The ash storm ended at dawn.
Kallum woke to silence. Not the gentle quiet of morning, but the absence of the wind's howl. The air in the shrine tasted of stone and something older, something patient. His body ached. The training had taken more than he wanted to admit.
He sat up slowly. The stone bench felt harder than it had the night before. His left arm was heavy. The silver and gold spirals had spread further across his forearm while he slept. They now reached nearly to his elbow, their interwoven forms twisted across the scars of the branding, the umber pulse of the Dirge still burning at the center.
The Dirge had changed. The hunger was still there, but it was different. Less focused. The memory of last night's training returned in fragments. Resonance guiding him through the mountain's frequencies. The moment when his judgment had widened from the baker's killer to the system that created him. The way the cold fire had become vast instead of sharp.
"You're awake."
Kallum turned. Elyria sat across the chamber, sharpening her knife against a whetstone. The rhythmic shhhk of steel on stone was the only sound in the shrine.
"How long did I sleep?" he asked.
"Six hours," she said. "The storm broke an hour ago." She stopped sharpening. "Resonance says the path is clear."
Kallum stood. His legs trembled, then steadied. The physical toll was manageable. The mental weight was not.
He could still hear Shea's voice. The whisper from the end of his training. The memory of her laugh when they'd stolen extra rations, the warmth of her hand in his as they'd hidden in the archives, the way her eyes had looked when the Watchers came. Not afraid. Resigned.
She had known. She had always known.
"Elyria," he said. "Can I ask you something?"
She looked up. The lumen-stone at her belt cast soft shadows across her face.
"You can ask."
"The people you killed," Kallum said. "When you escaped. The Delvers who came after you. Do you remember them?"
She set down the knife. She didn't look away.
"All of them," she said.
"Does it get easier?"
"No." She stood. "It gets heavier. Each one is a stone in the pack. You learn to carry the weight, but you never learn not to feel it." She studied him. "Is this about Shea?"
Kallum's hand went to his chest. The silver and gold pulsed beneath his tunic.
"She's here," he said. "In the frequencies. I heard her voice last night. When Resonance was teaching me to expand the Dirge."
"What did she say?"
"That I'm still here." Kallum shook his head. "I don't know what it means. A memory. A hallucination. The mountain playing tricks."
"Or a resonance," Elyria said. "The Dirge connects you to judgment. To balance. Shea was unbalanced—taken by the system, purged for nothing." She stepped closer. "Maybe part of her frequency stayed with you. A question that never got an answer."
"The Order took everything from her," Kallum said. "Her future. Her voice. They erased her like she was nothing more than a smudge on a page."
"But she wasn't nothing," Elyria said. "She was your friend. And now she's part of why you fight. That's not erasure. That's survival."
Resonance emerged from the shadows. The obsidian figure moved without sound, crystalline eyes dimmed to a soft glow.
"The mountain waits for no one," the Echo said. "The storm has passed. The path is clear. But we cannot go further."
Kallum had suspected as much. The Echo Clan was bound to the shrine. Their transformations had tethered them to its frequencies.
"How far can you guide us?" he asked.
"To the edge of the Hollow," Resonance said. "Beyond that, the frequencies change. The mountain's song becomes something else. Something we cannot harmonize with." The figure paused. "You must face what lies ahead alone."
"Not alone," Elyria said. She nodded toward Kallum. "We have each other."
Resonance's crystalline eyes flared briefly.
"So you do," the figure said. "So you do."
The heavy door groaned as Kallum pushed against it. The ash outside had settled into drifts against the shrine's entrance. The world beyond was grey and silent, the mountains rising like jagged teeth against a bruised sky.
The cold hit him immediately. It was different from the night before. Drier. More patient. This wasn't weather. This was the mountain's breath.
Kallum stepped out. The ash crunched beneath his boots. The sound was swallowed almost before it reached his ears.
