The ruin still shook from the abyss's whisper—"the feast is not hunger, it is war." Dust fell in trembling sheets from the fractured arches as I clutched Dahlia tighter, her body limp but burning with a strange afterglow. The Scar writhed against my skin, alive, no longer mine. It pulsed like another heart, another will, beating beneath my flesh.
My arm convulsed, jerking like a limb under puppet-strings. Shadows spat from the Scar, chains twitching like broken limbs clawing at the ground. Each pulse was not pain anymore—it was command.
My wolf growled low in my skull, voice edged with fury and dread. This is no leash. It has crossed you. It takes orders from what lies below.
I could feel it—every throb, every lash, my body moved not for me but for something else. For him. The ancient pulse that groaned beneath the earth.
The Scar split open in light and black fire, its voice crawling out of my skin in a tongue that should never belong to mortal lips:
"Shael draevor ultherra… Coroneth undral… Veyrathuun shaelth."
(The wolf is broken… the crown unbinds… Veyrathuun breathes.)
The sound made the stone itself bleed. My teeth ground against the vibration rattling through bone and marrow.
Every beat felt like surrender. Every twitch, like another piece of me no longer mine.
And in that moment, I knew the truth: the Scar was no longer just a mark. It wasn't a wound. It wasn't a leash. It was a parasite with a will of its own—one that answered to the god stirring in the abyss.
The Scar no longer served me. It served Veyrathuun.
---
The Scar throbbed like a parasite inside me, its chant still echoing—"Veyrathuun shaelth…"—when Dahlia convulsed in my arms.
Her breath tore sharp and ragged from her chest, her body shuddering as if prophecy itself was breaking her spine. I tightened my hold, but her skin burned hot, veins spiderwebbing with shadow and faint streaks of moonlight.
Then her eyes snapped open.
Not glazed. Not lost. Not half-sleeping.
They blazed like black glass fractured by star-fire, abyss and cosmos clashing in her gaze. For the first time since she had fallen, she wasn't drifting between worlds—she was here.
Her lips parted, and when she spoke, two voices bled through her throat—hers, trembling but defiant, and another deeper, older, like the Crown itself riding her breath.
"Coroneth drael… ultherra shael…"
(The crown unbinds… the wolf bleeds…)
Her hands clutched at my chest, knuckles bone-white, as if she feared letting go of me would sever her from herself.
"…the vessel breaks…"
The last word fractured, half-moan, half-prophecy, and I saw her war—her body torn between the girl I held and the vessel the abyss demanded.
I forced her closer, scar searing, heart pounding against hers. Her awareness burned raw in her eyes.
She was waking. Not healed. Not freed. But fully aware, trapped inside the terrible truth of her vesselhood.
Dahlia had returned—but not alone.
---
Her fingers shot up and locked around my wrist, iron-hard, though her body should've been too broken to move. The strength was unnatural—half hers, half something woven through her veins. Her grip burned, as if prophecy itself branded me through her skin.
Her lips trembled, but her voice cut through with feral clarity, not the glassy incantations that had haunted my nights.
"If you falter, he takes me. Don't let him chain us both."
The words shook me more than the grip. She was awake. Not whole, not free, but aware—fighting beneath the weight of a vesselhood I couldn't break for her.
The Scar snarled at her defiance. It heaved against my chest, the veins at my throat flaring black. From the wound came a chorus of whispers like rusted chains dragged across stone:
"Veyrath ul-drae… shaelcor nathur… vessel bind, wolf bend…"
Chains of shadow spooled out from the Scar, coiling around my arms, my ribs, my throat, as if it sought to gag her, to silence her warning.
Instinct flared. I reached inward, summoning the moonfire I had burned worlds for. I let it roar through me, searing down my arm into the Scar—blue-white light colliding with black hunger.
For a heartbeat, I thought it might work. The shadows recoiled, sizzling, hissing like a nest of serpents. But then—
The Scar opened. Not outward, but inward. It drank. My fire bled into it, twisted, inverted, fed back into me as black flame. My veins lit with it, not silver, not blue, but a crawling, starving darkness.
The whispers deepened, louder now, triumphant:
"Ultherra drael, shaelthorr unmaak… the moon feeds the hollow, the hollow feeds the chain…"
The realization crashed through me—every strike, every flare of resistance only fattened the thing. By fighting it, I was feeding it.
And Dahlia's eyes, black glass rimmed with star-fire, locked onto mine—not in fear, but in terrible recognition. She already knew.
