The wind screamed across the shattered spires of the Southern Marches as the first light of dawn scattered gold and ash across the ruins. Auren stood still amid the wreckage—his cloak heavy with soot, his eyes locked on the distant horizon where the last screams of the Rift had finally gone quiet.
For now.
Behind him, the remnants of the expedition regrouped. Less than half had returned from the depths. Some bore new scars. Others… bore silence. Haunted silence. Lys hadn't spoken since they climbed out. Darien's Shard still flickered with unstable resonance. Even Caelen, ever stalwart, looked older—like a man who'd glimpsed something too vast to name.
But it was Auren who had changed most.
The Hollow Light still flickered beneath his skin. The whisper of the Shard—his Shard—was no longer a tug or a thread, but a steady hum. Not comforting. Not obedient. Alive.
He felt it when he moved. When he breathed. When he thought.
And sometimes, when he wasn't paying attention… it felt like it thought back.
The return to the surface hadn't been a triumph. There were no parades, no songs. Just the uneasy shuffle of boots and the weight of eyes that couldn't unsee what they had witnessed.
The Choir had been real.
Buried beneath centuries of silence, locked away by forgotten seals, its remnants had pulsed with voices not quite dead. The Shardbearers who had touched that place now carried something with them—fragments, echoes, maybe more.
And in Auren's case, a tether.
At night, he could still hear the Chorus.
Not music. Not voices.
Something stranger.
Back at the encampment, tents had been fortified, and Crown banners now flew beside the House standards. Reinforcements had arrived from the capital—Silvercloaks bearing the Crest of the Throne. Not protectors. Watchers.
The Crown was paying attention.
Their leader, Commander Vael, was cold-eyed and perfect in posture. He asked questions, but never twice. He observed. He lingered near Auren.
"You were at the epicenter?" Vael asked one evening, as the fire crackled low.
Auren nodded, unsure what to offer.
"And you survived."
"I wasn't alone."
"No. But only you glow like that now."
The words felt like an accusation.
Auren didn't respond.
Later that night, as frost crept along the canvas of his tent, Auren sat cross-legged, eyes shut. He reached inward.
Show me again.
The power responded. Images flickered across his mind's eye—runes etched in bone, a tower of voices spiraling into the dark, a figure cloaked in white with a shattered crown.
Then something new.
A heartbeat.
His own?
No. Too deep. Too vast.
The Choir is not gone, the Shard whispered.
It waits. It listens. It remembers.
And you… you sang with it.
He gasped, breath catching as reality returned. Outside, the wind had died.
And for a moment, the entire camp was silent.
Too silent.
He stood, stepped outside.
Across the tents, lights were flickering. Men stirred in their sleep, some screaming. Others convulsing—one guard retched black bile into the dirt.
A cold dread curled in Auren's spine.
The Rift hadn't been sealed.
It had spread.
By morning, seven were dead. Twelve more comatose.
The Crown blamed exposure. Madness. Contamination.
Lys pulled Auren aside.
"We touched something bigger than Shards," she whispered. "Something they buried long before the Houses even rose."
Auren looked at her. "The Choir?"
"No," she said, voice trembling. "A fragment of it."
He swallowed.
"What happens when it awakens fully?"
She didn't answer.
But in her eyes, he saw the truth.
That evening, Auren stood before what remained of the shattered Choir Gate—now sealed behind layers of warding stone and Crown sigils.
He raised his hand.
The glyphs pulsed faintly in response to his presence.
A part of him wanted to run.
But another part—stronger now—stepped closer.
Because whatever had begun in the depths was not over.
And for the first time in his life, he wasn't just a boy struggling to belong.
He was the key to something ancient.
And the Choir?
The Choir wasn't done singing.