The rune carved into my skin is not still. It writhes, alive, glowing faintly with a rhythm I can feel in my bones. It's not ink, not scar, but something forged from fire braided with shadow. Each pulse matches the fragile rise and fall of Dahlia's chest beside me. My flesh burns, but I do not flinch—I will not.
Sareth kneels close, his hand hovering above the rune, his lips moving in a whisper of old tongue.
"Erah'thuun varra, kethor-velai, ahran doshal…"
The air shivers, as though the words tear through some veil I cannot see.
The rune tightens, binding itself deeper into me, and Dahlia stirs faintly, a tremor rippling across her fingers. I clutch her hand.
"It answers her," I murmur. My voice cracks with something I refuse to name.
Sareth's eyes, wide with that strange fever of both awe and terror, find mine. "It does more than answer. This brand is no blessing, Damon. It is a summons. The gods—or what remains of them—now see you both as one."
The words settle like cold iron. A summons. Not a gift. Not mercy. A chain.
The rune flares again, and I hear it—not with my ears, but inside the marrow of my skull:
"Veyrathuun sorra-kel. Atharion dosh vel. Thal'vaaren kroth."
The sound is not sound, but command. A decree from something ancient enough to drown stars. Dahlia's breath jolts once more, aligning with me, and I realize—whatever watches us through this tether has claimed us both.
And it is still listening.
---
The chamber dropped into an unnatural hush, the torchlight guttering as if unseen lungs had exhaled. A crawling frost licked the stones, and every breath misted white. Damon's eyes stayed locked on Dahlia's still form, but Sareth's hands trembled against the haft of his staff.
"I have heard it again," his voice rasped, raw and fractured. He did not meet Damon's gaze. "The Witness."
Something inside the walls stirred—like an echo pressed into bone rather than air. Damon clenched his jaw. "Speak."
Sareth pressed his palm to his temple as though it might cage the sound. His lips cracked open, and the words seeped out as if not entirely his own:
"Tacet est eius clypeus, tacet est vestra ruina…"
The whisper reverberated through the stone, curling like smoke. Damon's brand seared against his flesh, pulsing with each syllable.
"The silence is her shield," Sareth translated, voice trembling. "The silence… is your doom."
The rune burned brighter across Damon's skin, answering the words as though they were a key turned in a lock. Dahlia did not stir, but the glow from her chest deepened, veins of light threading her collarbone like cracks in marble.
Sareth staggered backward, sweat shining cold on his brow. "Her coma—it is no curse. It is the only dam holding prophecy at bay. Should she wake too soon, the flood will break. The ruin will pour out."
The Witness's echo coiled once more in Sareth's skull, thick and wet as if spoken from inside his marrow. His knees buckled, and he clawed at his ears.
"Clavis taciturnitatis… aperiet abyssum…"
Damon caught him before he fell, though his eyes never left Dahlia. The words had already etched themselves across his mind.
"The key of silence," Sareth croaked, "will open the abyss."
The chamber breathed with them, as if waiting. The rune's glow steadied, a heartbeat no longer Dahlia's alone, but his.
---
But the silence inside the chamber was not the only silence being born. Far beyond the walls of Aurikhan Veil, in the ashen sprawl where the wastelands stretched like rotting scars across the horizon, the Hollow Order gathered what remained of itself. Their banners, once inked with flame, were ragged and torn; their zeal had not dimmed but hardened.
A commander stepped forward, his armor split with cracks that leaked faint red smoke, his eyes glassy with a fever of faith. He raised a broken blade toward the storm-heavy sky.
"The Silent Bride," he rasped, voice carrying like bone dragged across stone. "Her blood is the crown of the god who stirs. Spill it, and the heavens fall to their knees."
Behind him, the zealots chanted, voices raw, tongues bound in ritual syllables.
"Naaru-thaen velith morrah, Saarith-thuun velcorah. Eil-shar dravan. Eil-shar dravan. The Bride is silence. The Bride is ruin."
The wasteland itself seemed to respond. Winds keened with tones too human to be wind. From the blackened rivers rose bubbles that burst into whispers. The commander spread his arms as the chant thickened, as if summoning something buried deep below.
"Val'thuun-veyrrathuun. Sahrith velcor. Dra'naesh ur-vorr."
And in the forests at the edge of their camp, the world began to shudder. Birds fled in dark flocks that spiraled as if pursued by unseen claws. Wolves, once predators, bolted in silence, tails between legs. Even the insects seemed to vanish. The rivers that cut through those lands frothed into ink, black veins slithering downstream like serpents in search of prey.
