The rains came not as a mercy, but as a judgment.
Grey sheets poured over the charred remains of the outpost where the Choir had once sung. Now it lay broken, hollowed by whatever had clawed its way out of the deep. Smoke still rose in damp curls from shattered stone and sundered wards.
Auren stood in the middle of the ruin, soaked to the bone, his Shard pulsing weakly beneath his ribs—slower now. Dimmer.
His knuckles were bloodied from digging.
He'd pulled out three bodies.
None of them were whole.
And none of them were Darien.
"He's not here," Lys said from behind, her voice flat. "Or if he is, he didn't die like the others."
Auren didn't turn. "You think he ran."
"I think he did."
Caelen cursed, stomping through the wet ash. "Whatever did this… it wasn't just rogue bearers. This was something older."
The others stood scattered—what was left of the group, fewer now. The Southern Marches had become a graveyard. The deeper they went, the louder the land seemed to scream.
The Rift wasn't spreading.It was calling.
Auren felt it constantly now—that low thumping beneath his bones, like the echo of a drum he couldn't unhear. It wasn't pain, not exactly. It was hunger.
His Shard was no longer whispering.
It was singing.
Lys walked closer, her face unreadable. "We'll burn what we can. Bury what we can't."
"And then?" Auren asked.
"Then we go to north," Caelen replied grimly. "The Crown needs to know what's rising. Before it reaches them."
Auren looked back at the ruin, at the blackened sigils on the walls. Not a single one had held. Not even the deep-ward of Silence. Whatever had come through… it had been let in.
Not forced.
Invited.
Later that night
Auren sat alone again. Always alone. The others kept their distance now—not with suspicion, but caution.
Since the Choir.
Since the pulse of that Hollow Light through his skin, cracking the earth, unmaking the voidspawn that had consumed the outpost.
They had seen it.
What he had become.
Or was becoming.
He opened the worn journal Darien had left behind. It had survived the fire somehow, wrapped in shardwoven cloth. Pages smeared and half-burnt, but a few lines remained.
"If the Choir is broken, we will not hear the warning in time. The Old Wills stir. The boy—he is more than he knows. Or perhaps… less."
His hand trembled as he turned the page.
"Not all oaths are to be kept. Some are cages made by the wrong gods."
A voice behind him: "Still looking for answers in ashes?"
He turned—Lys again.
She sat beside him, silent for a time. Then, quietly: "You saved us."
He shook his head. "I lost control. I could've killed you."
"You didn't." Her voice hardened. "You stopped what none of us could."
He looked down at his hand. The veins around his Shard still faintly glowed. But beneath the light… there was shadow.
"Whatever I'm becoming…" he whispered, "it's not a Shardbearer."
"No," Lys said. "It's something else."
At dawn
Before they set out again, Caelen drew a circle in the earth with his blade. One by one, the survivors stepped into it, speaking oaths of silence, duty, and fire.
When it came to Auren, the others hesitated.
He walked in anyway.
And when he spoke, his voice did not echo alone.
The Shard spoke with him.
A chorus.
Broken. Reborn. Bound.