The doors did not open—they inhaled. The vast gates of shadow bent backward, groaning like ribs parting, and the world exhaled into a silence so complete I thought I'd gone deaf. One by one, we crossed the threshold, and it was like stepping into a lung. The air moved without wind. The walls twitched. Veins of black fire pulsed in rhythm with a heartbeat too vast to belong to anything mortal.
"Naelthuun varach, shaedra vel coruun," hissed the stones, their glyphs crawling, glowing, burning.
Statues that should have been relics of gods long-dead stood before us—but as we neared, they crumbled, not into dust, but into living shadows. Those shadows took up the shapes of kings and martyrs, wolves and dragons, bleeding their false faces in smoke.
My oath burned against my skin, an invisible brand carved by the Ironsworn's blood-pledges. Around me, I felt the others choking—wolves growling in madness, dragons coughing like the air itself was poison.
"Shaedrunn… shaedrunn draevol," the shadows whispered, overlapping in a thousand tones, their tongues like blades dragged across bone.
Dahlia clutched her chest. Her body arched as if her very blood had been seized. Her voice was small, broken by awe and terror: "This isn't a place… Damon… this is his body."
The Scar blazed at my neck, fire gnawing outward. I grabbed her hand, steadying her, and lifted my head into the storm of whispers. "Forward," I roared, my voice cracking through the dark. "If you stop here, you die here!"
The flames on the walls shifted like eyes. Every step set the cathedral groaning as if amused. There was no throne to march toward—because the cathedral itself was his throne.
---
~ The god did not wait upon a seat—he was the seat, the hall, the walls, the air.
---
The deeper we walked, the louder the silence became. It wasn't silence at all—only the hollow between voices. Then, like cracks splitting a dam, the air filled with them.
Voices of old kings. Lost gods. Ancestors whose bones had never known rest.
"Velmura shaedrith… coroneth drael… unchain, unchain…" they crooned, dripping from the walls, seeping from the veins of black fire.
I heard Serathion choke, his steps faltering. His head tilted as though listening to a breath pressed right against his ear. "She calls me," he rasped, claws shaking. "My mate… I hear her. She says my name—she's waiting beyond."
The shadows around him flared, curling like a hand of smoke reaching for his throat.
"Draelith seruun, marath veilun… come, beloved, come…" the phantom voice sang in her timbre, and I knew it was a lie, but he staggered toward it as if bound.
Veyra snapped her whip of flame to block him, shouting for him to wake, but already the cracks were spreading. Kaelthys muttered oaths in Drakhen tongue, his scales paling. Marlow swore he heard his father forgiving him, calling him home.
And Dahlia—her lips trembled, tears cutting down her cheeks. "Mother…" she whispered. "She's here. She says if I just… open myself fully…"
"Shaevol naelthuun… vestra draevol… vessel, open, break…" the walls chorused in her mother's voice, their tongues weaving around her veins.
I seized her shoulders before she could collapse. My Scar seared like a brand, light flooding through the darkness. "No, Dahlia. That's not her. That's the chain tightening around your throat."
Her eyes burned with pain, flickering silver. I snarled into her face, forcing the words out like a blade: "By Scar and oath I bind you here. Coroneth drael, vestra unchain—I drown their lies before they touch you."
The shadows hissed, recoiling from my defiance.
The hook pulled tight around us all—the cathedral did not need to strike with claws or blades. It would break us from the inside, one whisper at a time.
---
~ The cathedral breaks them from within before a single blade is ever drawn.
---
We spilled into the nave, and my breath froze.
Thousands knelt in endless rows—zealots of the Hollow Order, their eyes rolled white, their mouths open like broken flutes. Knives gleamed in their hands, and as one body, they dragged the blades across their skin.
The floor drank them. Blood poured into channels cut deep into the cathedral's flesh, the streams glowing with shadowfire until the whole nave pulsed like a single heart.
Then the song began.
"Veyrathuun coroneth drael… vessel chain, Velmorr unmade…"
The sound was not song but rupture—throats tearing themselves open on syllables not meant for flesh. The echoes didn't stop at the walls; they pressed into bone, into marrow, into the fragile seams of the soul.
Dahlia screamed, clutching her chest as her vesselhood convulsed. Her veins burned black fire under her skin, glyphs shimmering along her throat. She staggered, her voice almost joining theirs without her consent.
"Shaevol, shaevorr, coroneth drael…"
Her eyes turned glassy silver.
"No!" I roared, tearing the Scar wide across my palm. It flared, every nerve screaming as light poured from the wound. I dragged the glyphs against her skin, branding her with my agony.
"Coroneth drael, nael vestra, shael unchain—by fire, by blood, by pain I anchor you!"
The Scar's blaze crackled like lightning through the nave, cutting across the Choir's tide. My flesh burned, blistering where the light seared too long, but I didn't release her. Not when the shadows wanted her mouth singing their dirge.
The Choir only grew louder. Thousands of voices rising, ecstatic in their mutilation.
"Veyrathuun! Velmorr unmade! Coroneth drael, vessel chain!"
The hall shook as though the cathedral itself were harmonizing, each note a hammer against the ribs of the world.
We weren't facing soldiers. We weren't facing worshippers.
We were standing before a god's chorus.
---
~ They're not facing soldiers—they're facing a god's chorus.