"The path," Resonance said, pointing toward a ridge that wound upward along the mountainside. "Follow it until you reach the stone pillars. The Hollow lies beyond. The Throne waits above."
Kallum looked at the figure. At the obsidian skin cracked with golden light. At the crystalline eyes that held centuries of isolation.
"Why help us?" he asked. "Why help anyone?"
Resonance's smile was terrible. The tuning-fork teeth chittered against each other.
"Because once," the figure said, "we were where you are. We carried a frequency. We sought answers. And we found them." The figure raised a hand. The obsidian cracked. Gold light spilled through. "The answers changed us. The answers unmade us. But we found our place in the song."
"What place?"
"The chorus," Resonance said. "Every frequency has a part. Even the broken ones. Especially the broken ones." The figure lowered its hand. "Go now, Kallum Vire. The mountain is listening. And the question you carry is louder than you know."
Kallum turned away. Elyria was already moving toward the ridge, her cloak flapping in the wind. He followed.
The shrine disappeared behind them as they climbed. The ash made the footing treacherous. Each step was a negotiation with gravity. The silver and gold in his arm pulsed with a rhythm that felt almost like breathing. They were keeping him stable. They were pushing back against the mountain's silence.
They walked for an hour without speaking. The physical exertion was a welcome distraction from the thoughts circling in Kallum's head. Shea's voice. The memory of her face as the Watchers dragged her away. The way her eyes had found his across the courtyard, holding no accusation. Only understanding.
She had known he couldn't save her. She had known he would try anyway. That was why she'd taken the bread. That was why she'd spoken when she shouldn't have. She'd made herself the target so he wouldn't be.
"I never told you," Kallum said. The words came without thought. "About Shea."
Elyria didn't turn around. She kept climbing.
"I know," she said.
"She didn't just take the bread," he said. "She stole it for me. I was fasting for the Rite. Three days without food. She saw how weak I was. She knew I couldn't make it through the Rite if I didn't eat." His voice caught. "She sacrificed herself so I could become exactly what the Order wanted me to be. And then they killed her for it."
The memory hit him like a blow. The courtyard in the Scholasticum. The line of acolytes standing at attention while the Watchers dragged her away. Her screams. The way Solen had looked—disappointed, not angry. Like a parent whose child had broken a minor rule.
Shea had been nothing more than a lesson to the others.
"That's why the Dirge chose you," Elyria said. She stopped climbing and turned to face him. "Not just because your faith shattered. Because the injustice was personal. Because the system that killed her was the same one that raised you." She studied him. "The Dirge of Reprisal isn't just about judgment. It's about vengeance for things that can never be fixed."
"It's not enough," Kallum said. "Killing the Watchers. Killing Solen. It won't bring her back."
"Of course not," Elyria said. "Nothing will. That's the point." She stepped closer. "You think I don't know this feeling? You think I don't have names? Faces?" Her voice dropped. "I killed my own mentor to escape the Order. He was the closest thing I had to a father. Do you think that pain ever goes away?"
Kallum hadn't known that. He looked at her differently. Really looked at her. The careful way she moved. The way she held herself apart. She wasn't just cautious. She was lonely. She was carrying her own stones.
"Why?" he asked. "Why did you have to kill him?"
"Because he would have killed me first," she said. "Because he believed the Order was right. Because he loved the Quiet Light more than he loved me." She looked away. "We don't get to choose what breaks us, Kallum. We only get to choose what we build with the pieces."
The silver and gold in his arm pulsed. The Dirge responded to her words, to the truth in them. The judgment expanded. It wasn't about individuals anymore. It was about the pattern. The cycle. The machine that took people like Shea and Elyria's mentor and turned them into fuel for something that didn't care if they lived or died.
"What are you building?" Kallum asked.
Elyria's expression was unreadable.
"I haven't decided yet," she said. "But I know what I'm tearing down."
She turned and continued climbing.
They reached the stone pillars as the sun began to set. Massive monoliths of black rock, arranged in a circle around a depression in the mountainside. The Hollow.
