The trio left the capital through the Gate of Martyrs—
a gate that hadn't opened in four centuries.
Tonight it hung from its hinges like a broken jaw,
and the skulls mortared into the archway shed black tears that hissed as they hit the ground.
No trumpets.
No banners.
Only the wind, carrying the scent of burning scripture and wet stone.
The Imperial Highway stretched north—once the pride of Elyndor—
now split in places where the earth itself had tried to crawl away.
Trees along the roadside twisted overnight into shapes that hurt to look at:
branches braided into nooses, trunks carved with children's faces screaming skyward.
Every mile, something watched from the ditches.
Not alive. Not dead.
Just waiting.
Veyra walked with Wrathbinder slung across her shoulders, humming a marching tune with no words—only the wet scrape of chains on steel.
Her thorns were growing outward again, curling into crowns around her arms, dripping slow crimson that steamed in the cold.
Seraphine drifted ahead, barefoot.
Where her feet touched the road, frost bloomed in perfect circles before melting into black handprints pointing back the way they came.
Kael brought up the rear.
His shadow no longer matched his body.
It stretched thirty feet behind him, sometimes sprouting wings, sometimes crawling on all fours, sometimes simply going limp until he bled to make it obey.
The Hunger was quiet.
Listening.
Greyspire Fortress — The Truth Buried Under Iron and Lies
Greyspire had never been built to defend anything.
It was a lid.
Nine hundred years ago it was raised atop the Wound of the World—
the largest natural Rift ever recorded.
A vertical scar in reality, three miles deep, wide enough to swallow a city if it ever yawned.
The first emperor drove thirteen thousand slaves into the chasm and built the keep on their backs.
Their bones are the foundation stones.
Their screams are the mortar.
House Voss has held the keys for four centuries because only Voss blood sings in the exact minor key the Wound likes.
Every generation, the heir must descend alone on their nineteenth birthday and give the seals one drop of heart-blood.
Kael did it at sixteen.
He gave it more than a drop.
The fortress itself is a single black tower rising from obsidian glass—no gates, no windows below the thousandth step.
Only one door: ironwood bound in silver scripture, locked by seven keys that must be turned in the veins of seven living Voss.
There are no living Voss left except Kael.
He carries all seven keys now, tattooed in living shadow along his ribs, burning colder with every mile.
The locals call it the Needle of God.
Pilgrims once prayed at its base.
They stopped when the prayers began answering back.
The Pursuit
They felt the legions before they heard them—
a tremor in the earth, steady as a second heartbeat, rolling from the south.
The First, Third, and Seventh Imperial Legions.
Forty thousand soldiers, marching beneath blackened banners that bled light.
And leading them: three new "Saints," forged in a single night from what little remained of the Dawnheart after Alcris shattered it.
Their armor is gold fused to bone.
Their voices are choirs.
Their eyes are replaced by rotating scripture wheels that drip molten gold.
They do not eat.
They do not sleep.
They march—
and the road behind them turns to salt.
Every village they pass is found the next dawn perfectly preserved:
inhabitants alive, standing in doorways, mouths frozen in silent screams, eyes tracking something just behind the viewer.
The legions are three days behind.
Closing fast.
Night on the Glass Plains
They camped—if one can call it that—on a plateau of volcanic glass that reflected no stars.
The sky above was wrong: two moons instead of one, and the second bled slow black across the first.
Veyra sharpened Wrathbinder on a whetstone carved from a saint's femur.
Each stroke left pink sparks that hovered, whispering her childhood name before they died.
Seraphine sat cross-legged on nothing, three feet above the ground, weaving threads of absence between her fingers.
Each thread turned into a dead butterfly that drifted upward and vanished.
Kael stood at the edge of the glass, staring north.
The Wound-light flickered on the horizon—pale violet, pulsing like a dying heart.
"It knows we're coming," he said.
"It's been dreaming of this since the day I fed it too much."
Veyra didn't look up.
"Good. I hate one-sided relationships."
Seraphine tied another thread.
"It isn't dreaming," she murmured.
"It's remembering its name.
We gave it the first note beneath the city.
Now it wants the rest of the song."
A wind rose, carrying the echo of forty thousand boots
and three choirs singing one endless, perfect note.
Closer.
Kael closed his eyes.
In the glass beneath him, he didn't see his reflection—
but Alcris's, smiling like he used to on summer roofs, his mouth forming silent words:
Jump with me.
Kael's shadow spread wings again.
He didn't stop it this time.
Far to the south, the salt-road cracked.
A golden figure paused, scripture-wheels spinning faster, and began to march.
The glass plains hummed—
a low vibration that crawled through bone and teeth.
Three monsters stood at the center of it all, surrounded by upward-falling butterflies, pink sparks, and a shadow with wings far too large.
Dawn was still two nights away.
But the Wound was already opening its mouth.
And the song was nearly ready for its final verse.