The cathedral quakes as the altar swells like a living heart, black fire beating in rhythm with Dahlia's body. She jerks forward with a cry, her chest splitting with lightless veins. A tether of shadowfire erupts from beneath her skin, lashing out and sinking into the altar's burning core.
Her scream shreds the silence. The tether pulls taut, dragging her toward the flame.
Damon roars and tears the Scar wide, the black brand across his chest flaring until his flesh splits. He slams his palm against the stone floor. Fire bleeds from him in waves, scorching runes into the cathedral itself. Every heartbeat costs him blood, every breath ash, but he holds. His Scar burns like a chain hooking Dahlia back from the altar's pull.
The Council scrambles to act—Serathion driving his blade through the tether, Kaelthys spewing dragonflame against it, Myrrath hammering with runes of oathfire. But every strike dissolves into the tether, absorbed into the altar's pulse. The harder they strike, the brighter it burns.
Whispers crawl through the air, not from throats, but from the walls, from the altar itself:
"Veyrathuun coroneth drael… vessel chain… vessel bind… scar unmade…"
The chant seeps into marrow, into oaths, into the Council's veins.
Dahlia's eyes glaze black. Her voice cracks as if echoing from somewhere far below herself.
"He's binding you too, Damon. Through me."
Damon snarls through the fire, tightening his grip on her wrist. His arm blazes with the Scar's fury, his own blood dripping into the tether as he growls:
"Then let him try. I am no chain to break."
The altar's beat quickens. The tether pulses. And the truth hits them like thunder: it isn't only Dahlia the god is binding—it's Damon, through her.
--
~ The tether isn't just binding her—it's binding him through her.
---
The Hollow Order rose in one trembling motion, knives carving their own flesh with ritual precision. Each cut spilled rivers of blood onto the altar's stone, and the cathedral shuddered as if swallowing their devotion whole. Their voices braided into a single chant, low and scraping, an old tongue drawn from the marrow of ash itself:
"Khal-ruun, vestraa dei, mor-rathuun!
Sethral veigh, khal-ruun, thryss!"
Every syllable poured into the tether that bound me. My veins became theirs, my wounds echoing their sacrifice. When they cut their throats, I choked on their breath. When they opened their bellies, I bent under their pain.
The wolves leapt to tear them down, Ironsworn steel flashing as it carved through zealot bodies. Yet with every death, the altar drank deeper, black fire rising in a column that tore the roof of the cathedral open. Damon roared, dragging against the Scar, but even his defiance bent beneath the swell.
"Stop!" I screamed, blood slicking my lips. "Every life feeds him—every blade, every death!" My voice drowned in the thunder of chants, the zealots still cutting, still kneeling, still bleeding themselves into me.
The hook wasn't a weapon—it was a prayer. And the god's altar did not starve. It feasted.
"Veyrathuun kharass, vestraa dei, vestraa dei…"
The echo carved into stone, into bone, into me.
---
~ We realized too late—the god's altar could not be broken by mortal means. Every strike only deepened his feast.
---
Damon roared, the sound splitting stone, ripping dust and flame from the cathedral walls. The Scar answered him, black veins bursting across his chest and arms, tearing his flesh as if it were parchment too frail to hold its fire. His blood boiled against the altar's pull, yet still he stood between me and collapse.
Through the smoke of zealot fire, he forced words that no mortal throat should have dared shape. His voice became a blade, cleaving silence, and the god's eyes turned at once.
"Nael vestra, shael unbreak, drael velmorr, scar eternal."
The cathedral shivered. The Scar ignited into a black sun, each pulse scorching shadow and flame alike. The tether faltered, just for a breath—Dahlia's breath—and in that heartbeat she did not shatter.
But the price poured from him in torrents. His body split at the seams, skin cracking into fissures of red and void. His eyes bled shadow, his teeth lengthened into something feral, wrong. Even his howl bent at the edges, no longer wolf, no longer man.
The Council stared in horror, their weapons slackening as they saw what the oath had carved him into. Not a protector. Not even a beast. Something else.
The Scar's chant whispered back to him, ancient voices from a pit without bottom:
"Nael vestraa… drael velmorr… unmake, unbind, eternal…"
He snarled through it, but I saw what it was doing—binding him, piece by piece, into the god's own game.
---
~ Damon's defiance had saved me, but it was remaking him into what he had sworn all his life to destroy.
