The Scar writhed like it had grown a second heartbeat inside me, veins alive with a rhythm not my own. I held Dahlia tighter, but my arm betrayed me—jerking violently, shadow-chains tearing out in wild arcs that nearly split the ground where she lay.
The abyss below hissed again, voice older than the Crown, heavier than the Hunger:
"Shael ultherra… you already are…"
My wolf snarled inside me, hackles raised, claws raking at the bars of my mind. This isn't hunger anymore. The Scar itself has turned. Another hand tugs the leash.
I staggered, fighting to lock my muscles, but every motion felt stolen—as though I were nothing more than the vessel's shadow.
Visions burst behind my eyes, unbidden: titanic chains coiling in the dark, anchoring a form too vast to name, its body buried beneath the world, its silence swallowing stars whole.
The Scar pulsed with a chant not from my lips, not from Dahlia's, but from something else tugging the tether:
"Vorenn drael shaelth… Ultherra coroneth… Veyrathuun undral stirreth…"
("Chains uncoil, the bearer crowns… Veyrathuun stirs beneath.")
My knees hit the stone as I realized the truth—the Scar wasn't just a wound, not just a mark. It was a conduit. And something buried at the other end had begun to pull.
Something beneath the Hunger had touched me. And it wanted more.
---
The mountain did not rumble—it groaned, as if the roots of the world itself remembered pain. The sound was not stone shifting, nor cavern breaking, but something vaster—an ancient exhalation beneath all breath. My scar seared, not as fire, but as if another pulse beat through me, older and colder than blood.
And then the whispers came. Not from the Hunger, not from the Scar's rebellion, not from cult lips chanting blasphemies in forgotten temples. This was deeper. A tongue older than thought itself, rising like the slow grinding of oceans:
"Vorenn shaelth… draevor ultherra… Veyrathuun stirreth."
The syllables did not echo—they bent the air, sinking into marrow, a language not heard but endured.
I staggered, clutching Dahlia tighter, yet the abyss seemed to lean upward toward us, pressing its will into my chest. For a heartbeat, I felt eyes in the dark—vast, starless, patient. They were not the Hunger's ravenous eyes. These watched, measured, and waited as if they had all eternity to unmake me.
Dahlia convulsed in my arms, her lips parting with a whisper not her own. Broken syllables, fractured truths, yet every one carved into me like scripture:
"The Devourer… not chained, not slain… only waiting."
Her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids, trapped between worlds, as if she were a vessel trembling under the weight of voices not meant for her flesh. My wolf snarled in terror, not defiance. For the first time, I understood: the Hunger had never been the enemy. It was nothing more than a taste—an echo—of the greater thing buried beneath.
The scar pulsed with its rhythm. The abyss breathed.
And Veyrathuun waited.
The Hunger had been only a mask. The Scar, only a conduit. And the true threat—the Devourer—was stirring, patient and eternal.
---
Her body jerked against mine, not in seizure, but in defiance. Dahlia stirred, eyelids fluttering like a drowning soul breaking the surface. For an instant her eyes opened—and they were not her eyes. Black glass, reflective and depthless, stared through me, as if some other tide had flooded her vessel.
Her lips moved, whispering in that fractured, burning tongue the abyss had pressed into us:
"Ultherra shael coroneth drael… The wolf binds, the vessel breaks… unmake or unbound…"
Each word shivered the air, glyphs bleeding faintly into her skin, like invisible ink revealed under a black sun. I clutched her tighter, but it was not enough. She was not simply speaking the words—she was bearing them.
Then, for a fleeting heartbeat, her true voice cut through, raw, trembling, yet unbreakable.
"Damon… if you falter, he takes me."
The words were hers. Entirely hers. And that made them more terrifying than all the abyssal whispers.
My scar responded like a predator enraged by prey's defiance. It coiled tighter around my veins, constricting, punishing her resistance with my flesh. Shadow-chains writhed beneath my skin, veins bulging as if something inside me wanted to burst free and strike her down for daring to resist.
My wolf bared its teeth—not at Dahlia, but at me. At the leash. At the truth.