Resonance had described it as a geographic feature. Looking down into it, Kallum understood why it was called something else.
The Hollow was not a valley. It was absence.
The depression was perfectly circular, too regular to be natural. The sides were smooth, polished to a mirror sheen that reflected the violet sky. At the center, something rose. A structure. Not built, but grown. Spires of crystalline stone twisted toward the heavens, each one singing a different song.
The sound hit him all at once.
It was not noise. It was pressure. A physical weight against his skin, his bones, his thoughts. The frequencies were everywhere. He could feel them in his teeth, his joints, the blood moving through his veins.
"The Throne's antechamber," Elyria said. Her voice sounded distant. "The Kyn called it the Choir of Silences."
Kallum's left arm burned. The silver and gold spirals flared. The umber light of the Dirge responded. His transformed flesh was trying to harmonize with the mountain's song.
"It's beautiful," he whispered.
"It's a warning," Elyria said. "Look closer."
He did. The crystalline spires were not just stone. They were filled with things. Bodies. Kyn, human, Eldrin—all frozen in crystalline suspension, their forms preserved in perfect detail. Some wore the armor of Temple Knights. Others the robes of scholars. A few were Kyn, their stocky forms unmistakable even in death.
They had all sought the Throne. None had reached it.
"They didn't understand the frequencies," Resonance had said. "They brought judgment. They brought order. They brought certainty. The Throne consumed them."
Kallum felt something shift in his chest. The Dirge of Reprisal stirred. It recognized these things. It recognized the pattern. Each of them had come with a purpose. Each of them had believed they were right. Each of them had been destroyed by their own certainty.
"Kallum," Elyria said. Her voice was urgent. "Your arm."
He looked down. The silver and gold spirals were moving. Not just pulsing. Spreading. The pattern was extending past his elbow now, reaching toward his shoulder. The umber light at the center was brighter than he'd ever seen it.
The Dirge was responding to the Hollow. It was measuring the bodies. It was judging the spires. It was preparing to unmake everything in sight.
"Get back," Kallum said. He grabbed his left forearm with his right hand, trying to physically restrain the corruption. "Elyria, get back."
She didn't move. She stepped toward him instead.
"Listen to me," she said. "The Dirge wants to consume. That's what it does. But the silver and gold—they're something else. They're not just Kynish steel. They're a different frequency." She grabbed his shoulders. "Kallum. Remember what Resonance said. The mountain fears the uncertain. Be the question it can't answer."
He tried. He tried to find uncertainty in the certainty of his judgment. But the Dirge was too strong. It had been forged in trauma, tempered by betrayal, sharpened by every injustice he'd ever suffered. It knew what it was. It knew what it wanted.
The crystalline spires began to crack.
Sound exploded outward. Not noise, but pressure. A wave of force that knocked Kallum off his feet. Elyria stumbled but kept her balance, her boots gripping the polished stone. The bodies in the crystal began to move. Not alive. Resonating. The mountain's song was pulling at them, dragging them into a new frequency.
The Dirge screamed. It demanded he release it. demanded he let it unmake this place.
Shea's voice cut through the chaos.
*Kallum.*
It wasn't a memory this time. It was present. Immediate.
*Don't become them.*
He could see her in his mind, clear as daylight. Shea as she'd been the day they met. Her hair chopped short against the Order's rules. Her hands stained with ink from the archives. Her smile, quick and sharp and full of defiance.
*They all came with answers,* she said. *They all came with certainty. That's why the mountain took them.*
"I don't have answers," Kallum whispered.
*Then stop looking for them.*
The umber light flared, searing his skin. The Dirge fought the restraint, sending spasms of agony up his shoulder. It wanted to feed. But Shea's voice held firm, a barrier of memory against the hunger. With a final, reluctant shudder, the light dimmed. The silver and gold spirals stopped spreading. The pressure in the air decreased.
