Chapter Thirteen — Echoes Without Throats
The path back from the Cenotaph was not a march.
It was a procession of ghosts.
Kaelen Vorr walked at the rear. Not as a leader.
But as the echo of one.
Every step he took reverberated against the silence left behind. The others had not spoken since leaving the Cathedral of Loss. It wasn't just reverence. It wasn't just trauma. It was the feeling that every sound might break something sacred.
Even the wind seemed reluctant to move.
At camp that night, fireless and cold, they sat in a ring. Not around warmth—around weight.
Selene broke the quiet first. "What you did back there... it wasn't a Psalm."
Kaelen didn't answer. His throat still ached, the vocal cords raw from the broken verse.
She looked at the others, then back to him. "You weren't singing. You were remembering."
He finally lifted his gaze. "It remembered through me."
Lira blinked. "What does that mean?"
Kaelen closed his eyes. The Cenotaph's touch still lingered. Images bled into each other. Walls of mouthless faces. Tombs filled with songs that had never found breath. And above it all, a name without language.
"Something was buried in me," he said. "And the Psalms aren't just rituals. They're keys. Every verse I sing breaks a lock. But I don't know if I'm opening a door..."
"...or a cage," Selene finished.
The others looked uneasy.
One of the younger scouts, Marik, finally spoke. "If this thing inside you wakes up, does it mean we win? Or does it mean we become what we hate?"
Kaelen had no answer.
In the days that followed, strange phenomena began.
They passed through dead Dominion outposts where machines refused to hum. Screens shattered. Metal warped.
At one site, a recorder played a looped signal in reverse.
It was a lullaby. Sung by a child. In a voice no one remembered having.
Lira wept. Selene vomited. Kaelen stood still.
"We're waking it," he whispered. "The Choir isn't coming back. It never left. It's buried beneath memory. And memory..."
He pointed at the recorder.
"...wants revenge."
Dominion recon drones spotted them near the eastern trenchline.
Two hours later, they were ambushed.
Six sky-blades.
Four infantry hounds.
One Harmonic Severant.
The Choirites fought not with weapons, but with tones.
Selene activated the Hymnal. Lira synchronized the tempo with her breath weaponry. Kaelen, half-conscious, simply stepped forward—mouth closed, throat open.
A single, guttural note escaped him.
Not screamed.
Not sung.
Not spoken.
Just released.
It was the sound of a grave being dug by something still alive inside it.
The Harmonic Severant burst apart mid-air. Flesh bloomed backward. Wings unfurled, then calcified, then crumbled. The others scattered.
Marik ran to Kaelen. "What was that?"
Kaelen blinked.
"A Psalm without a throat."
That night, Kaelen dreamt of the Womb.
Not a real place.
An idea. A memory. The origin of breath.
He stood in a chamber of lungs.
Walls pulsed.
Ceilings inhaled.
The floor trembled with contractions.
In the center: a mouth with no body, suspended in air, speaking in endless rhythm. Each syllable summoned a universe. Each pause destroyed one.
He tried to speak back.
But he had no mouth.
He awoke screaming.
Only—he hadn't made a sound.
At dawn, Selene handed him a knife.
The blade was made of bone and silence.
"What's this?" he asked.
"To carve the next Psalm."
Kaelen frowned. "I thought Psalms were sung."
"Some must be written." She pointed to his chest. "Into you."
He looked at the blade.
He looked at the horizon.
Then he turned to the others.
"There will come a day," he said, "when breath will betray us. When our voices will no longer be ours. That's when we must become more than echoes. That's when we must become..."
He paused.
"Unsingable."