Dahlia's weight slumps against me, her breath shallow, shadows smoking from her lips like threads unspooling into the air. My arms lock around her as if I could anchor her back to herself by force alone. But it isn't just her I feel—it's the thing inside me, the rune carved into my flesh, alive and burning.
The scar on my palm seethes with molten fire, crawling higher into my veins. Each pulse is not mine. It drags. It tugs. It feeds. My oath no longer feels like my own—it beats in rhythm with something far older, something hungry.
I grit my teeth and clutch Dahlia tighter, but the rune thrashes against me, demanding obedience. I hear it before I see it: a hum beneath the chamber stone, a chorus bleeding into my skull.
"Veyrathuun coroneth shael… ulthera draveth…"
*("The Crown descends… the silence binds…")
The words don't come from outside. They rise from inside my scar, threaded into my blood.
Dahlia twitches in my arms, her head snapping against my chest. Her lips part, and though she is unconscious, syllables spill out, soft as a dying breath, terrible as a curse.
"Mor'ethuun veyra… Silvarreth ulthren…"
*("Shadow-born hunger… roots unbroken…")
Her voice is layered, two tones woven: hers, fragile and familiar, and beneath it, the echo of the Witness.
The rune jerks my hand violently against her ribs. It's as if the brand itself wants to climb out of me and into her—chain to vessel, wolf to crown. I force my arm back, but the pull is relentless, alive, as though every beat of my heart is hammering another link into the bond.
"Damn you," I snarl under my breath, pressing my forehead to hers. "She is not yours to claim."
But even as I speak, the chain bites deeper, and I know—if I don't master it, it won't just devour me. It will devour us both.
I feel it in the marrow of my bones—the brand is no longer a mark. It is a chain, and if I don't break it, it will lead me into the Crown's silence forever.
---
I bite down on the roar clawing its way out of my throat and summon the only thing left to me—the wolf. My blood ignites with moonfire, veins blazing until my skin glows like molten glass. The scar on my arm convulses, the glyphs writhing as if trying to crawl free.
I slam my palm against the ground, moonfire spilling into the rune like a river trying to drown a star. Stone splinters, cracks spiderweb across the chamber floor. My claws rip through the rock as the chamber shakes beneath me, but the brand does not yield. It drinks.
"Ultharion velthuun… coroneth drael…"
*("The bond is forged… the crown endures…")
The words hiss from my flesh, not my mouth. My body is being used as a mouthpiece for a god's chain.
The wolf snarls inside me, furious, a storm of teeth and fury tearing at the leash. Break it. Burn it. She is ours.
I roar with him, pouring every scrap of myself into the scar. Moonfire surges, my muscles split and heal, my lungs sear with lightning—but the more I push, the tighter the chain coils. The brand lashes my veins like iron wrapping a beast's throat.
Dahlia spasms in my arms, her lips moving again with that double-voice.
"Silvarreth shael, veyra thun'val…"
*("The silence crowns, hunger eternal…")
The wolf thrashes inside me, his rage breaking like a tide. But beneath his fury comes a whisper I do not want to hear. She is ours… but no longer only ours.
The words splinter through me like ice. The wolf does not lie. And for the first time, I understand—the brand hasn't just leashed me. It has leashed us both. My wolf and I are chained to the same hunger I swore to defy.
I feel the leash tighten, not around my flesh, but around my soul. My wolf may still rage, but his teeth are bared against a god's crown—and I don't know if even we can survive that fight.
---
The world lurches sideways, and I am no longer in Damon's arms. The chamber's stone bleeds into roots, vast and black, winding around me like serpents. The Hollowroot yawns open beneath my feet, swallowing me whole. I fall without end until the roots close in, binding me in chains forged of their own marrow. Each link is slick, pulsing like veins, sinking into my skin.
Darkness breathes. My lungs burn with ash. Then I hear it—the whisper not from outside but from within.
"Ulthera veyrathuun, coroneth shael… Velthros nox undral."
("The Devourer rises, the crown descends… bonds unmade in shadow.")
The chant repeats, each echo a hook dragging me deeper.
From the void, the Witness steps forward, robed in gray flame, his face obscured by shifting glyphs. His voice slices through the dark, neither cruel nor kind, only inevitable.
"You carry his love like a torch into a void—but the void feeds on flame."
The chain jerks tight around my chest, pulling me toward a crack of light in the endless black. Through it, I see him—Damon. His body convulses with moonfire, claws sunk into stone, veins writhing under the scar's brand. His eyes blaze with fury as if he can see me too.