Kallum lay on the polished stone, gasping for breath. The Hollow was silent again. The crystalline spires stood untouched. The bodies remained frozen in their crystal prisons.
He had stopped. He didn't know how. But he had stopped.
Elyria crouched beside him. Her face was pale. She looked more shaken than he'd ever seen her.
"You did it," she said. "You held it back."
"I didn't," Kallum said. He sat up slowly. His arm throbbed, but the spread had stopped. The silver and gold reached nearly to his shoulder now, leaving only a handspan of normal flesh between the corruption and his neck. "Shea stopped it."
"Kallum—"
"I heard her," he said. "Not a memory. Not a hallucination. Her voice. In the frequencies." He looked at the Hollow. At the crystalline spires and their frozen dead. "She's part of the Dirge now. Part of the judgment. She's keeping me from becoming what they became."
Elyria didn't argue. She looked at the Hollow, then back at him. Something like understanding crossed her face.
"Then maybe you're not alone in there after all," she said.
Kallum stood. The physical toll was enormous. His vision blurred at the edges. His legs trembled with the effort of remaining upright. But the Dirge was quiescent. The judgment was sleeping.
"We need to keep moving," he said. "The Order is coming."
He could feel them. The Purifiers. The Temple Knights. They were miles behind still, but their frequencies were distinctive. They sang of order. They sang of certainty. They were exactly what the mountain wanted.
"You can sense them?" Elyria asked.
"The Dirge recognizes them," Kallum said. "They're judgment. They're certainty. They're everything the Hollow consumes." He looked at the path ahead. It wound around the edge of the Hollow, climbing toward a pass between two jagged peaks. "They won't make it this far."
"They have numbers," Elyria said. "They have resources. They have Solen."
"Solen has answers," Kallum said. He closed his eyes, tuning out the visual of the torches and tuning in to the frequency buzzing in his bones. He felt the High Alchemist down there, a dense, suffocating knot of absolute certainty. "He believes he's right. He's bringing that certainty to a place that eats it."
Solen would come to the Throne with absolute faith in his own righteousness.
The mountain would eat him alive.
"Come on," Kallum said. "We need to reach the pass before nightfall."
They climbed. The path grew steeper as it wound around the Hollow's edge. The air grew thinner. The cold sharper. Kallum's breath frosted in the air, each exhale a tiny cloud of white that vanished almost instantly.
The silver and gold in his arm kept him warm. They pulsed with a steady rhythm, pushing back against the mountain's silence. The umber light of the Dirge was quieter now. Resting. Waiting.
They reached the pass as the last light faded from the sky.
What lay beyond took Kallum's breath away.
The Throne of Quietus stood at the center of a vast plateau, a mountain shaped like a spearhead driven into the earth. It was taller than the surrounding peaks, its summit lost in a ceiling of violet cloud. But it wasn't the mountain's height that made it impressive.
It was the sound.
The Throne sang. It was a low frequency that Kallum felt in his bones, in his blood, in the transformed flesh of his arm. The song was vast and patient and hungry. It was the sound of endings. It was the sound of the quiet that comes when all things cease.
"Atresia's grave," Elyria whispered.
"Or its cradle," Kallum said.
He could feel the Vestige in his satchel responding. The shard of the Threnody pulsed against his side. It wanted to go to the Throne. It wanted to complete the song.
The silver and gold in his arm pulsed in response. They wanted to harmonize. To find a place in the music that didn't require surrender.
The Dirge of Reprisal remained silent. For the first time since the Rite, the cold fire was still. The judgment was waiting.
"It's beautiful," Elyria said. "In a terrible way."
"It's a mirror," Kallum said. "Resonance told me. The Throne amplifies whatever is brought to it. Bring order, and it will impose absolute order. Bring chaos, and it will dissolve all structure." He looked at his arm. "Bring judgment, and it will judge everything."
"So what do we bring?" Elyria asked.