---
Dahlia arched in my arms, a shudder tearing through her frame as if something vast and unseen tried to split her down the spine. Her mouth opened—not in a scream, but in a broken hymn that scorched the air.
"Drael shael ultherra… unmaak draethorr…
Unmake the chain before the chain unmakes…"
The sound was jagged, half her, half something older clawing through her throat. Each syllable struck like a shard of glass hammered into the marrow of the Scar.
The chains binding me writhed, recoiling, shivering as though her defiance drew real blood from them. For the first time, the Scar flinched.
Her body bled fractured moonlight—faint, splintered, but enough to set cracks through the dark coil binding my ribs. Not freedom. Not salvation. But defiance.
And in that moment, I saw it—she wasn't a husk. Not a hollowed vessel to be filled and forgotten. She was the battlefield itself, bleeding prophecy into every nerve, every breath, every whispered curse.
The Scar spat back, its chorus rising, venomous, desperate to drown her:
"Ulthorr shael draeth… vessel is mouth, vessel is chain…
The wolf drinks the hollow, the hollow drinks the wolf…"
But she only gritted her teeth, whispering back, voice shaking yet unbroken:
"Drael ultherra shael… chain must bleed, chain must break…"
The shadows hissed again, loosening fractionally, and the realization tore through me like lightning: her awakening gave us one chance—but only if I faced what I'd been denying.
The Scar was no longer mine. It was compromised. Feeding it, fighting it, even burning it—every act bound us closer to the hunger.
If I didn't accept that truth now, we'd both be chained.
---
The Scar shrieked against her words and lashed outward, chains whipping free of my flesh to carve another sigil deep into the ruin's stone. The glyph bled black fire, its edges whispering with voices that had no mouths.
"Coroneth drael shael… the bearer bends, the vessel breaks… feast begins…"
I threw myself over Dahlia, shielding her as the air buckled around us. But her hand rose—shaking, pale, trembling—and pressed against the mark seared across my chest.
Moonlight spilled through her palm, fractured and dim, but steady. Her eyes locked on mine, no longer fevered or drifting—clear, resolute, burning with a terrible kind of calm.
Her voice was no longer two, no longer split—it was one. Hers.
"Then let me share it. If you bear it alone, he wins."
The Scar convulsed beneath her touch, as if scorched by light it couldn't consume. But then something shifted—her glow threaded into it, not burning it away, but linking. Binding. Tethering.
I felt it immediately. A pull deeper than flesh, deeper than soul. Her vesselhood latching onto my Scar, stitching us together with threads of moonlit fire.
The Scar resisted, screaming through my veins:
"Shael draethorr! Vessel is mouth, bearer is chain—divide or devour!"
But Dahlia whispered against its chorus, her words weaving counterweight:
"Ultherra drael shael… chain shared is chain broken… Coroneth draeth, Coroneth free…"
My heart clenched with the realization—the gamble had begun.
If I let her connect, she risked full possession, body and soul swallowed whole by prophecy's hunger.
If I refused, if I severed her now, Veyrathuun's hand would close around her anyway—and I would lose her just the same.
Either way, the choice was mine. And the Scar pulsed, waiting.
---
The Scar throbbed like a living wound, each beat threatening to split me open. But Dahlia's hand did not falter. Her palm pressed hard against the brand, and for the first time since its birth, the chaos steadied.
A pulse—mine and hers together—echoed through the ruin. Not devoured, not twisted, but shared.
The ground shuddered as if the stones themselves recoiled from this defiance. Dust cascaded from the broken arches. Deep below, the abyss whispered its displeasure in a voice like grinding mountains:
"Vorenn shaelth… draevor ultherra… two vessels… one chain… coroneth ultherra drael…"
The words slithered through me, cold and vast. But Dahlia's eyes burned hotter—clear, sharp, unbroken. For the first time, there was no glaze of prophecy, no veil of vesselhood. Only her.
Moonlight threaded her veins like silver fire as she stared into me, unflinching. "I'm awake, Damon."
The Scar writhed beneath her touch, snarling to reclaim its dominion. But she anchored it with her will, binding her essence to mine in defiance.
And the truth crashed into me—her first act upon awakening wasn't breaking free. It was tethering herself to my damnation, the very conduit through which Veyrathuun clawed back into the world.
The ruin groaned like a grave disturbed, the abyss whispering louder still.
And I knew this was no salvation.
This was a war neither of us could walk away from.
---