The silence weighed more than the battlefield ever had. No clash of steel, no thunder of wings, no screams of dying foes—only the suffocating hush of a sanctuary turned into a grave.
I woke to her stillness. Dahlia lay unmoving, her breath shallow, the glyphs carved into her skin pulsing faintly like veins of fire beneath pale flesh. Each flicker seemed to eat at her, burning away what little strength remained.
Beside her, Mira's body was sealed in ritual stillness. Candles guttered low around her, their flames bending as though even air itself mourned. Ash wards, drawn in careful circles, glimmered faintly—fragile as cobwebs. They could not hold forever.
The weight pressed down on me until rage chewed my bones raw. Every breath I took was a reminder that she might never take another. My hand brushed her wrist—cold, too cold.
Whispers coiled through the sanctuary, echoes of the spells that still lingered:
"Veyrathuun'kai shal maren, othuris velen-dahr."
(The chains are broken, the silence devours all.)
"Ashiraen thor-kai, miraveth solun, endra vehl."
(Blood to ash, soul to silence, flame to end.)
The chants were not ours, but remnants of the Rift—shadows that had followed us, clinging to Dahlia's flesh, trying to claim her still.
I clenched my fists, teeth grinding. Every instinct told me to rip those whispers from the air, to tear down gods themselves if that's what it took to bring her back. But the more I stared at the glyphs, the more I realized—they weren't just burning her. They were binding her. Holding her halfway between this world and the other.
And I could not break them. Not yet.
The silence deepened, pressing like a coffin lid.
---
Her fingers twitched in mine. Just the faintest pulse, a broken ripple across her stillness. Then it began—the convulsions, shallow but fierce, as if her veins burned with wildfire.
Her lips parted, and what spilled out was not breath, not prayer, but the Choir's dread-born tongue.
"Veyrathuun na'shar, thryl vashta. Eren'khal, en'shothun."
(Veyrathuun rises. Blood unbroken. Witness not forgotten.)
The syllables cut through me like molten iron. She should not have known them, yet they poured from her mouth like an inheritance carved into her bones.
Again, her breath seized and trembled. The second whisper came fractured, each word straining as though forced from the marrow of her soul.
"Thyrien'shael, thyrien'shaal… trevhar lun, ekthir vak."
(Thirteen shards, one voice, one end.)
I clutched her hand harder, my knuckles whitening. "Stay with me, Dahlia. You don't walk this path alone. Do you hear me? You're coming back. You're mine."
But her body was already elsewhere.
In flashes I felt it—through the bond, through the raw tether that had chained us long before fate spoke its name. Her mind wandered the Choir-hall of visions. I saw fragments: vaulted expanses of black stone that wasn't stone, constellations of glyphs burning above her like stars that bled.
The air of that place was alive, singing—not songs, but wounds. Thousands of lost voices whispering through cracks in eternity.
She stood adrift beneath it all, her shadow stretching into an abyss without end. And the voice that came to her was not Mira's, nor mine. It was older. A voice that made the constellations bow.
"Awaken, thryvhaal. Esh'thren, ashar draveth. Taar'ven."
(Awaken, and the sky will burn.)
I felt the command crawl through me as if I, too, had been called.
Her breath hitched. Sweat slicked her temple. Glyphs beneath her skin blazed like brands, and still she whispered in broken tones, every word a knife carving the future:
"Erethuun… thaal'ven… veyra'thurra."
(Endless… silence… devourer.)
I held her tighter, whispering promises she could not hear, desperate enough to bargain with gods I had sworn to break.
---
The pyre rose beneath the ruined arches, built from blackwood and ash-soaked timber. Mira's body lay at its crown, draped in wolf-fur, the last honor of her kin. Around her, wards burned low—circles of bone-dust and ink, fading as if even the runes could not bear to guard the dead.
One by one, the wolves knelt. Their throats opened with a raw, shattering chorus. Howls—long, fractured, off-key—spilled into the hollow air. It was no battle-cry. It was mourning, stripped of strength. The sound clawed at marrow, made even stone remember grief.
Damon stood at the pyre's edge. His palms bled where his nails had cut, fists trembling as the flames caught. "Forgive me, Mira. I led you into the Rift, into the maw of silence. You bled because of me." His voice cracked, yet his vow burned stronger. "But your death will not be in vain. I swear by the Oath of Ash and Fang—vengeance will come. They will choke on their own silence before I yield."
