The night was long and voiceless as Kael and his companions rode east from Myrrak, the shard now secured, its dark pulse contained in the runic vessel that Lyra had conjured. Even encased, it still whispered, a low, relentless thrum that stirred the edges of sanity.
"It's getting louder," Nyra muttered, pressing her hands against her ears. "Even when I close my eyes… I hear them singing."
"That's no song," Garros growled. "It's a warning."
Kael said nothing.
He could feel it too — like a chorus of the damned, clawing at the inside of his skull.
But his resolve didn't falter.
With every shard claimed, his strength grew. His aura had shifted — darker, more defined. And Ashrend, the crimson blade once dormant, now shimmered faintly with runes that weren't there before. As if the weapon, too, was awakening.
They reached the Valley of Cinders by dusk.
Ash-gray trees lined the pass, leafless and brittle as bone. The ground was littered with ash and iron — the remnants of a forgotten war.
"We'll rest here," Kael ordered.
"Are you sure that's wise?" Lyra asked. "This place reeks of cursed ground."
"Good," he said coldly. "Let them come."
And they did.
At midnight, the sky tore open.
A scream, neither wind nor mortal, split the air.
Then they came — The Harrowed Choir.
Winged abominations, once angels of the old pantheon, now twisted by the Sovereign's corruption. Their wings bled shadow, their eyes were sunken voids, and their mouths opened not to speak, but to chant — a cursed hymn that bent the air and shattered stone.
"Get behind me!" Kael shouted, his voice cutting through the nightmare.
The companions scattered into defensive formation.
Lyra raised barriers of white light. Nyra vanished into the gloom, reappearing behind one of the winged fiends with her daggers poised. Garros stood like a fortress, hammer swinging in wide arcs.
But it was Kael who stood at the center, blade burning red.
One of the Harrowed Choir descended.
Kael met it mid-air.
Their clash sent a shockwave across the valley.
Ashrend roared with black lightning as Kael activated a new technique — his eyes burned crimson as he shouted:
"Obsidian Rift."
A vertical slash tore through the beast's core, and the very air cracked with unstable force. The angel screamed as it imploded into shreds of torn light and ash.
Two more fell from the sky.
Kael landed hard but steady, his body steaming with power.
"You want a song?" he snarled, raising Ashrend.
"I'll show you a requiem."
The second wave descended.
Kael spun through them, blade arcing like the scythe of judgment.
"Crimson Severance!" he roared again, the strike carving a blood-red arc through multiple enemies.
Lyra supported him with holy blasts, while Garros crushed one of the winged things into the ground with a blow that cracked the earth.
Nyra leapt between them, flipping off one winged back to land near Kael.
"They just keep coming," she hissed.
"Then we keep killing," Kael answered coldly.
As the last of the Harrowed fell, twitching and blind, silence returned.
But the cost was clear — Garros was bleeding from a gash down his side, and Lyra was pale from magical exhaustion.
Kael alone still stood tall.
Ashrend was still humming. Hungry.
"They weren't sent to kill us," Kael muttered. "They were here to test me."
"Then someone's watching," Nyra said.
"Let them," Kael growled, turning toward the east. "Let them see what's coming."
Far beyond the valley…
In the Throne of Thorns, a woman cloaked in blood-silk stepped before a brazier.
Eyes crimson. Smile razor-sharp.
"The boy has teeth," she purred.
"Shall we dispatch the Dread Priests?" a voice asked from the shadows.
"Not yet," she said. "I want to meet him first. Let's see if he bleeds like his father."