Dawn rose over Eldren's Reach, and the city looked like a corpse someone had tried to baptize in fire.
Half the cathedral was simply gone—erased—replaced by a yawning crater that steamed in the morning cold.
The surviving half leaned drunkenly, bells melted into slag.
Smoke rose in slow black ribbons that spelled no prayer anyone living could read.
Kael, Veyra, and Seraphine walked out of the aqueduct mouth as if they owned the ruins.
No one tried to stop them.
The few who survived the night—guards, priests, nobles who'd hidden in cellars—took one look and ran.
Some dropped to their knees in worship or terror.
Others clawed at their own eyes, refusing to see what the dawn had brought them.
The trio looked like the end of a story no holy book had ever dared to write.
Kael's left arm was still living shadow, fingers occasionally lengthening into claws before he forced them back with visible effort.
Veyra's chains dragged behind her in broken, blood-slick loops; thorns pulsed beneath her skin like she was trying to crawl out of her own body and failing.
Seraphine's remaining silver hair floated weightless, its ends dissolving into flickering black-white sparks that never touched the ground.
They reached the crater.
At the bottom lay the shattered Dawnheart Relic—cracked open like an egg.
Whatever golden yolk had once been Alcris had cooled into brittle glass.
The breeze stole him shard by shard.
Kael stared until there was nothing left to recognize.
Veyra elbowed him, her joint tearing open and bleeding freely when she moved.
"Your boyfriend's prettier this way," she said. "Talks less."
Kael didn't answer.
He was listening to the quiet inside his chest where the Hunger had once screamed.
It hadn't vanished.
But it had curled up, small and watchful—
like a wolf that had finally seen a bigger monster.
Seraphine knelt at the crater and dipped two fingers into the glass dust.
Golden flakes clung, then dissolved into nothing.
"The Church finished dying tonight," she murmured.
"No more saints. No more relics. Just stories that end in fire."
She looked up at the burning skyline.
"Good."
A distant horn sounded—thin, frightened.
Beyond the walls, imperial legions were marching.
Someone would try to reclaim the capital.
Someone always tried.
Veyra cracked her neck.
Thorns shifted under her skin with a series of wet clicks.
"So what now, shadow boy?" she asked.
"We burned the world's biggest church. Hard to top that for a second date."
Kael looked east.
The rising sun felt wrong on his skin—too bright, too clean, too alive.
"North," he said. "Greyspire Fortress. The biggest sealed Rift in the empire.
My father's keys still work."
He lifted his shadow-arm.
The black veins pulsed once—a heartbeat that wasn't his.
"I'm going to open it."
Veyra's grin returned—slow, hungry, magnificent.
"Knew I liked you."
Seraphine stood.
The wind tore another strip from her dress, revealing pale skin now laced with faint silver runes—new ones, glowing softly like fresh scars.
"And when you open it?" she asked.
Kael met her gaze.
"Then we finish the song."
He turned away from the ruins.
Veyra fell in beside him, chains singing against the stone.
Seraphine followed last, barefoot in the ashes, humming a lullaby that made nearby birds fall dead from the sky.
Behind them, the capital burned itself out.
Ahead lay the empire, the sky, and every seal still holding the Abyss at bay—waiting for three monsters who had learned they could make gods cry.
The Hunger stirred, stretched, and purred.
It was no longer starving.
It was curious.
And in the Abyss, curiosity is the most dangerous appetite of all.
Far beneath the crater, something wearing a child's shape opened brand-new eyes and smiled through a mouth it hadn't needed in ten thousand years.
Three voices.
Finally.
It rose through the stone like smoke through cracks—
following the scent of a song that had only just begun.