The fire roared higher, casting long shadows across the sanctuary. Some wolves lifted their heads to howl louder, eyes blazing with shared fury. Others lowered their gazes, uneasy, their glances sliding toward Dahlia's still body, her glyphs burning brighter with every convulsion. Whispers slithered among them—fear, doubt, suspicion.
"Ashsong… curse-born…" one voice muttered, quickly silenced.
Still, the fracture deepened. Loyalty and terror coiled together, indistinguishable in the smoke. Damon felt it in his bones—the pack was no longer one howl, but many jagged echoes.
The flames swayed as if stirred by unseen breath. From the crackle rose faint echoes of an ancient tongue, carried on Mira's departing soul:
"Khaerithuun… sol vyrrath… eiran dosh valun…"
(In silence, vengeance grows, in ash the oath is bound.)
The wolves trembled, some bowing lower, others lifting their heads as if to defy the omen. Damon's jaw clenched. Grief bound him to rage, but he saw clearly now—this war was not only against the Hollow Order. It was inside them, too, gnawing at their unity.
And unity was all that had ever kept them alive.
---
The ruins stank of scorched marrow. Blood-iron banners sagged against broken spears, dripping with ash that curled like black snow in the stagnant air. Survivors of the Hollow Order crawled from pits of smoke and shattered stone, armor cracked, faces smeared with fire-soot. Yet their eyes glimmered with fanatic clarity.
"Mira is ash," one hissed, clutching a shard of burnt bone as if it were relic. "The wolf's heart consumed by the Choir."
Another voice joined, hoarse but sure: "A sign… her flesh is offering. Their pyres ignite our creed."
They circled the fallen banner, pressing bloodied palms to the sigil. From their throats rose the rasp of the creed, half-chant, half-curse:
"Zha'vrin taluun. Blood for Veyrathuun. Ash for the End."
"Kha'reth shuunar, kha'reth ulnaar."
"Thirteen bind, thirteen burn."
The commander, his helm split across the brow, staggered forward. His shadow pooled wrong, as though the battlefield itself leaned toward him. He raised a gauntleted hand, slick with wolf-blood.
"The Ruthless Alpha thinks grief will bind his pack. But grief cuts deeper than steel. They fracture. We bleed them more." His voice was low thunder, carrying even through the whimper of dying wolves in the distance.
He pointed toward the northern ridges, where jagged ravines laced the path Damon would be forced to take home.
"Set snares of marrow. Lace the stones with shadow-oil. No howl will rise unbroken. Their wounded will fall first, the cursed mate next, until only the Alpha kneels."
The Order knelt as one, striking the earth with blades and fists. Their chant rolled like bone grinding in a crypt:
"Orrathuun, Orrathuun. Mira burned, Mira bound.
Wolf's flame doused, the End unchained."
Ash fell heavier, cloaking their bent backs like a burial shroud. And in their silence after the chant, the only sound left was the crackle of charred banners—like whispers of a god listening.
---
The night had not yet lifted from Mira's pyre when word reached us—ragged scouts returning with ash clinging to their fur, their eyes hollow. Their voices trembled as they spoke: Serathion lives. His trail scars the land—ash-scorched trees, runes burned into stone, shadowfire that eats the air itself.
A silence heavier than grief pressed on the sanctuary. Wolves shifted uneasily, glances darting between Damon and the still form of Dahlia wrapped in glyph-burned sleep. Fear had no words, but it hung thick in the chamber like incense.
Damon stood, shoulders rigid, his eyes reflecting fire. His voice broke the silence like a blade.
"Serathion is mine."
The words were not a vow. They were a sentence. Carved into stone, unbending.
But hesitation rippled through the pack. They had seen Damon lead them into the Rift. They had watched Mira fall. And now Dahlia lay between life and death. To follow Damon into vendetta felt like stepping into their own graves.
A low murmur spread—half loyalty, half fear. Some knelt to him still. Others turned their gaze away. The fracture deepened.
—
Far from the sanctuary, in a cavern drowned in shadowflame, Serathion carved Dahlia's name into the blackened stone with claws slicked in blood. His breath was a hiss, his voice a litany.
"Dahlia… Moon…"
He traced the syllables in fire, each one binding her wound to his own strength. The glyph circle around him bled smoke, spirals of ash rising like souls clawing free.
"⸸ Veyr'thuun drakhal… Ashira vel Draem. ⸸"
("By the godless flame, I drink the wound of dream.")
