The Wound in the World
News of the Black Bastion's fall spread like wildfire. Across the fractured kingdoms and forsaken lands, hope stirred in the hearts of the oppressed. Bonfires were lit in secret caves and ruined cities—symbols of a rebellion reignited.
But hope was not without cost.
Beneath the shattered ground of the Black Bastion, something ancient stirred.
A crack in the fabric of the world—a wound left behind by the abyss. As Valeria stood on the broken ramparts, she felt it pulsing beneath her feet.
"Something's wrong," she whispered.
The Stormborn Prince approached. "We've won. What could possibly be wrong?"
Valeria's eyes narrowed. "This fortress was a seal."
"A seal?"
She turned to him slowly. "Kaelen didn't just occupy the Black Bastion. He was guarding it."
Before the Prince could respond, a chilling wind blew from the depths.
And then, they heard it—
A whisper, distant and ancient, echoing from the heart of the earth.
> "One has broken the silence. Another will answer."
Kaelen's Wrath
In the Abyssal Throne, Kaelen stood in silence, his fingers clenched on the armrest of his throne.
He had underestimated her.
Valeria.
Not only had she survived, she had become something that even the abyss could not corrupt.
"She has awakened it," the Seer rasped, appearing behind him like smoke.
Kaelen's gaze remained fixed on the void before him. "I know."
The Seer hesitated. "Shall I prepare the rites?"
Kaelen shook his head. "No. She wants me to overreach."
He turned his gaze to the darkness swirling around him. "But let her feel the weight of true despair. Release the Pale Choir."
The Seer stiffened. "The Choir has not sung in centuries…"
"They will now."
Kaelen's smile was cruel.
"Let them drown the world in madness."
Voices in the Fire
Back at the Bastion, Valeria retreated into the ancient catacombs with the Prince and a small team of trusted warriors. They descended into the depths, led by the hum of a forgotten power.
They found a door—massive, carved with symbols no living scholar could decipher.
The stone was warm, pulsing faintly. As Valeria approached, the symbols glowed.
"It's reacting to you," the Prince said, uneasy.
Valeria nodded. "This was never about just the Bastion. This is a key."
She placed her hand against the door.
It opened.
Inside was not a chamber, but a void—a swirling maelstrom of fractured space, like the world had been torn and stitched by something not meant to exist.
And at the center floated a crystal—small, black as midnight, surrounded by floating runes and coiled with chains of starlight.
As Valeria stepped forward, the crystal whispered:
> "Child of light and shadow… we have waited long for you…"
Then came another voice—familiar, cold, and distant.
Kaelen.
> "So, you've found it. The First Memory. Touch it, Valeria… and become what you fear most."
She hesitated.
Then, she reached out.
Her fingers brushed the crystal—
And the world around her shattered.
---
The First Memory
Fractured Time
When Valeria touched the crystal, reality fractured.
Time folded inward. Space unraveled like threads in a tapestry.
One moment she stood in the catacombs beneath the Black Bastion—
The next, she was drifting through a sea of memory.
Not her own.
Thousands of voices echoed in the dark. Countless lives. Countless deaths. She was pulled deeper, through moments lost to time—through pain, fire, betrayal, and hope.
Then—stillness.
She stood upon a shattered plain beneath a black sun, its light cold and lifeless.
And before her… stood a woman.
Draped in white robes that flickered like flame, the woman's face was hidden beneath a veil of stars. Her presence was ancient, cosmic, and familiar.
> "You are the first in an age," the woman said softly. "The first to awaken the memory of what was lost."
Valeria struggled to speak. "Who are you?"
The woman turned, her gaze piercing through dimensions. "I am the last Luminary. The final echo of a forgotten order that once held the abyss at bay."
She raised a hand, and the black sun above dimmed.
> "The world was broken not by darkness alone… but by betrayal."
Images swirled around them—of gods and monsters, of kingdoms rising and crumbling in fire. Valeria saw herself reflected in every era, in every war.
> "You are not the first Valeria," the woman whispered. "You are her reincarnation. The one who sealed the Abyss... and perished for it."
Valeria's breath caught.
"This power… it isn't just mine?"
"No," the Luminary said. "It belongs to all who carried your soul before you. You are the vessel of the Forgotten Flame."
Valeria looked at her hands, now glowing faintly with that same inner fire.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked.
The Luminary turned away. "Remember. Rise. And burn the corruption out of the world."
"But beware… Kaelen knows now. He will stop at nothing to break you."
The sun above them cracked. The vision collapsed. The voices screamed.
And Valeria fell—
—back into her body.
