Chapter 9: Chapter 8-The God's Silent Hand

She could feel the weight of her limbs, the tightness in her chest, the slow rhythm of breath—but none of it obeyed her. Her body rose before dawn, moved with purpose, stretched, and trained. Silent like the others, fluid and sharp. But she, the girl inside the skin, merely watched. Somewhere deep beneath the ribs and muscle and skin, Shade still existed—a flicker behind her eyes, a breath behind every step. But the edges of her soul felt eroded. Smoothed over by repetition and darkness and the hands that carved her.

Today, her fingers flicked into a weapon stance before she thought of it.

Her foot twisted into a pivot before she noticed the ground.

Her lips did not part. Not for speech or breath, and not for her.

I am here.

But I do not move.

I am a blade held by another hand.

She tried to scream once. A year ago? A month? Time dripped strangely in the Hollow. Now she didn’t waste energy fighting the stillness. She simply watched. The sparring floor shimmered faintly with dama runes, activated and active. Other Weapons moved like clockwork — Kaelith with her brutal grace, Ymir like a storm’s patience, Cael loose and vicious like a cornered snake. She remembered training with them. At least, she thought she did. Her body dodged a sweeping strike, retaliated with a conjured dagger—void-slick and cruel. It was embedded in the shoulder of a Tool, sending them sprawling. The body did not pause.

Do you feel anything, anymore? she wondered.

Did I ever?

Somewhere, high above the black-tiled chamber, a bell rang once, low and deep.

The others froze. Turned toward the veiled one standing at the entrance. A Hound, the enforcers of Hollow Vows. The same one who never spoke to her but always looked through her. Behind the veil, there might have been eyes. There might have been sorrow. But all she heard was the rasp of authority:

“Weapons. Assemble. You are summoned.”

And without a whisper, her body turned. She walked briskly and obeyed. Inside her chest, Shade remained silent. But thethought-thet—the thought-that-the quiet, living thought—was still hers.

One day, I will not.

One day, I will not obey.

And then her feet carried her somewhere new. Not the sparring pits. Not the dormitories or the bath halls of silence. Not the darkened tunnels that whispered when no one spoke. A new place she had not been to before, the mission chamber. She had heard it whispered between training bouts as a Tool. A vaulted room with walls of carved damastyl and blackened runes. The place where orders were given not to children but to weapons—the named, the proven, the sharpened. And now she walked through its obsidian arch, as a Weapon herself. But it wasn’t her, not really. Her eyes moved, but she wasn’t seeing. Her feet stepped, but she wasn’t walking. It felt like watching someone else’s memory play through a broken mirror— The world bent at the edges. Her senses filtered. A breath away, a heartbeat behind.

I am here… but I am not.

A reflection trapped in motion.

Inside, the air crackled with static dama — not wild, but leashed. Runic conduits hummed faintly beneath the floor. The mission boards were not paper, but black crystal tablets pulsing with encoded intent. Names, coordinates, enemy designations. Squad rotations. Kill orders. Others filed in—Kaelith first, exuding disdain for the rest. Ymir, stone-faced. Serin, half-smiling like he was waiting for the floor to vanish beneath them. Shade’s body stood in formation. Her mind… hovered. She had crossed a threshold she had once dreamed of. And now that she stood beyond it, she felt less real than ever before.

The mission orders dissolved into their minds—black crystal tablets pulsing as silent directives etched themselves into memory. Coordinates. Threat assessments. Elimination parameters. No discussion. No refusal. Then came the tray. A tall, faceless attendant entered the chamber bearing a bone-white platter. Upon it, twelve vials shimmered faintly, viscous and grey as congealed smoke. The Obedience Draught. Not a spell. Not a choice. A poison crafted to bind loyalty, suppress divergence, and harmonize the implanted crystal’s resonance. It forced silence upon the soul. Shade moved first. No one had been called. But her body stepped forward, lifted a vial with fluid grace, and drank it down without pause. Not a tremor, nor a blink. Just obedience made flesh. The others hesitated. Serin’s jaw tightened. Ymir narrowed his eyes. Kaelith scoffed and followed next, slamming the vial down after. The Tools trickled forward, uncertain, dreading, two nearly refusing. One did. A whisper of movement. A blur of red steel. And then there were eleven. As the last Tool drank, silence settled. Thicker than before. That’s when The One Beneath the Veil moved. No one had heard her step.