His eyes burned with fever, his body trembling as shadowfire surged through his veins. Her pain was his anchor now, her breath the rhythm of his curse.
"⸸ Khaelith… Durnath… Dahlia nox ven'drel. ⸸"
("Khaelith… witness… Dahlia bound to my ruin.")
The cavern trembled as if the world recoiled from his obsession. The ritual circle seared her name deeper into the earth, a scar that no rain could wash clean.
Serathion's whisper grew into a growl, then into laughter—hollow, fractured, unstoppable. His vendetta had taken form.
He would kill Dahlia.
He would end the prophecy.
And Damon would walk straight into the snare of his shadow.
---
The silence inside the sanctuary shivered as if it had heard its own name spoken. I turned, my pulse hammering, as Sareth stumbled through the archway—ashen, trembling, his palms dripping trails of cinder that didn't belong to this world. His eyes were hollow, as if something had looked back at him through the Veil and refused to let go.
"The Witness wrote a second line tonight…" His voice cracked, carrying the weight of doom.
Every gaze in the room locked on him, the air heavy with anticipation. And then he spoke the words that should never have been spoken aloud:
"When the Alpha breaks oath with gods, the Last Moonblood will bleed against the sky. Her silence is the key; her waking, the war's unmaking."
A sharp chill speared down my spine. Dahlia's stillness—her fragile coma—wasn't just her body's prison. It was the fragile thread between survival and annihilation. If she woke, the heavens themselves might collapse in fire and oathblood.
"No." My voice broke against the stone. I dropped to my knees beside her, unable to breathe against the sight of her frail form wrapped in rune-light. My hands shook, but I knew what had to be done.
I carved my palm with a fang, the steel biting deeper than flesh. Blood ran hot and furious, and I pressed it against the glyphs burning beneath her skin. Her marks flared in answer, swallowing my pain like they had been waiting for this very moment.
Ash symbols screamed into being, blazing along the chamber walls, as a new brand burned itself across my hand—searing, binding, fusing my fate to hers.
"Ardhel veyrith… ilun karas… talum veyra Dhaliah."
("Blood-bound flame… eternal oath… I anchor myself to Dahlia.")
The brand carved into my flesh glowed with her pulse, brighter than any torch, brighter than the gods themselves. I could feel her heartbeat sync with mine, a rhythm chained to prophecy.
Sareth staggered backward, horror and awe splitting his face. "You've marked yourself against the Witness' hand. Damon—you and she now bear the same rune. If she falls, you fall. If she rises, the war breaks."
And still I didn't let go.
"Then let it be war."
---
Her body twitched once beneath the weight of the runes. A faint gasp rattled out of her lips—then nothing. She did not wake.
The chamber fell into a silence so complete it felt like the air itself held its breath. Damon's hand still pressed against her chest, his blood-soaked palm binding to the glyphs. The rune branded into him throbbed, each pulse echoing with the fragile rise and fall of her ribs. His heart now beat in lockstep with hers. Their fates chained. Their silence one.
The ash candles guttered. Whispers moved along the stone like trapped spirits. "Zaroth, En'kai… Sylthra, En'kai… Khoruun, En'kai…" The ancient tongue scraped like knives across glass. Sareth collapsed to his knees, unable to bear the vibration of prophecy in his bones.
Cut to the Shadow World—Veyrathuun stirred. His name, unspoken for millennia, writhed now in every shadow. The sky bent into an unholy eclipse. Crops withered black overnight. Livestock shrieked and collapsed in fields of rot. In the temples, priests fell into seizures, spitting ash as they screamed of "the Old Father walking." Entire towns vanished without sound, swallowed beneath skies that bled grey fire.
The Hollow Order raised their banners beneath those collapsing heavens, chanting in one voice: "Veyrathuun Arakai. Veyrathuun Na'thal. Veyrathuun, the first, the end." Their throats tore raw, but they chanted on, each syllable a blade in the weave of the world.
Back in the chamber, Damon leaned over Dahlia. His jaw was locked, his voice raw with the ache of something deeper than rage. He pressed his lips close to her ear.
"Wake to me, love."
The rune seared brighter, answering his vow. Her chest rose in another faint gasp—then stilled once more. Not silence of death, but silence alive with unbearable tension.
And from the mouth of the Witness, carved into the ash-drenched prophecy walls, a final line bled itself into existence—its words trembling like the opening of a grave:
The War of Silence begins.
---