Return from the Memory
The warriors around her stepped back as she awoke with a gasp, glowing embers flaring from her skin. The Prince was at her side in a heartbeat.
"Valeria!"
She staggered, but caught herself.
"I saw it," she said. "I saw… everything."
The ground beneath them rumbled. The crystal, now dim, crumbled into dust.
The Prince looked around. "What did you awaken?"
Valeria's eyes were hard.
"Not what. Who."
She stepped forward, her aura radiating stronger than ever.
"I was never meant to fight the abyss with borrowed power," she said. "I was born to end it."
She turned toward the others.
"Gather the army. We march at dawn."
The Prince frowned. "To where?"
Valeria looked toward the distant mountains where the abyssal sky bled red.
"To the place where the world broke," she said.
"To the Hollow Star."
---
The Pale Choir Sings
The Silence Before the Song
Far from the Black Bastion, in a land long swallowed by twilight, a hollow wind crept across the plains of Tir'Vareth—a kingdom now reduced to whispers and bone. The skies above churned, not with clouds, but with thin tendrils of black smoke that moved like conscious things.
A single toll echoed.
Then another.
Then… silence.
In that silence, they awoke.
The Pale Choir.
Once priests. Once kings. Once innocents.
Now, twisted into beings of sorrow and scream—white-skinned, hollow-eyed, mouths sewn shut by strands of void-silver. Their flesh pulsed with the rhythm of a song not yet sung. Their existence was pain, but their purpose was clear:
To break the minds of the living.
To sing madness into the world.
At the center of the ruined kingdom stood their conductor—Virell, the Wailing Voice. A creature cloaked in robes of drifting ash, his face a mirror cracked a thousand times, showing a different dying soul in each shard.
He raised his staff of silence.
And the Pale Choir sang.
No words. No melody. Just a terrible harmony of despair that rippled through the land. Trees withered. Rivers curdled. Birds fell mid-flight.
And across the land, those who heard the Choir's dirge… began to forget themselves.
Their names.
Their loved ones.
Their own thoughts.
Madness, gentle and absolute, spread like fire under their song.
Valeria's March
Valeria felt it before they heard it.
Riding through the highland passes with her gathered force—mercenaries, rebels, loyal remnants of fallen kingdoms—she stopped midstride, her horse uneasy beneath her.
"The air changed," she said softly.
The Stormborn Prince rode up beside her. "The men are uneasy. The scouts returned with stories—villages emptied overnight. No sign of struggle. Just… gone."
Valeria closed her eyes. The fire within her flickered against the distant echo of the Pale Choir's influence.
"They're not dead," she said. "Not yet."
"Then where are they?"
She turned her head toward the west, where the sky shimmered with an unnatural stillness.
"They've been… unwritten."
The Prince's grip tightened on his sword. "Kaelen's doing?"
Valeria nodded grimly. "He's unleashing everything now. If we wait, there won't be a world left to save."
Then from the canyon below, a horn blew—long and desperate.
The Choir had found them.
The Battle Without Sound
They came like a mist—slow, deliberate, emotionless. Hundreds of them, moving in near silence but for the low thrum of their mind-breaking harmony.
Men screamed and fell before a blade was drawn, some clawing at their faces, others collapsing with tears and laughter.
But Valeria strode forward.
She drew her sword, Verdanthis, the blade now humming with the awakened memory of the Flame.
She whispered to her soldiers:
> "Cover your ears. Don't listen. Let me listen for you."
And then she stepped into the storm of song.
The Pale Choir closed around her, singing louder, wrapping her mind in visions of despair—visions of her mother's death, of her father's betrayal, of her own heart torn open by Kaelen's lies.
But the Flame within burned brighter.
> "I am not just Valeria."
She lifted her sword.
> "I am every life the abyss tried to silence."
And she sang back.
A new song. One of defiance. Of light. Of memory reclaimed.
The two harmonies clashed—hers golden and alive, theirs cold and dead.
And as they collided, one by one, the Pale Choir began to burn.
Silent fire engulfed them. Their sewn mouths burst open in screams not of madness—but of freedom.
She was not merely fighting the enemy.
She was unbinding them.
The Aftermath
When the smoke cleared, the Choir was gone—some freed, others fallen. The soldiers watched Valeria in awe, her form still glowing with traces of that terrible, beautiful power.
The Stormborn Prince approached, voice low. "You… silenced them."
"No," she said, gazing into the sky. "I answered them."
He hesitated. "How many more of these horrors does Kaelen have?"
Valeria turned, her eyes cold and determined. "Enough to drown the world."
She mounted her horse.
"Let's not give him the time to."
---
End of Chapter 29.