The ruin's chamber was quiet, save for the faint groan of stone above the abyss. The council fire behind them sputtered out, voices dimming into restless murmurs, but I felt her hand still pressed to my Scar. Trembling—not from weakness, but from holding back something vast and merciless.
I guided Dahlia into the side passage, where the air was cooler, laced with ash and echoes. She leaned against the wall, breath uneven, her eyes glowing faint silver even in shadow.
"It feels like a second heart," she whispered, voice jagged. "Not mine. Not yours. Something waiting. Beating. Hungry. If I stop breathing, it will still beat."
I reached for her, claw and flesh together, thumb brushing the faint lines of her pulse. "Then let me be the anchor. If it drags, it drags us both—but I'll hold you."
Her eyes snapped to mine, wet with defiance. "And what if anchoring me is only chaining you tighter to him? Damon, you can't bind me without binding yourself."
The Scar beneath my skin flared, searing through my ribs. A whisper crawled up my spine, low and amused:
"Ultherra shael… vessel bind, vessel break… coroneth drael…"
She shuddered, hearing it too. For the first time, no barrier separated what whispered to me and what clawed at her.
We stood close, silence heavy with truths neither of us wanted. I traced the trembling edge of her jaw, felt her steady herself against my chest. Between us, the Scar's rhythm and her vessel's thrum beat as one, clashing, feeding, echoing.
"Damon," she breathed, not as prophecy but as herself, "I might be a cage. Or I might be the key. Either way… you may have to choose."
Her words sank like claws through my chest. Not war. Not prophecy. But her.
And I knew—before any blade struck, before any god rose—we were already standing at the edge of that choice.
~ Her body was no longer just hers. No longer just mine. It was the chain and the lock—and one day, I would be forced to decide which to break.
---
By dawn's ruin-light, the courtyard burned with the clash of bodies and steel. Scarred stone walls bore scorch marks where dragonfire had already been loosed in practice, and the ash-flecked wind carried the scent of sweat, iron, and char.
Damon's voice cut the morning like a blade. "No more divided oaths. Wolves, Ironsworn, Drakhen—you fight as one, or you die as one."
The pack bristled at his words, eyes flashing, hackles high. Veyra and Marlow lunged at each other in a blur, their sparring so sharp it drew gasps from the watching Ironsworn. Jareth drove his spear against Marlow's flank, only to be yanked aside as Lucian barreled through, turning wolf-speed into human strength.
Above, Zorathion descended in a storm of wings, lightning sparking across his scales. He loosed a bolt at the Ironsworn's shield wall; steel sang, sparking, but they held, bruised yet grinning.
Kaelthys the Dreadscale growled, crushing a slab of stone between his claws with casual violence. "If you would stand against gods, learn to endure what dragons endure."
I stood beside Damon, watching chaos sharpen into rhythm. Dahlia lingered a step behind, breath sharp. Her eyes burned with a black-silver sheen, the vesselhood pulsing in tandem with the Scar's steady throb.
As Veyra twisted through Lucian's strike, as Ironsworn locked shields against lightning, as Kaelthys shattered stone with his bare hands—I saw her still, trembling, lips moving.
"Coroneth drael… ultherra shael… battle flows, vessel knows…"
Her pupils flared, glass-dark with threads of starfire. She gasped suddenly, gripping Damon's arm, whispering low. "I can feel it. The flow. Their strikes, their falters—I see the shape before it breaks."
Damon's jaw tightened. "Vesselhood is bleeding into the field?"
Her eyes shone, terrified yet resolute. "No—it's showing me how to survive it. How to fight him. But if I open too far, he'll see me."
The courtyard roared with training cries, steel on stone, dragon wings blotting out the light. And there, in the center of it all, Dahlia stood trembling—not just a vessel, not just a girl.
She was a blade waiting to cut both ways.
~ Dahlia realized her vesselhood was no curse alone. It could read the movements of gods themselves—if her body could endure the cost.
---
The courtyard fell into uneasy silence as Elderflame Veyltharion lowered his ancient head. His scales shimmered with age-born fire, each word rolling like thunder through stone.
"Long before gods chained themselves in shadow," he said, "the Drakhen forged glyph-weapons—not of steel, but of blood and soul. Blades etched with runes older than prophecy itself. A weapon that strikes not flesh, but spirit."