---
The Choir's chant nearly tore her open. Dahlia staggered into Damon's arms, her body trembling as if every vein had turned to fire. He dragged her into the shadowed cloister of the cathedral, away from the main hall, the thunder of zealots still rattling the walls.
Her vesselhood flared like a wound, raw and screaming, every pulse echoing the god's command. She gasped, clutching her chest as black fire threatened to split her apart.
Damon seized her wrists, pressing them to his Scar. His voice was a growl torn from blood and defiance, not lust—an anchor against the abyss.
"Coroneth drael, nael vestra, shael unchain—"
I burn, I bind, I bleed with you.
The words weren't just whispered, they were driven into her skin, his Scar blazing hotter than flame. His forehead pressed to hers, sweat and blood mingling, breaths ragged but steadying in rhythm.
She felt the vesselhood quiet—not extinguished, but bound, coiled tight under the weight of their joined will. For a moment, she wasn't prey to the Choir. She was anchored. She was Dahlia.
Her whisper trembled against his lips, more vow than prayer: "If you bleed, I bleed. If you burn, I burn."
The storm inside her relented. Not broken. Not gone. But chained.
---
~ Their bond steadies her—but it is still a chain, and chains cut both ways.
---
The nave vomited us forward into a darker wound.
The chamber was vast, round, its walls slick with flame that wasn't fire. Eyes—thousands of them—burned in sockets carved from living stone. Some were wide with hunger, others wept shadow-blood, others unblinking, lidless, vast and cold. All of them tracked us.
The air groaned as we stepped across the threshold. Every oath the Ironsworn bore ignited like poison beneath their skin. Men dropped, clutching their throats, coughing blood, their sacred pledges tearing them inside out. Wolves snarled and turned on their own shadows, biting and snapping at nothing until their jaws cracked. Above, dragons shrieked and thrashed, their wings collapsing mid-beat, as though invisible hooks tore them down.
The god was watching. Not the cathedral. Not the Choir. Not the zealots. The god.
And he had chosen her.
Dahlia gasped, collapsing against me. Her vesselhood convulsed, veins blazing black fire, skin searing with glyphs that burned from the inside. Her eyes rolled back, silver bleeding into them as her body bucked like she was being hollowed from the core out.
The chamber whispered with a thousand tongues, a susurrus of watching eyes:
"Coroneth drael… vestra vessel… shael unchain…"
Dahlia's mouth opened, the words dragging through her like chains around her lungs. Black fire spilled from her lips in ragged bursts.
I caught her, pressing my scarred hand to her jaw, dragging her face to mine. The Scar split further down my arm, my flesh tearing as its blaze poured into her like molten iron.
"Look at me," I growled, the words half-broken into the old tongue, my voice cracking blood and light. "Not him. Nael vestra—shael unchain! Look at me!"
The chamber shook. Some of the eyes burst, raining black ichor across the stone, but more opened—wider, hungrier. They blinked as one, and when their gaze fell fully, wholly, upon us, the weight of it crushed the air out of the world.
The god was no longer lurking behind shadows and Choirs.
The god saw us.
Not soldiers. Not mortals.
Prey.
---
~ The god sees them now—not soldiers, not mortals, but prey.
---
The chamber funneled into a single passage, narrow, suffocating, walls slick with living flame. Each step pulled us deeper, dragged as if gravity itself bent toward the nave's end.
Then we saw it.
Not an altar. Not a throne. But a heart.
Suspended in the cathedral's core, vast and obscene, pulsed a sphere of black fire, its veins spilling rivers of shadow into channels carved in the floor. Each throb was a drumbeat that rattled ribs and crushed lungs. Every flicker lit faces stretched in silent screams across the walls—faces that shifted, familiar, forgotten, eternal.
The Hollow Order encircled it, thousands of zealots bleeding themselves open, their crimson pouring into the channels until the fire blazed brighter. Their chant thundered as one, a hymn that shook marrow and thought alike:
"Veyrathuun coroneth drael, vessel chain, Velmorr unmade! Shael unchain, shael consume, shael all!"
The sound wasn't in the air anymore—it was inside us, worming through blood and bone. Wolves dropped, thrashing. Ironsworn clawed at their oath-scars, bleeding smoke. Dragons folded into the ground like broken stars.
And Dahlia—
She collapsed, screaming, her body arching as glyphs burst from her skin. Her vesselhood stretched like a tether of living fire, reaching for the altar, reaching for the god's heart, as though she had always belonged there. Her voice broke, torn between plea and song, as black fire bled from her mouth:
"Coroneth drael… vestra vessel… shael unchain…"
I caught her hand, burning myself on her skin, the Scar splitting wider, spilling fire and blood in rivulets down my arm.
"Look at me!" I roared, dragging her gaze from the pulsing core, holding her against me even as it tried to tear her free. "If you fall, I fall with you! Nael vestra! Shael unchain! Scar unbreak!"
The heart throbbed in answer, vast enough to shake the city above us. The voice of the god filled the cathedral, each word splitting stone and soul alike:
"Vessel come. Scar break. Velmorr fall."
The altar pulsed brighter, its black fire spilling out across the chamber floor. Dahlia's vesselhood tether snapped taut—already binding itself to the god's heart.
And I knew: the descent had begun.
---
~ The god's altar awaits, and Dahlia's vesselhood is already binding itself to it. The final descent has begun.
---