"
My throat tears with a roar. Rage, grief, fury—they are one thing, one wound. My pack drags me backward, Dahlia limp in my arms as the land crumbles.
Behind us, Veyrathuun lifts his colossal shadow, wings spanning eternity, his laughter echoing like the end of all hymns.
We flee through Mira's sacrifice, swallowed by firelight and sorrow.
And as the gates close behind us, I know this war is no longer ours to win.
It has already become something greater. Something hungrier.
---
We burst through the collapsing wall of shadow, half-falling, half-dragged, until my knees hit soil that still remembers what sunlight once felt like. The Rift's edge is jagged, like the world's flesh torn open. Behind us, the wound begins to fold in on itself, shrieking.
The sound is not just air being devoured—it is laughter, deep and merciless. Veyrathuun. His voice churns through the marrow of the earth:
"Zor'ethuun marakai… Ithar vel raanthos… the feast begins…"
The ground trembles. Mountains bow like bent spines. The sky flickers—blue bleeding into void.
Dahlia slips from my arms, pale as uncut marble. Her lips part soundlessly. Her pulse—barely there, like ash cooling after fire. And then, across her skin, faint glyphs ignite. Crimson threads burned into flesh, spiraling over her veins. Prophecy marks, not written in ink but in blood-memory.
"Aethren ka'loren, vireshta sul'dran…" The whispers rise again, though no mouths speak them. The glyphs answer with their own light, each symbol writhing.
I clutch her tighter, throat raw with helpless rage. "Stay with me, Dahlia. Do not let him write your ending."
But her eyes remain sealed, lashes trembling against skin that grows colder. She is not here—she is somewhere beneath, trapped in the drowning current of prophecy.
Around us, the survivors stagger. The pack drips blood into mud. The Conclave remnants limp away, some carrying the wounded, others broken beyond mending. The Ironsworn kneel, heads bowed, chanting hurried wards to seal the tear:
"Vel'shara! Ith'run kar devorah! Seal the wound! Seal the wound!"
But the Rift only laughs. A black fissure, smoldering, remains. The laughter fades, swallowed into silence that feels heavier than war.
I press my forehead to Dahlia's, desperate enough to break my own oath. If I could tear the prophecy from her veins and take it into mine, I would.
"Damn fate. Damn gods. Damn every shadow that dares to touch her."
And still, the glyphs burn brighter.
"When the last Moonblood sleeps… the world shall be unmade in her dreams."
Her skin pulses like parchment aflame. She breathes once. Twice. Then she goes still, trapped in a trance that is no sleep, no life, no death. Only the limbo of becoming.
The Rift behind us snaps shut with a scream. The world shakes, then quiets. But nothing is healed. The wound has only deepened, hidden inside her.
And for the first time, I—the Ruthless Alpha—am afraid.
---
The Rift spat us back into broken earth, the world buckling under its own collapse. Shards of shadow howled, spiraling upward, before Veyrathuun's laughter rolled across the horizon—deep, unending, like the cosmos itself had split.
Dahlia was limp in my arms, her skin deathly pale, lips cold. Beneath her collarbone, the prophecy glyphs seared through her flesh, burning faint light as if branded from the inside out. Her pulse was faint, erratic, slipping like sand through my fingers.
Ash drifted from the sky. My pack stumbled behind me, ragged survivors, bloodied from blade and spell. Mira did not stand among them. Her body lay broken across the ground where she had fallen, her blood mingling with the earth. A howl rose, fractured and raw, echoing grief.
Sareth dragged himself closer, cloak torn, his voice a hoarse whisper as he stared at Dahlia's burning marks.
"The Witness has spoken… the first line of the Last Prophecy has been written."
I pressed my forehead to hers, fury and desperation burning hotter than any wound I carried. My voice tore free, raw, as I swore over her unmoving body.
"I will not lose her. Not to gods, not to shadows, not to prophecy. Hear me, all of you. If I must rip open the heavens and drag the divine from their thrones—I will. If Serathion breathes, he will not draw another without knowing I am coming for him. I will make him choke on every scream he carved into this war."
The ground rumbled as if even the world recognized the vow. Glyphs along Dahlia's skin flared, pulsing once with dim fire before fading again into silence.
The pack, broken yet unbowed, bent their knees in mourning and oath alike. Some whispered her name, others Mira's. But I could hear the shadows hissing on the edges of reality, carrying fragments of prophecy in the language no mortal should know.
"Ithrenn vel tharyn… veshtor ilai… witness the unbroken line… blood scribed in ash eternal…"
Sareth lowered his head, voice unsteady, the first hint of fear in his tone.
"The war is over… for now. But this is only the opening cut. The gods will not sleep again. And the Witness has marked her as its vessel."
I stood, Dahlia held against my chest, her hair limp with ash, her breath shallow but still there. I looked at the horizon—the fractured sky, the wound of the Rift closing, the smoke that would never truly fade.
"Let the gods tremble," I said, my voice carrying into silence. "Because she will wake. And when she does—their world ends."
And beneath that vow, the glyphs beneath her skin flickered once more, like the faint heartbeat of a prophecy daring to defy fate itself.
---
The battlefield is silent—but the Last Prophecy has only just begun. Dahlia's coma, Mira's sacrifice, Serathion's escape… and the gods themselves stirring. Will Damon's vow become salvation—or damnation?
👉 Continue to Chapter 33: The War of Silence and witness Dahlia's descent into the dream-realm where the Bloodsong Choir sings.
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