The wind howled across the ridges of the Bleak Spine mountains, shrieking through the skeletons of trees like ghosts still trapped in their final screams. Snow clung to everything—graves, weapons, and the weary boots of a broken band of rebels making their way to the edge of a forgotten world.
Liora led the way.
Her cloak was soaked through, its hem blackened from the burnt remains of their last camp. She hadn't spoken much since Eliane's death. When she did, it was to give orders, sharp and final. Grief had been buried beneath focus. But something in her posture—too rigid, too quiet—betrayed the storm behind her eyes.
Behind her trudged Dareth, silent but steady. Calen, his usual sarcastic energy dulled by the cold and the lingering tension in the air. And Tessa—the healer who had once feared her own gifts—now walked like someone who had witnessed too much to be afraid of anything anymore.
"We should reach the tomb before dusk," Liora said without looking back.
"You're sure this is where the Bone Choir will meet us?" Dareth asked.
"Yes. The soul fragment… showed me."
He didn't question her. Not anymore.
They crested the hill—and there it was.
A ruin buried half in ice, half in legend: the Mausoleum of the Last Accord. Carvings of anguished faces curled along the frozen walls, mouths open in eternal scream. And standing like shadows at its entrance—robed figures. Motionless. Watching.
"The Bone Choir," Liora whispered.
Inside the mausoleum, torchlight flickered against jagged stone and shattered sarcophagi. The Choir moved in unison, their hoods hiding faces Liora wasn't sure she wanted to see.
They encircled her.
"You carry him," one of them rasped. "The first of your kind to walk beyond the Gate and return unshattered."
"I carry myself," she said evenly.
The hooded one tilted their head.
"Even now, the echo of Eliane's death clings to you. You let it burn a path into your soul. Do you know what that makes you?"
"Stronger."
"Dangerous."
They parted, revealing a circular basin carved into the stone—filled not with water, but with powdered bone and runes that pulsed with faint, red light.
"If you wish to ascend into the next Veil-tier, you must survive The Chorus."
Liora stepped forward. Dareth moved to follow.
"Alone," one of the Choir hissed.
She didn't hesitate.
The basin welcomed her like an open grave. As her feet touched the powdered bone, the runes flared, and the chamber dimmed.
And then… the voices began.
Thousands of voices. Screaming. Weeping. Whispering secrets no living soul should ever hear. Liora fell to her knees, hands pressed to her ears, blood leaking from her nose.
"You are not strong enough," one voice said.
"You are not worthy," said another.
But through the chorus, a whisper rang out clearer than the rest.
"Remember me."
Eliane.
Liora's eyes snapped open, glowing violet and veined with black energy. She stood—slowly, defiantly. Her soul pulled tight, her pain forming shape.
"I am grief," she growled. "I am the weight of every life I couldn't save. And I will not be silenced."
The voices shifted—screams becoming song.
The stone basin cracked beneath her feet.
When the light cleared, she stood alone.
Her eyes no longer violet.
They burned with spectral gold.
Outside, the Choir watched in silence as Liora emerged.
Power rolled off her in waves. Snow melted in a circle around her. Her breath came slow, controlled.
Tessa blinked. "Your hair…"
Liora looked down—strands of it had turned white at the ends, as though kissed by the Void itself.
"She survived it," one of the Choir whispered, awed.
"No," Dareth corrected. "She owned it."
That night, as the camp reformed around the mausoleum, Liora stood at the edge of the mountain, staring into the vast stretch of white and shadow below. Dareth joined her.
"What happens now?"
"Now we find Black Hollow," she said. "And we find out if my brother's truly dead… or if he's been part of this nightmare all along."
Dareth nodded. "And the war?"
"We don't wait for it anymore. We bring it to them."
Elsewhere, in the depths of the White Circle's cathedral of bone, Mavrek stood before a war table of living flesh, eyes closed, fingers stained with the blood of prophecy.
Beside him stood a new general—a woman with eyes like wet obsidian and scars shaped like runes across her face.
"They awaken too quickly," she warned. "You were supposed to have more time."
Mavrek smirked. "Time is an illusion."
He held up a vial—Eliane's ashes, enchanted and still warm.
"Liora is not the only one who can raise the dead."