She was simply there, draped in shadowed cloth, wrapped in silence older than language. A Hound beyond doubt. She passed through the line like a phantom, trailing command and consequence in equal measure, until she stood before Shade. Close. Too close. Shade’s body remained still, eyes forward, posture perfect. But inside, —where thought curled like breath in winter, —something tensed. The Veiled One leaned near, her voice a hush so fine it might have been imagined.

“The third… must not be taken,” she said, just above breath.

“Not until you see from whence you came.”

And then she was gone, drifting to the side as though nothing had passed between them. The others didn’t notice. Or pretended not to. But inside, buried and silent, Shade screamed.

What does that mean?

Why now? Why me?

No answer. No movement. Only the weight of the Draught curling in her veins like ice. And somewhere above, far beyond the stone and blacksteel, the moons did not blink.

***

They traveled underground. Not through carved roads or enchanted lifts like in Faeyren or Containe—but through the ancient lava tunnels of the Velarûn, where the heat was not just felt but inhaled. The air shimmered with copper and ash. Walls pulsed with dormant dama veins, some still warm, glowing faintly like slumbering serpents. It was as though the tunnels themselves breathed with old anger. No one spoke. Even silence burned here. The light came not from torches but from bioluminescent lichen and the faint volcanic glow of veins deeper still. Shade’s body moved in step with the rest—measured, controlled, tireless. But her mind floated half above it all, absorbing texture, temperature, and pressure.

I never thought fire could be quiet.

They passed Velarûn caravans, eyes like embers peeking from under hoods. Traders. Hunters. Silent acknowledgments. The Hollow Vows operatives were in disguise, good enough to fool most. When they emerged, it was into the shadow of Galemorn, the fortress-city built into the understructure of a fallen southern range. Stone and steel kissed by ancient magma. Red banners barely moved in the ever-thick air. Beneath it, hidden by charm and ritual and sheer obscurity, lay one of the Hollow Vows’ Sanctums—a place built into the Hollowzone. Each operative was to descend alone. One of the Tools went first. Then one of the Weapons. Then… her. Her body entered the black-mawed stairway, wrapped in runes, heat, and stone. The air was thicker here. The pressure… off. At the bottom stood the two Hounds. One was quiet, distant, watchful—the One Beneath the Veil. The other was taller, broad-shouldered, with eyes like burnt iron and a sneer that had never left his face. His vambrace glowed with scorched dama — carved with sigils that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He stepped toward her. Sneering.

“She doesn’t talk, huh?”

“Not even a 'yes, sir'?”

Shade said nothing. Her hands were relaxed. Her posture, perfect. Her silence, absolute. He didn’t like that. With a sudden movement, he backhanded her across the face. The crack echoed through the stone. She staggered slightly. Not a word. Not a sound. She stood back up.

He laughed low. “Oh, she’s Hollow alright.”

He struck her again, harder. Enough to send her stumbling to her knee. Blood touched her lip. Still, she did not speak. Did not glare. Did not move. The Veiled One spoke at last, from the shadows behind him.

“Enough.”

Her voice was not loud. It didn’t need to be.

“She’ll need her breath when it comes to him.”

The other Hound clicked his tongue, stepping back. But the sneer remained.

“Just making sure she’s ready.”

Shade stood. Wiped her lip. No thought passed to vengeance or hate.

She simply rejoined the others. Inside, though—

I remember the fire.

I remember how it moves. How it waits. Just as I’ll remember his face.

And just then, in the hollow of her mind, a single whisper:

“Three flames. One silence. Choose which to keep.”

But Shade did not know what that meant. Not yet.