They called it a sign. A whisper of their imprisoned god. Veyrathuun stirred.
And in that stirring came the echo—a soundless pressure bleeding from earth into marrow, pressing into the zealots' skulls until they fell to their knees. The commander only laughed, spitting blood, his blade lifted toward the heavens that refused to answer.
"Find her," he roared. "The Silent Bride. No citadel, no oath, no Alpha will keep her from us."
The shadows writhed in agreement.
---
The cries of the Hollow zealots still seemed to echo in the stone when the chamber fell silent again. Only Dahlia's shallow breaths tethered me to the moment. I sank to my knees beside her, every muscle taut with fury and despair. Her hand was cold against mine, her silence unbearable.
I lowered my forehead to hers, letting the pulse of my blood drum against her stillness. Words I had never spoken before rose from somewhere deeper than thought, raw and ancient, carved in the marrow of my being.
"Velmora shai ven, draen ulthura."
—I bind my war to you, and your breath to mine.
The vow left me trembling. My wolf clawed at its cage, no longer only beast but something vaster, something unrecognizable. Power seared along my veins, burning hotter than any oath I had sworn. My vision bled with light and shadow both, as if two worlds pressed against my skull.
From the cracks in the stones, faint whispers stirred, answering me as though the walls themselves bore witness.
"Shairak velm, ulthura draen… shairak velm, ulthura draen…"
—War entwines, breath entwines.
I gripped Dahlia's hand tighter, my teeth gritting against the storm rising inside. My wolf thrashed, snarling not in hunger but in defiance. I knew then that this was not only about her survival—this vow was reshaping me.
The Witness had whispered doom. The Hollow Order hunted her as the Silent Bride. But I swore into the marrow of Shadow World itself that no silence would take her from me. If prophecy wanted her as its sacrifice, then prophecy would have to break me first.
Her lashes flickered, only faintly, but enough to send lightning through my chest.
I whispered again, voice raw, forcing the ancient words through clenched teeth—
"Velmora shai ven, draen ulthura. Velmora shai ven, draen ulthura."
And my wolf howled inside me, not alone, but as if something else had joined its cry—something older, darker, and far beyond Alpha.
---
The great hall of Aurikhan Veil bled with firelight and the groans of the wounded. Shields lay cracked, spears broken, banners torn into shreds of ash. The survivors gathered in a fractured circle, eyes wild with exhaustion, but sharper still with fear. Dahlia's silence weighed on them more than any blade.
A scarred captain slammed his fist on the stone table, voice raw. "She must be hidden. The girl draws the Hollow like blood draws carrion. If we bury her behind the warded crypts, perhaps the war tide breaks elsewhere."
Another, younger and trembling, spat back. "No. She must be awakened. Whatever sleeps in her veins—whatever song the Silent Bride carries—let it be loosed, for death hunts us already."
Murmurs spread like wildfire. Soldiers muttered the cursed word: "Cairnveil… Kha'ruun vel dratha." (The binding veil, the price of breath.) Their whispers clung to the rafters like cobwebs, clashing with the iron clatter of armor.
Then one voice, colder than winter stone, cut through the air. "Perhaps she must be surrendered. Offered to the gods themselves. Better her life than all of ours."
The hall erupted into chaos. Shouts clashed with steel as desperate hands gripped hilts. Men who bled together hours ago now pointed blades at each other's throats.
Damon stood at the center, shadow draped across him like a cloak, his breath sharp enough to shatter bone. His brand burned hot beneath his skin, twisting veins of black across his throat. He did not roar, but when his voice broke free, it nearly split the rafters:
"If any here dare speak of surrendering her again—then you surrender to me first."
The wolf within him snarled, its hunger scraping at his ribs. The councilmen recoiled as though fire had licked their faces. One bold soldier still dared hiss: "Cursed Alpha. Branded Alpha. No man leads from shadow. The gods have already claimed you."
Damon's hand shot to the table, claws ripping from his skin as wood splintered like kindling. The air reeked of wolf and bloodlust. One heartbeat more and he would have torn the council to shreds.
But Sareth's voice broke through, not with thunder, but with stillness. He stepped forward, robes stained with ink and blood, eyes like wells that swallowed rage whole.
"Velmora thain drael. Shothruun khaelis ven," he whispered, the words low and binding. (In silence, power finds its root. In restraint, the fire grows unbroken.)
He pressed a trembling hand on Damon's chest. "You cannot lead them by rage. You must lead them by silence, as she does."