He exhaled, smoke curling from his jaws as his talon traced a sigil into the courtyard ash. It pulsed once, alive, feeding on the silence around it.
"Shael draevor… coroneth ultherra… blood binds, soul severs…"
The rune hissed, splitting a crack into the stone. Even the air recoiled.
The Ironsworn stepped forward, spears striking the ground as one. Their captain's voice boomed: "Then let us match blood with oath. Our spears are sworn in iron and life—shields that will not break until we do. Coroneth shael… Ironsworn unyielding."
A deep hum answered them, spears glowing faintly as their life-forge oath sealed into steel.
But Dahlia—still trembling, still awake—stepped into the circle. Her voice rang with both her own breath and prophecy's cadence.
"If vesselhood binds me," she whispered, eyes burning with starfire and shadow, "then let me be the chain. Strike him through me, not around me."
The courtyard erupted in fury.
Zorathion's storm-growl shook the walls. "Too dangerous!"
Kaelthys slammed his claw into the ground. "She would shatter before the god!"
Even the Ironsworn muttered, uneasy.
But Damon did not speak—his Scar pulsed, and his fist clenched hard enough to bleed. He stared at Dahlia, his wolf howling inside, torn between love and war.
And in that silence, the abyss itself seemed to answer her words:
"Ultherra shael… drael coroneth… vessel binds, god breaks…"
The ruin groaned, the air tightening. They all felt it—the prophecy did not reject her idea. It embraced it.
~ The strategy was no longer about slaying Veyrathuun, but binding him—through Dahlia's body, through the chain she had become.
---
When the council dispersed, their voices still ringing with blood-oaths and dragon-fire, a colder silence fell. Dahlia lingered in the broken courtyard, her body heavy with the weight of what she had offered. Damon stayed near, his shadow wrapping hers like a vow unspoken.
That was when Serathion emerged—from between the fractured pillars, his robe dragging ash, his presence a smoke that clung to bone. His smile was thin, his eyes unreadable.
He bowed his head toward Dahlia, but his whisper slid like venom.
"You think yourself chain, little vessel. But chains bind, restrain. You—" his finger touched the air, not daring to touch her flesh—"you are not chain. You are door. And doors do not close… they open."
The words coiled inside her chest, chilling even her firelit breath. Damon stepped forward, growl in his throat, but Serathion's gaze turned to him, sharper than any blade.
"Alpha, you lead them toward ruin. The council's plan cannot hold. Blood-runes burn, oaths crack, even dragonfire fades. There is but one way to keep the god from walking your world."
His voice lowered, almost tender.
"Cut the door from its hinges. Kill her before he steps through."
Damon's Scar throbbed, black fire lacing the veins in his hand. He almost lunged, but Dahlia's palm brushed his arm, steadying him. Her breath was ragged, her eyes distant—haunted not by Serathion's malice, but by the weight of his words.
For beneath the poison, a shard of truth pulsed. Vesselhood meant tether, but also passage. If she faltered, even for an instant, the god would not be chained. He would enter wholly.
The air around them trembled, carrying faint echoes of the Bloodsong Choir:
"Ultherra shael… drael voruneth… vessels break, doors awaken…"
The chant slithered across stone, as though the ruin itself agreed.
Damon's wolf roared inside him, fighting to deny it. But his heart knew—Serathion's venomous whisper had cut deep. The war outside, with Ironsworn and dragons and burning spears, would mean nothing if Dahlia lost the war within her own body.
~ Damon stood at the precipice of an impossible truth—if she was the chain, she was also the door. And every battle they fought would matter little if that door ever swung wide.
---
Serathion's shadow had barely faded when the courtyard thundered to life. Iron clashed, howls rose, and dragonfire split the sky. The council no longer argued—they drilled. Wolves and Ironsworn locked into formation, their movements raw and jagged at first, then sharper, iron spears anchoring wolf packs like spines of living steel.
Overhead, dragons wheeled, their wings tearing gales across the ruin's open dome. Their roars bled into chants that rattled the marrow:
"Coroneth drael, shael unchain… Velmorr draeun, oath flame bind…"
The words struck like hammer and anvil, weaving sky and stone into a single rhythm. The air itself seemed to hum with unmaking and rebirth.