***

They did not travel in formation. The Hollow Vows rarely moved as one, only when orders bound them together like links in a chain. Otherwise, they were scattered like shadows, taking separate paths to a common place. Shade walked alone. The last of the operatives to leave Galemorn’s understructure, her boots pressed against a half-forgotten path carved through ash-choked scrub and jagged stone. Ruins loomed like teeth, half-swallowed by the earth. Trees grew here, but wrong limbs curved toward the ground, bark flaking like molted skin, leaves humming ever so faintly with ambient dama. The Hollowzone’s edge was near. The sky had gone slate-grey, even in full day.

The wind came in bursts, as if unsure of itself, and through it all… her body walked. No command. No order. Just movement. Like she was following something already decided. The ridge narrowed ahead—columns of basalt pushing up from beneath, creating a jagged corridor barely wide enough for one.

That was when she saw it. Perched atop a broken column, half camouflaged by stone and lichen, lay a creature the size of a horse. Its hide was stone-plated, textured like ancient armor. Massive claws rested across a ledge, tail curled around the pillar, eyes like burnished copper fixed on her. A rock lizard. Native to deeper Velarûn lands. Rarely surface-bound. Often peaceful, but unpredictable when startled. Her body did not pause, nor did it flinch. It did not reach for weapons or shadow. The creature stared a her. Unmoving. And then, so subtly, it might have been the wind. It nodded. A slow, deliberate dip of its heavy head. Not a warning. Not a threat, but something else, a show of respect. Shade, within her body, blinked behind her eyes.

Why?

But her body walked on. Didn’t look back. Didn’t react. She felt her mouth was still. Her arms were calm. Her steps were measured.

I would have stopped, she thought.

I would have stared longer. Wondered what it meant.

But I am not the one walking.

Far behind her, the rock lizard watched until she vanished behind stone and dark. The ground changed. Not suddenly, but like a fever rising. Slowly, subtly. Heat that lingered too long. Air that didn’t move. Colors that shifted when you looked away. She had entered the Hollowzone. It was land that did not belong to itself anymore. A place that had tasted gods and screamed for a thousand years. Miasma hung low in the air like a bruise — visible, undulating, sticky with magic that had never been human. The terrain melted logic. Trees grew inward. Roots pulsed above the soil like veins. Stones floated a few inches off the ground and rotated gently in defiance of gravity’s memory. Even time felt folded here, or perhaps lazy. The sun was still somewhere overhead, but no light pierced the haze. Her body walked on, unhindered.

Then came the creatures. The first was a thing that had once been a boar, maybe. Its legs were fused into a single slithering appendage. Its face stretched too far, too long. Eyes melted into the sides of its skull. It gurgled in its chest as it crawled up a hill of blood-colored moss and then froze as her body passed. Its head tilted, and its breath caught. It just watched her. Not with hunger. Not with rage. But with a quietness that hurt. Further ahead, she passed a pack of miasma-touched wolves—joints bending the wrong way, fur replaced with brittle crystal, teeth that clicked like metal. They circled a carcass. But when she stepped into their scent range, they stopped feeding. They turned. All of them, and watched. One even lowered its head. Not a whimper. Not a snarl. Then they let her walk past.

I should be dead, Shade thought.

I should be bones by now.

But her body did not fear the Hollowzone. And so the Hollowzone, somehow, did not fear her. The landscape dipped again, into a shallow ravine where the wind died completely. Bones littered the ground in neat, unnerving spirals. Not scavenged. Arranged. Carcasses reduced to brittle patterns, as if some mind had tried to remember ritual through decay. That’s when the shadow passed over her. Her body did not flinch. Wings beat once, thunderous and slow. Something large descended from the heights above, circling once before perching on a broken rise of stone and bone. A wyvern, if it could still be called that. Its wings were frayed with crystal. A third eye had opened on its brow, dripping with green fire. Its tail forked into two blades of bone. The miasma thickened around it like a breath held too long. It stood atop a nest of twisted wood and burnt earth, guarding something unseen. Then it saw her. Its head turned. The third eye focused. Then the other two followed. For one breathless moment, it flexed its wings—muscles tightening, talons scraping the stone— and then it bowed its head. Just slightly. No sound. No warning. No strike. Her body walked beneath the creature's gaze without turning. It did not move again, simply watched her pass, as though witnessing something it had seen once, long ago. In another age. Before the gods fell.

