The Ashen Wastes stretched before them, endless and rippling like a sea frozen mid-breath. Beneath the gray sky, dunes of scorched earth shifted slowly, whispering in tongues no living being should understand.
Jack stepped lightly, every footfall sinking an inch too far—as if the sand wanted to swallow him whole. Behind him, Nyssa muttered wards under her breath. Marek carried a curved blade now, scavenged from one of the Hollowed. Kael kept checking the horizon. And Lola… she walked with her head tilted slightly, as if listening to something none of them could hear.
The silence wasn't natural.
It was composed.
"Something's humming," Lola murmured.
Jack paused. "What?"
"I don't mean a sound. It's like… a rhythm, under everything. The wind, the sand, even our breathing. It's being conducted."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "By who?"
She didn't answer. But her fingers tapped unconsciously against her leg—mimicking the beat she felt.
Marek grumbled, "I hate this place. Feels like walking inside a dead god's mouth."
"Don't say that," Nyssa hissed.
But she wasn't wrong.
The further they went, the less real things felt. Colors dulled. Sound thickened. Once, Jack saw a flock of birds overhead—only for their shadows to fly in a different direction entirely.
And beneath it all, the song persisted.
Low.
Endless.
Calling.
By nightfall, the Wastes changed again. The sand became darker. Colder. And just as they were making camp near the ruins of a half-sunken obelisk, Lola dropped to her knees.
"Stop."
Jack knelt beside her. "What is it?"
She clutched her temples. "It's louder here. The song—it's pulling now. Not just humming. Calling."
"To what?"
"To me."
Kael drew his sword, eyes scanning the dark. "Is it the Hollow King?"
"No," Lola said, voice strained. "It's older. Deeper. It's—"
And then, she collapsed.
Jack caught her before she hit the ground.
Her eyes rolled back. Her skin shimmered faintly, the runes from before reappearing along her neck.
But her mouth…
…her mouth began to sing.
No language. No words.
Just sound.
And it wasn't hers.
It was hers, from before—before Lola, before the Guardians, before even the Sundering.
The voice of the one who wrote fire into being.
The First Flame.
Jack's breath caught.
He looked to the others, but they were frozen—not in fear, but in awe.
Because around them, the sand was rising.
Not in waves.
In shapes.
Figures.
Dozens. Maybe hundreds. All made of dust and wind and memory.
All kneeling.
As the song passed from Lola's lips, the air grew warm—then hot—then molten with power that could not be named. Light without source danced through the storm, drawing lines into the dunes like veins. The earth cracked.
And from beneath—
A sound answered.
Not a song.
A note.
Sour.
Opposing.
Breaking.
The kneeling sand-figures collapsed, scattered by a gust not of wind—but of will.
Lola's eyes snapped open.
And someone else looked out from them.
"You shouldn't have come here," said the voice. Not hers. Not the Flame's.
Something else.
Something beneath even them.
Jack stood, swordless but not helpless. "Who are you?"
The thing in Lola's body looked up.
"You'll know me soon enough."
Then her body arched—lifted by invisible threads—and her mouth unhinged.
From her throat spilled a single phrase:
"The Threshold is awake."
And then—
Lola collapsed.
The warmth vanished.
The silence returned.
Jack rushed to her, catching her just before her head hit the earth again. Her breath was ragged, her eyes wild.
"I—I was gone," she whispered. "I was buried. I couldn't see. I couldn't think. Something… rose through me."
Kael knelt beside them. "We have to move. Whatever just happened—it echoed. That scream? Every twisted thing across this Wastes probably heard it."
Nyssa nodded grimly. "We need shelter. Now."
Jack looked out across the dunes—and saw something new.
Far ahead, buried beneath black glass sand, jutted the tip of a monolith. Carved in a language he didn't know—but somehow understood.
It pulsed with the same rhythm as the song Lola had sung.
He pointed. "There. We go there."
Marek grunted. "That's not shelter. That's a temple."
Jack shook his head. "Not a temple. A prison. For what sings beneath."
And as they gathered their gear and prepared to cross the last stretch of the Wastes, none of them noticed that behind them—
The sand had begun to breathe.