---
The tether swallowed me whole. I was no longer standing in the cathedral but suspended inside its vein of shadowfire, where visions raged like storms. Cities toppled in silence, oceans boiled until they peeled away into ash, and beyond it all I saw him—Veyrathuun—walking through eternity with no end, no rival, no mercy. Each step crushed centuries into dust. Each breath devoured creation.
My vesselhood writhed, not only bound but alive, pulling me closer to that pulsing altar. And then—I understood. The tether was not only a chain. It was a path. A command. A crown waiting to be seized.
Damon's voice tore through the flames, ragged, broken, yet anchoring me. "Chain him, Dahlia. Chain him through me."
I looked at my arms. My skin flared with fire, lines splitting open into symbols that bled light and shadow both. The glyphs burned across my flesh, searing words not spoken by any mortal tongue.
"Coroneth vestra… vessel crown… shael all…"
The whisper was inside my skull, slick and endless. Not his command—mine, if I dared claim it.
I pressed my will into the tether. It buckled, screamed like a living thing. My glyphs flared, blood hissing as it evaporated into fire. Runes spiraled outward from my veins, biting into the tether itself, binding it tighter instead of looser.
The cathedral shuddered, zealots collapsing mid-chant as if their veins had been cut from within. Even the altar faltered, its black flame hissing with sudden restraint.
And yet every sigil I carved into myself was a cost. My blood, my voice, my soul. I felt myself thinning into nothing.
---
~ If I could bind this tether, I could bind the god. But each stroke of power carved me closer to vanishing forever.
---
The zealots rose in a frenzy, their bodies carved open with their own blades, shrieking as blood poured from them in ribbons that hissed across the cathedral floor. Their screams were not pain but worship.
"Veyrathuun shael'thar… vessel chain… drael unending…"
The chant thundered through the stone, multiplying with every throat that split itself open.
Wolves hurled themselves into the tide, jaws closing on fanatic throats, tearing flesh and bone. Ironsworn spears clashed, ringing like bells of war, each strike staining the floor in red. Dragons above roared until the ceiling cracked, belching infernos that consumed rows of zealots in molten shadow.
And still—the altar swelled. Every death, every scream, every drop of blood poured like oil into its flame. The tether in my chest writhed with every life stolen, binding me tighter, making me choke on breaths that weren't my own.
Myrrath's cry cut above the carnage. His voice shook like thunder made of grief. "We cannot win this battle—we can only buy them time!"
The Council answered not with words but with fury. Spear met bone. Claw met flesh. Wings smashed zealots into ruin. They fought not to survive, but to bleed, to burn, to die if it meant Damon and I could face what waited at the altar's heart.
The cathedral pulsed around us, alive with whispers, with chains, with eyes.
"Velmorr unmade… vestra chained… scar eternal…"
--
~ The Council accepted their role—to stand as the last wall of mortal flesh, buying a heartbeat of eternity for us to seize or lose.
---
The altar throbbed like a wound torn into eternity, its black flame swelling until the cathedral itself bent beneath the weight of its rhythm. Every beat was a hammer, every pulse a command.
And then it spoke.
"Scar break. Vessel open. Velmorr fall."
The words were not sound—they were thunder lodged inside bone, shattering marrow, cracking stone, making the very blood of the zealots ignite as though obeying.
The tether lashed tight, yanking me forward. My legs buckled. My chest convulsed. My body was no longer mine—I felt my arms dissolving into the flame, my ribs stretching like gates being pried apart. Half of me was already gone, swallowed into the altar's blaze.
The zealots screamed in chorus, voices piercing as their blood spilled into the channels:
"Veyrathuun coroneth drael… vessel chain… shael eternal…"
The flames surged, and I knew it—I wasn't being chained. I was being consumed.
And then Damon's hands seized me, raw and blistered from the Scar's fire. His face was blood, his chest was ruin, but his voice cut through the howl of gods and zealots alike.
"Then take us both!"
The Scar ripped open across his body, its blaze no longer bound to his chest alone but threading into mine. We were one wound, one flame, one chain.
The altar roared, answering with a pulse that made the cathedral buckle, statues collapse, dragons falter in mid-air. The Council drowned in zealot blood, every heartbeat another shriek of dying flesh, and still Damon held me, Scar against vessel, flame against flame.
And the heart of the god replied—not as a throne, not as a prison.
But as a mouth.
And it began to close.
---