Why?

Why do they look at me like that?

But her lips did not move. Her eyes did not turn. And the body kept walking. The sanctuary lay ahead. Half-buried in the bones of an ancient cathedral, it loomed like a wound in the landscape, spiraling down into the earth beneath a husk of stone once holy. Only faint ward-lights marked the entrance now, pale as drowned stars. But just before she stepped into its shadow, the world paused. Not her body nor her steps. But everything else. The wind forgot to move. The creatures at a distance held their breath. The very ground seemed to wait. In that impossible stillness, from somewhere not above, not around—but inside the hollow curve of her soul—a voice slid like silk through silence. Not words. Intention. And yet she heard it. Felt it.

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“They will not hurt those held dear.”

She didn’t know who “they” were.

Didn’t know who “dear” was supposed to be.

But something inside her twisted. Tightened. A memory not remembered. A promise not made. A danger not yet real. And then, just as it came, the whisper was gone. The miasma thickened behind her. The sanctuary waited ahead. Her body stepped forward. But within her, something blinked awake.

***

The doorway yawned open before her—an ancient fracture in the stone, half-swallowed by creeping roots and scorched ivy. Dama runes flickered around the frame like static flame, marking this place as not just old but watched. Her body passed through the threshold without pause. Inside was a chamber of waiting. Narrow, circular, the walls scorched smooth from old ritual fire. There were no chairs. No light. Only a central seal on the floor, cracked and long-silenced. The Hounds were already there. The Veiled One stood in shadow, back straight, arms folded beneath her long, draping cloak. Silent. Still. The other—the arrogant one—paced slowly along the chamber wall, boots clicking with intent. His eyes burned like coal under pressure. He looked at her. And smirked.

“Still mute, shadow?”

She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Her body stood perfectly still.

“Think being Hollow makes you special?” he sneered, voice almost soft. “Makes you invincible?”

He moved faster than a thought. A hard blow again—but this time, not to the face. A fist to the stomach, full-force, enhanced by dama. She folded slightly from the impact, her boots sliding on the stone. A wet breath slipped past her lips. But she did not fall. She stood upright again, slowly, perfectly balanced. The chamber pulsed once, like a held breath. And then the Veiled One spoke. Her voice wasn’t loud. But the walls shook.

“Enough.”

It wasn’t a command. It was a sentence. The kind handed down from only the highest-ranked Hollow Operatives. Dust fell from the ceiling. The runes around the seal flared, briefly, reacting not to power, but to presence. Even the other Hound froze. Then he smiled.

“So you do care,” he said with a chuckle.

“I wondered if the shadows ever left room for anything else.”

The Veiled One said nothing further. But her silence cracked the room in half. The arrogant one stepped back, slowly, still smiling but no longer mocking. More... curious. Shade's body returned to stillness. But inside—

Did she protect me?

She didn’t know. Maybe it was pity on her. Maybe it was something worse. The others began to arrive—Tools, Weapons. All silent, all bearing the Draught’s lethargy. None of them spoke to her. But all of them looked. They descended in silence. The gathering room gave way to a spiraling tunnel—once a sanctum of forgotten purpose, now reappropriated by the Hollow Vows. Their boots echoed off old stone, the runes along the walls long burned to ash. The smell of old smoke clung to everything like memory.