Damon stood at the center, his Scar a storm beneath his skin, barking orders that fused wolf and oath-sworn into one organism of violence. But Dahlia—she felt the pulse inside her veins twist, rising to answer those chants.
Her breath shortened. The vessel within her stirred.
"Test her," Kaelthys rumbled, his drakhen frame towering over them. His talons carved a shallow scar into the courtyard stone. "If she is chain, let her bind."
Before Damon could snarl, Dahlia stepped forward, iron spear pressed into her palm. She thrust it into the rhythm of the wolves' drill, letting the vessel's pulse guide her steps. For a moment—perfect harmony. The Scar in Damon's chest blazed, and their heartbeats collided like twin storms.
Then—convulsion. Her knees buckled, her body wracked as the vessel surged. Not hers. Not his. Other.
Her scream cracked the air. Damon caught her before she collapsed, Scar flaring black fire that wrapped her spine like shackles.
Her eyes glowed with something not her own. His hand seared against her skin, tethering. For one breathless instant—they weren't two bodies but one weapon, vessel and Scar entwined. The courtyard itself trembled, ash lifting from the ground as if gravity had bowed to them.
The wolves froze mid-howl, Ironsworn lowered their spears, even Zorathion's lightning stuttered. Power radiated from them, divine and ruinous, barely contained.
Dahlia gasped, clutching Damon's chest. "When united… we can wield it."
Damon's jaw tightened, Scar blazing brighter. He knew the other half of that truth, the darker one.
"When divided… it will destroy us."
The echoes of the Bloodsong Choir rose again, unbidden, a whisper threading through marrow:
"Two as one, flame and void… sunder once, worlds destroyed…"
The drills resumed hesitantly, but no one forgot what they had just witnessed. Neither did Damon. Neither did she.
~ They had touched godhood—terrible, undeniable. But it was not theirs alone. It was a power that could just as easily unmake them both.
---
The courtyard's echoes faded into night. Above them the Shadow World sky bled fire, veins of crimson light splitting the darkness as if the firmament itself had been torn open. Factions camped in uneasy circles—wolves sharpening claws and steel, Ironsworn tightening oaths with low iron-chants, drakhen coils glowing faint with ember-heat.
Yet in the ruin's shadowed edge, Damon and I sat apart. The hum of drills had left my body raw, my veins a battlefield. Whispers rippled inside me like a second bloodstream. Ultherra drael… vessel chained, vessel unmade…
My hands trembled. Not from fear alone—but from the awful certainty that I was both weapon and weakness.
Damon's shadow loomed close. His hand—burning with the Scar's light—closed over mine, steadying the tremor. His gaze pierced through the red-lit dark.
"Tomorrow," he said, his voice low, Scar and wolf blending in its timbre, "we chain a god." His hand lifted, resting against the mark over my heart, heat sinking deep into me. His eyes softened, rough edges breaking for only me. "Tonight… you're mine."
I swallowed, veins still whispering rebellion, but when he drew closer, the vessel's hum was drowned by something fiercer, something alive. His lips found mine, and the kiss burned—hungry, desperate, a vow of flesh instead of ash.
The world bled away. His hands traced fire across my skin, my breath breaking against his mouth. We collapsed into each other, a storm of need and defiance. His Scar flared as our bodies tangled, heat and shadow colliding, every heartbeat pounding like war drums. I clutched him tighter, not from weakness, but because every whisper inside me tried to pull me elsewhere—and only his touch anchored me here.
We made love beneath that broken sky, not gently but as if each thrust, each gasp, each desperate cry might bind me tighter against the abyss. His strength, my surrender; my fire, his storm. For the first time, vessel and Scar were not at war but entwined, the abyss pushed back by mortal hunger and mortal love.
When it ended, I lay against his chest, our breath ragged, our bodies marked with sweat and flame. The vessel inside me stirred—not in hunger, but in silence, as though even it could not break what we had forged.
But the abyss never truly sleeps. Out of the cracks of night came the whisper again, deeper, hungrier:
"Two chains, one vessel, all unmade…"
The fire in the sky guttered as if the god himself listened.
~ Tomorrow, the Council would march—not against nations, nor armies, but against the endless hunger of a god already clawing inside our skin.
---