Silence draped the battlefield, but it was no peace—only the stunned hush after ruin. The lattice dimd, its jagged light receding into faint threads that barely held against the fissure’s shadow. The ground smoked where echoes had struck, scarred earth breathing heat into the fog.
Kael rose slowly, his blade dragging in the dirt. His chest rattled with every breath, each exhale threaded with a faint vibration that did not belong. He spat blood, wiped his mouth, and forced his legs steady. “It isn’t gone. Just... waiting.”
Elara cradled the boy, his glow guttering weak as a candle drowning in wax. His chant had collapsed into rasps, every syllable costing him. She stroked his damp hair, her face drawn tight with fear. “He won’t last another strike like that.”
The scarred woman staggered to them, pressing a bloodied hand against her ribs. Each inhale clicked faintly, as if her bones had beco splintered reeds. Yet her eyes burned with a steady fire. “Then we keep moving before it gathers again. The fissure feeds on stillness—on our pause.”
The widow coughed violently, voice shredded raw. Blood spattered her trembling hands. She laughed through the pain, a broken, ragged sound. “Still standing. Still screaming. It’ll take more than a choir of knives to shut up.”
The farr leaned on his cracked drum, each beat of his heart echoing in his bruised chest. He grimaced, but struck it once—hollow, uneven. “A warning. If we rest here, it’ll claim us in sleep.”
A tremor rippled across the plain, subtle but certain. The fissure throbbed like a vein, pulsing faint red beneath the earth. The survivors felt it, not in their ears but in their marrow. The Unborn’s voice lingered, not spoken but rembered, etched into their bones: last shard... waiting...
Elara’s gaze hardened. She shifted, pulling the boy closer. “Then we can’t let him break alone. Every shard it takes, it takes from us together.”
Kael lifted his fused blade, its surface spiderwebbed with cracks that glowed faintly. He ran a hand along it, as if steadying both weapon and self. “We’ll hunt it deeper. No more waiting for it to strike.”
The scarred woman raised her spear, though her hands trembled. “Into the fissure, then.”
The widow’s ruined throat rasped laughter. “A choir’s not ant for silence anyway.”
The farr nodded once, drum tucked under his arm like a shield.
The boy stirred, forcing breath into the shape of words. Weak, fractured, but still his. “Not... shards. Fla. Break —but burn brighter.”
The survivors turned toward the fissure’s edge. Smoke curled upward, red veins glowing faint in the stone. The air tasted of ash and iron, thick enough to choke.
Kael took the first step forward, his voice low, almost reverent: “Then let’s carry the fire where silence sleeps.”
The others followed, broken bodies stitched together by defiance.
The fissure pulsed once—slow, like a heartbeat—then opened wider, its maw spilling darkness across the scarred earth.
And into that waiting dark, the survivors descended.
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