Kallum thought of Shea. He thought of her voice in the frequencies, stopping him from becoming certainty. He thought of the silver and gold, pushing back against the cold fire. He thought of Elyria, standing beside him when she could have run.
"I don't know," he said. "But I know what I'm not bringing."
He wasn't bringing answers. He wasn't bringing certainty. He wasn't bringing the Order's sterile perfection or its brutal judgment.
He was bringing a question.
"Kallum," Elyria said. Her voice was sharp. "Look."
She pointed back the way they'd come.
Torches dotted the path below. Dozens of them. Hundreds. A winding line of light snaking up the mountainside, following their trail. The Order's forces had arrived.
Kallum couldn't see their faces from this distance, but he didn't need to. The silver and gold in his arm screamed. He felt a frequency he had never felt before, condensed, liquid order. It wasn't just torches they were carrying. They were carrying weapons of pure resonance.
Solen was there. The father figure. The mentor. The betrayer. The man who had strapped him to the altar and whispered that pain was necessary. The man who had looked on while Shea was dragged away screaming.
"He's pushing them hard," Kallum said.
"Then we have until dawn," Elyria said. "We need to reach the summit before they do."
They turned back to the ascent. The path wound upward from the Hollow, climbing toward the highest spire of the range, a needle of black rock that pierced the clouds.
They climbed for hours. The air grew so thin that every breath was a gasp. The cold was a physical weight, pressing against the warmth of their cloaks. The silver and gold in Kallum's arm kept him stable, pulsing with a rhythm that pushed back against the mountain's silence.
Finally, the path leveled out.
They stepped onto the peak, lungs burning, expecting a platform. Expecting the Throne.
There was nothing.
Just a jagged ridge of wind-blasted stone dropping away into nothingness on all sides. The peak was empty. No chair. No amplifier. No monument.
"It's not here," Elyria whispered. Her voice cracked, snatched away by the wind. "It's not here. Resonance lied."
Kallum looked around wildly. He checked the Vestige in his satchel. It was vibrating so hard it bruised his hip. It was screaming that it was home.
"No," Kallum said. "The Vestige knows. We're here."
He looked at the ground. At the rock beneath their boots. It wasn't grey granite like the rest of the mountain. It was black obsidian. Smooth. Polished.
He knelt and brushed away the layer of ash.
Symbols were etched into the flat stone of the summit. A spiral. A seal.
"The mountain is a shell," Kallum whispered. The realization hit him with the force of the wind. "The Order has been trying to climb to the heavens. But the silence isn't above us."
He placed his hand on the seal. The silver and gold in his arm flared, connecting with the obsidian.
"It's buried."
The ground shuddered.
With a sound like the earth tearing open, the summit split. A section of the peak ground backward, revealing a dark, square opening. Steps carved from the living rock spiraled down into the heart of the mountain.
A wind blew out of the hole. It didn't smell of cold or ash. It smelled of ancient, contained power. It smelled of the space between heartbeats.
"The Throne isn't on the mountain," Elyria said. She looked into the dark opening with wide eyes. "It's inside it."
"Solen will reach the summit in hours," Kallum said. "He'll stand exactly where we stood. He'll look around and see nothing." He thought of the High Alchemist's certainty, his absolute faith in answers. "He won't understand. He'll keep climbing. He'll search every peak. He'll die looking up."
"Then we go down," Elyria said.
She looked at the spiral staircase descending into the dark. Then she looked at Kallum.
"Are you ready?"
Kallum took a breath. He felt the silver and gold pulsing in his arm. He felt the umber light of the Dirge. He felt Shea's frequency, a whisper of warmth in the cold.
He didn't have answers. He didn't have certainty. He had a question, and he had the will to carry it into the dark.
"I've never been more ready for anything," he said.
He stepped onto the first stair.
The Vestige sang. The Dirge woke. The silver and gold harmonized.
Behind them, the summit ground slowly closed, sealing them in.
The hunt was over.
The descent had begun.