The words cut deeper than steel. Damon's breath caught, wolf howling inside, but he staggered back, trembling. Around him, the council hushed, fear cooling into brittle silence. Dahlia's quiet—her breathless sleep—now echoed like an unspoken command across every throat in the hall.
The war was no longer just fought in blood. It was fought in silence, in shadow, in choices that demanded surrender of the self.
---
Silence folds over me like a second skin. My body lies cold, bound to stillness, but my mind drifts beneath something vast—pulled into roots deeper than earth, deeper than memory. The Hollowroot Tree rises above me, its trunk endless, its branches clawing at a sky shattered by a broken moon. That moon bleeds silver light down through the veins of the roots, and the light is alive, writhing like snakes of sorrow.
The air thrums with a sound not of this world, a chant half-breathed, half-buried in the soil:
"Zha'ven ulthar, draem korrathi.
Shael ven'nor, haluun ekthar."
(Bind the dream in darkness, break the silence with blood.)
The chant seeps into me, threading through my veins, not unlike Damon's whispers—but this voice is older, rawer, and crueler.
I try to move, but my limbs belong to stone. I try to scream, but my voice collapses into the silence around me. And still I drift, lower, drawn to the pulse beneath the Hollowroot.
The broken moon tilts, its bleeding cracks widening, and shadows spill from it like tar. They stream into the roots, coiling into symbols I half-recognize from the Bloodsong Choir glyphs carved in Aurikhan Veil's chapel walls.
The whispers grow louder, closer—until they fracture into clarity:
"Velmora'thuun, shael draem,
Draen veyrathuun ul korr."
(The breath of Shadow World stirs the dream, yet all breath bends to Veyrathuun.)
My heart stops, then surges. A figure waits where the roots knot themselves into a hollow, faceless, cloaked in shadows that do not shift. Its presence presses against me, heavier than Damon's oath, heavier than the weight of blood and war. Watching. Waiting.
I cannot see its eyes, yet I feel them burn into me—searching, as if marking my silence as both curse and promise.
The chant falls into a whisper, curling like smoke:
"Dahlia shai ven… ulthar shael draem."
(Dahlia binds silence… silence binds the dream.)
And I know—I am not merely asleep. I am being called.
---
The earth convulsed as if it wanted to spit out its own bones. Mountains bowed; rivers turned back against themselves. From the deepest tomb of the forgotten, the shadow of Veyrathuun uncoiled like a serpent of endless night. His breath was storm, his silence thunder.
Valleys blackened as his shade stretched wider, drowning whole forests in a single sweep. Cities far from battle collapsed as though invisible hands had plucked their foundations from beneath them. Temples, once devoted to lesser gods, cracked in perfect symmetry, toppling like puppets with their strings cut.
The priests within screamed not prayers, but dirges. They clawed their faces bloody as the chant forced itself from their throats, a language older than flesh:
"Kael'vurath… shaen'doral… Veyrathuun koraesh."
(The Old Father rises… the veil is undone… Veyrathuun awakens.)
Their voices bled together into a single prophecy shard, a line etched into the marrow of the world:
"When the Old Father walks, the heavens will unweave, and silence shall crown the grave of gods."
Storms erupted from clear skies. Oceans boiled in their depths. Every idol crumbled, every altar wept ash. And across that ruin, a presence vast enough to eclipse thought itself stirred—neither alive nor dead, but the absence between both.
The priests fell to the ground, bones snapping like brittle reeds. Yet even as their lives ended, their mouths continued to move, echoing a whisper carried on the wind like a curse:
"Veyrathuun'kai… shael'morath… drael'vorr."
(All light dies… all thrones burn… the end descends.)
---
Damon's fingers locked around mine, desperate, unyielding. His palm pressed against my skin, and the rune carved there ignited, flaring like a fallen star dragged too close to the earth. The searing light poured between us, binding flesh to spirit, but I was drowning still—adrift in dream-roots that whispered with ash.
My lips parted. For a breath, it almost seemed a word would form—salvation breaking through—but instead, a thin ribbon of shadow spilled out, curling like smoke, whispering ancient syllables in a voice not mine:
"Nerathuun… vel'korr ashura… silven aethern, othra luneth…"
(The Father stirs… the locks of heaven break… the other moon bleeds.)
Sareth staggered backward, his eyes wide as though he had just seen the heavens tear. His voice broke into a hoarse rasp, brittle as bone:
"It has begun…"
And above us—though we could not yet see—the roots trembled, as if the Hollow Order itself had taken its first breath.
The silence that followed was not peace. It was famine. It was the devouring hush before screams.
The War of Silence had no mercy for dreamers or kings—it had only hunger.
---