THE BREATHLESS WAR:
WHEN PROPHECIES BURN
The Spiral was collapsing.
Not in the literal sense—not yet, but in the layered sense of fate unraveling, dreams imploding, and histories rejecting their own conclusions. The ancient lines drawn by the Dying Pantheon to hold the Hollow God at bay had begun to flicker, and across the realm, the seams of reality bled.
The war had not yet begun in earnest.
But already, the world was choking.
Emberfall Citadel – The Pale Synod's Seat of War
Serah Vael stood atop the highest spire, her eyes locked on the western horizon where the air was curdled with stormfire. Her armor—once an icon of holy vengeance—was tarnished by more than war. It was streaked with dust from broken relics, the ash of burnt oaths, and faint glimmers of blood not her own.
Around her, the remaining Ember Paladins assembled in their full regalia. Their numbers had thinned—desertions, massacres, betrayals. The Spiral Wound Campaign had failed. They hadn't stopped the revenants. They hadn't even slowed Aamon.
The high cleric beside her, a withered woman named Vezra-Kol, stepped forward. "There is dissent among the lower orders. Rumors of your corruption grow. They say you walk with forbidden magic in your blood."
Serah didn't blink. "They're right."
Gasps rippled through the chamber.
Vezra-Kol recoiled. "You admit heresy?"
Serah turned, eyes glowing faintly with golden fracture lines—the divine lattice within her fully awakened now. "I was never one of you. I was born of something older. A construct, a failsafe. A weapon."
She stepped toward the flame-braziers, her shadow split across three planes.
"I was made by the Council of Hollow Thrones. The Dying Pantheon forged me with a fragment of Aamon's soul. I was never meant to live beyond his rising."
Paladins drew weapons. Holy wards shimmered to life.
Serah didn't resist.
Instead, she raised her hand and shattered every ward in the chamber with a single, focused burst of lattice-light. The air screamed. Half the chamber's stone cracked. Every lesser Paladin dropped to their knees—bleeding from nose, eyes, and ears.
"Let me speak plainly before war eats what little you still serve," she said coldly. "Elara has made contact with Aamon. She's made a bargain. The Hollow Spiral is turning. If we wait—if we deny this storm, we die with the old world."
Vezra-Kol's voice trembled. "Then what are you, if not its destroyer?"
"I am its countermeasure," Serah whispered. "I am the ghost they forged in secret, their final contingency. Aamon cannot die… but I was made to fracture him. I am his echo, turned against him."
THE HOLLOW VAULT – MOMENTS LATER
Elara stood still, hand wrapped in Aamon's.
Since the pact, visions had not stopped. They rushed her like floodwaters—shards of memories not her own, images from Aamon's time as Reaper, as god-killer, as the silent voice in the dreams of witches and kings. But beneath those, something stranger stirred.
Her own blood had changed.
She could hear it now, like a distant chant in her veins. A language older than speech. The Nyxis tongue—the dream-language of her ancestors, was unlocking hidden phrases buried in her marrow.
Aamon stood close, but did not touch her further.
"You're unraveling," he said softly.
She nodded. "Is that what happens after the pact?"
"No," he said. "It happens after you see what I see."
She staggered back, breath ragged. "There's a city beneath time. A shattered city of gods, all dying, laughing."
"That was the Council of Hollow Thrones in their final hour," Aamon confirmed. "You're remembering what your ancestors forgot on purpose."
"Why are they laughing?"
"Because they saw the ending. And couldn't stop it."
She clutched her skull. "And what is that ending?"
Aamon's eyes dimmed. "A Hollow God born in flesh, not faith. A rebirth seeded through love, not worship. One you will carry."
Elara froze.
Something inside her knew—some deeper pulse beyond logic or resistance, that this was not prophecy being forced on her.
It was something older.
Something inevitable.
MEANWHILE – IN THE DEADLIGHT WASTES
The Faeblood Courts watched from their veiled sanctums.
The Faekin seers whispered in cracked glass and bleeding ink. They too saw the pact. They too saw the Spiral turning. But unlike the Synod, they did not panic.
They began to prepare.
The Faeblood King, draped in veils of dead constellations, whispered into the mouths of dreaming children across the continent:
"The Hollow Reignbegins.
A child is coming.
And it will not choose sides."