I reach toward him. My hand breaks through the crack, stretching for his touch. But the moment his fingers graze mine, agony screams across his body outside. The light burns his flesh, moonfire boiling against the leash.
I rip my hand back, choking, the void closing around me again.
The Witness tilts his head, as if weighing my pain like a stone in his palm.
"To touch is to wound. To love is to feed the Crown. Choose carefully, child of ash."
I press against the crack with trembling hands, torn between saving him and destroying him, knowing every reach might be the flame that feeds the void.
---
The crack in the void slams shut, and silence drowns me whole. But beyond, far from Damon's claws and my chains, the world itself convulses.
Across the Shadow World, temples carved in bone and black glass flare to life. Rival priests, scattered across desolate strongholds, fall to their knees as one. Bells made from hollowed skulls toll, their tones thick with smoke. The cults have felt the Crown's pulse—the vessel has awakened.
Their voices rise in a single hymn, carried through ash, through marrow, through the split skies above:
"Coroneth ulthera, shael nox, veyrathuun velthros undral—
Crown of shadow, blood of moon, silence feeds and ends too soon!"
The chant shakes rivers until their waters clot black. Forests bend like supplicants, their roots snapping in worship. Mountains crack, spilling veins of glowing red stone that drip into the oceans like wounds that will not heal.
The priests stagger in ecstasy, painting their foreheads with their own blood, eyes rolled white. In one voice, they cry prophecy made flesh:
"The vessel does not carry silence alone—
She spreads it, unmaking every bond, every oath, every flame that dares defy the Crown."
Lightning carves sigils in the heavens, splitting the sky wider still. From the rift, a rain of ash falls—a coronation veil, dark and endless.
The cults rejoice, blind to the truth that the silence they summon will not serve them, but consume them. And the Shadow Crown tightens its leash.
---
The sky's rift still echoes in my veins when the chamber convulses. Dahlia's body jerks out of my arms, lifted as though by unseen claws. Shadows rip from the floor, lashing around her wrists, her throat, her ankles, suspending her above the stone like a marionette of silence.
The scar on my arm seethes, glowing with the same abyssal pulse. I clutch at her waist, refusing to release her, but the mark coils higher, slithering around my forearm, iron-tight, sinking into flesh until blood drips between the links. It feels less like a wound, more like a shackle.
Her lips part—not her voice, not her breath, but the Crown itself pouring through her mouth and my scar in the same breath:
"Veyrathuun shael coroneth, noxthuun velar, silvarreth undral…
Wolf, your vow is mine. Your love, my leash."
The words crawl into my bones, turning marrow into chain. I taste ash on my tongue. My wolf thrashes inside me, torn between rage and despair.
I snarl, pressing my forehead to her stomach, refusing to let her vanish into that abyssal puppetry. My claws tear grooves in the stone as I roar into the Crown's hollow laughter:
"Then I will break gods with the chain you gave me!"
The chamber cracks, moonfire searing from my veins in defiance. For a heartbeat, the shadows falter, like a tide pulled back.
And in that pause, a low sound escapes the Crown—laughter still, but laughter edged with recoil. The first sign that defiance has struck deeper than intended.
The Crown laughs, but trembles—unnerved that its chosen wolf would dare wield its own leash against it.
---
Dahlia crashes back into my arms, the shadows unraveling but never dispersing, curling at the edges of her veins like smoke that waits for breath. She is limp, her lashes trembling against her cheeks, her mouth still stained with whispers not her own.
The scar blazes molten, searing so deep I can feel it coil around the cords of my soul. It does not fade. It will never fade. Every pulse of my heart feeds it, a reminder: the Crown's chain lives in me.
I kneel over her, clutching her close, my forehead pressed to hers as I whisper into the ash-stained silence.
"You will not take her. If I must wear this chain, I'll turn it into your doom."
The chamber breathes back—not air, but shadow-song, the same voice that mocked me through her lips. It reverberates in the stone, in my scar, in the marrow of the world itself:
"Veyrathuun coroneth ulthera…"
(The Devourer rises, the crown has chosen.)
The sound dies, but the brand does not. It pulses once more, tethering us both—her vesselhood sealed, my defiance branded.
The last hook settles into me like steel: the Crown had its vessel. But now I bore its chain—and whether curse or weapon, it would be mine to wield.
A curse that could bind me to silence. Or become the weapon that shatters it.
---