And then I understood. She was not some helpless vessel awaiting possession. Her awakening wasn't passive—it was an act of defiance. Each time she resisted, she drew him closer. Each time she spoke back, Veyrathuun's attention sharpened upon her.
The Scar was no longer only mine to carry. It wanted her, too.
Her awakening was no blessing—it was the flare of a beacon. And if I faltered, even once, Veyrathuun would claim her through me.
---
I forced moonfire into the scar, teeth clenched, willing the silver blaze to scour it clean. For a moment, light seared across my skin—burning white, holy, sovereign. But the Scar only shuddered, then drank. It swallowed the moonfire like a starving drunk drains wine. Heat became hunger, and hunger became chains.
They tore free of me in black arcs—shael draemor, ultherra shaenith…—slamming into the stone at our feet. The ground convulsed as sigils hissed to life, patterns I did not know, carved by my own flesh as conduit.
From the abyss below, the sound came—not a whisper this time, not a moan of Hunger, but a crack. A tremor that split the ruin's silence like thunder splitting mountains. The sound of something vast and hidden shifting. The sound of a prison wall giving way.
The wolf roared inside my skull, savage and desperate: "You are feeding him!"
I staggered, clutching Dahlia, yet my veins burned with rebellion not my own. The Scar writhed like a living brand, each pulse a blow against unseen chains.
Visions flared—colossal links coiling around a buried titan, shackles older than gods. With every lash of my shadow, those links weakened.
In that instant, I saw it clear—the Scar was no leash, no curse, no brand of Hunger. It was a lockpick. And I was the hand turning it, loosening the chains of Veyrathuun himself.
---
The ruin went silent. Not the hush of breath, not the lull of broken stone, but silence that pressed against my skull like iron.
Then it came. A voice that was not voice—deeper than the Crown, darker than the Hunger. A resonance too vast for mortal bones to hold.
"Coroneth ultherra… blood-bearer… mine."
The word struck like a brand against my marrow. For a heartbeat, the world itself froze. The ruin, the trembling stones, even the abyss—all stilled, as though the syllables alone commanded time.
My breath broke, my wolf snarling, thrashing against the impossibility of it. This wasn't cult murmur, nor chained beast. This was the abyss beneath the abyss.
Dahlia convulsed in my arms. Her eyes flew open—black glass burning with shards of silver—and a scream ripped from her throat. Shadows exploded from her veins, writhing like serpents, lashing at the air. The vesselhood was not just stirred—it was breaking under the weight of that single word.
"Shael draemor… Veyrathuun shaelth drael…" the air hissed, the chains of the ruin singing in answer.
Her scream became prophecy, torn from her blood: "The Devourer speaks… the vessel shatters… the bearer is named!"
I staggered, chest hollow, knowing what had just happened. It was not vision, not echo, not dream.
I had heard Veyrathuun's own voice.
And now—he knew my name.
The Scar burned hotter than moonfire, coils of rebellion tightening, and I felt it in my bones—he was no longer stirring in the dark. He was listening.
---
I forced the air back into my lungs, every breath tasting of ash and stone. Dahlia writhed against me, her blood singing with prophecy not her own. And still, that voice lingered—Veyrathuun's word carved into my marrow like a curse.
I bent over her, forehead pressed to her damp hair, and swore into the chasm.
"You'll never have her. Never."
The Scar answered. Not with silence, not with surrender—
But with laughter.
It pulsed inside me, a rhythm of chains and ash, and the ruin split again. Another hairline crack tore open across the floor, glowing with abyssal fire.
From below, the whisper rose—colder than stone, heavier than death:
"Shael ultherra… coroneth drael… The vessel resists, the bearer bleeds… draevor shaelth… the feast is not hunger—it is war."
The ground buckled. The abyss trembled. My wolf howled, not in rage this time, but in dread.
And in that instant, I understood.
The Hunger was only the mouth.
The Scar was only the chain.
Veyrathuun… was the hand reaching through.
The first war had already begun.
---
🔥 Damon understands the truth—the Hunger was only the beginning. Veyrathuun is stirring, and the Scar is his hand reaching through.
---