They came like ghosts.
The Pale Choir drifted into Duskfall without sound. No fanfare. No bloodshed.
Not yet.
They were not soldiers. They were a verdict.
And the sentence was erasure.
Western Quarter - Midnight
A rebel safehouse went dark. One moment the glyph wards hummed, the next, silence.
Kael found the site fifteen minutes later.
No bodies. No blood. Just a thin layer of white ash.
And a melody lingering in the air—soft, sorrowful, in a tongue no one remembered.
He whispered a ward of remembrance and fled.
The Pale Choir had arrived.
Forgehouse - Council Chamber
The flame at the center of the war table flickered violently.
Selene's hand hovered above it, tracing runes in the air.
"Five safehouses gone. No survivors. All within a single hour."
Altharion stood silent, eyes narrowed.
"These are not assassins," he said. "They are erasers. Memory-weavers. Once they finish with your body, they reach into the weave and remove your story."
He looked to his disciples.
"They cannot be fought with strength alone. They must be resisted with presence."
Selene frowned. "Presence?"
"Memory. Voice. Witness."
He pulled an ancient shard from his cloak—a mirror of star-glass.
"When they come, you must anchor the memory of those lost. Speak their names. Burn them into the ley. It is the only way they remain."
Slums of Duskfall - Two Hours Later
A woman named Myra sang to her son as they hid beneath a collapsed archway.
The song was old, from the time before the Dome.
She heard the footsteps first. Then the hum of erasure.
The Pale Choir was near.
She held her son close and kept singing.
A tall figure stepped into view, cloaked in linen, face masked in iron.
The hymn grew louder.
Then—
A flicker.
A flare of red light cut through the fog. A disciple of the Archon stood tall on the rooftop, arm raised high.
He shouted:
"MYRA! MOTHER OF ONE! WITNESS TO THE OLD SONGS! HER NAME IS HERS!"
The Pale Choir hesitated.
Just long enough.
Myra and her son vanished into a side tunnel.
Presence had saved them.
Celestial Dome - Interrogation Spire
Helios watched the playback of the event through a scry-crystal.
"Voice magic," he muttered. "Memory binding through collective will."
The Triune had warned him the Archon would evolve.
He hadn't expected it so soon.
He turned to a masked agent.
"Deploy secondary agents. Poison the minds. Turn memory against itself. They want legends? Then let's make monsters."
Forgehouse - Upper Terrace
Selene approached Altharion where he stood overlooking the ley-lit streets.
"We're losing people," she said.
"We always would," he answered. "But we haven't lost their truth. Not if we remember."
She handed him a ledger. "We've begun recording every name. Every act. Every resistance. Carved in stone and song."
He nodded. "That's how we win. Not by killing gods, but by surviving them."
They stood in silence for a while.
Then she asked, "When do we strike back?"
Altharion looked to the horizon, where the Dome's spires glimmered like cold stars.
"Soon. But not with fire. Not yet. First, we sing."
He turned to the disciples gathering below.
"Let the city hear us. Let memory awaken. Let the Pale Choir know—we do not go quietly."
And in the streets of Duskfall, voices rose.
Old songs.
New names.
And power not born of magic, but of remembrance.