They came to the first door. Massive, circular, carved with a twelve-spoked pattern—each spoke holding a socket. Old gears, long rusted, jutted from the wall in intricate confusion. At its center, a polished obsidian orb hovered a few inches off the ground, spinning slowly, as if time itself still turned here. A Weapon stepped forward and touched the orb. It shifted slightly, then held. A puzzle. Geometric. Mechanical. The wrong move might bind them in place—or worse. It took time. Tools guessed. A Weapon tried to align symbols. Even the arrogant Hound offered advice, which was ignored. Eventually, Ymir adjusted the pattern, using a piece of logic only a Velarûn might know: the shape of lunar paths as seen from a high point. With a final click, the door groaned open, dust spilling outward like breath held too long. The second door waited not far beyond. Smaller. Smoother. No locks. No hinges. No orb. Just an ancient slab of dark stone, etched in an old, spiraling script—like vines or smoke. A language lost to the world. Most stared at it blankly. Shade’s body stepped forward. And read it.

“Let the loyal one prove their devotion.

Let the silent one open the gate.”

And below that, another line—one only she could read, for it was written in her very being, a boon from the many carvings she wished she never had.

“Only blood opens what blood sealed.”

Her hand moved before she could stop it. A Tool stood beside her—a quiet boy, no older than fifteen. One of the newer ones. She remembered… he had once spoken kindly to her. Back when she was allowed to feel kindness. She drove the dagger into his chest without a word. Gasps echoed. One of the other Tools lunged before a Weapon stopped him. The Hounds did nothing. The stone drank his blood as it pooled forward. Lines in the rock pulsed, absorbed, shimmered. The door opened. Her body stepped through. Inside her mind, Shade whispered:

He was a comrade.

I knew his voice. I knew his name.

And still… I moved.

Still… I killed.

But her feet did not stop. Her breath did not break. Her heart, still beating, ached. The stone door groaned open on blood-slick hinges, the Tool’s body left behind like a discarded breath. Beyond lay a descending corridor. Carved stone gave way to something older—cavernous walls worn smooth by time and miasma, veins of pale dama pulsing faintly along the edges like veins beneath skin. And then the bodies began. They were Hollow Vows Operatives. Tools. Weapons. Two were barely recognizable through the miasma-warping that had bloated their corpses. Uniforms stained, bones shattered, faces twisted in expressions that begged for meaning. No alarms had sounded. No magical flares. No call for reinforcement. They had simply been… erased. One had his blade, pried from his dismembered fingers, buried deep in his throat. Another’s spine had been scorched with branded runes—traitor marks, used only in Hollow Vow punishment rites. Their deaths had been brutal. Personal. Serin muttered a curse under his breath. Even Kaelith faltered in her stride, but the Hounds said nothing. They walked until the corridor yawned open—into a stone basin carved directly into the rock, lit by the ambient gloom of the Hollowzone’s sky bleeding through a shattered ceiling above. The defectors waited beyond that final barrier. And just before they crossed the threshold, the arrogant Hound turned to Shade. Grinning.

“This one’s yours.”

Her body didn’t respond.

“Orders are orders,” he added with a shrug.

“You get the Hound. A real one. We’ll see if that crystal in you’s worth the damage it cost.”

No argument was offered. No strategy given. The Veiled One turned her back. The rest of the squad moved to the flank. Shade’s body stepped forward. Inside her skull, she screamed.

Let me out. Let me fight him.

Not like this. Not like a weapon thrown from a hand I can’t see.

But her feet moved. Her breath remained steady. Her eyes locked on the roiling darkness ahead, where a figure stood tall among the corpses, draped in broken sigils and pride turned venom. The rogue Hound. Once bound to the Hollow Vows.

Now traitor, killer, threat. And she—Shade—was the blade meant to silence him. But not by choice. Not anymore. The moment the squad breached the final passage, the air changed. The miasma swirled low and fast, whispering in dead languages. The fractured ceiling above revealed a sliver of the Hollowzone sky—amber-tinted, bleeding clouds casting a sickly light over the battlefield. And there they stood. The defectors. A group of nine—one Hound, three Weapons, five Tools. Their armor was scorched and twisted, some of it replaced with patchworked crystal and bone. Their eyes glowed faintly—not with power, but with conviction. Madness wrapped in faith. One stepped forward—a gaunt woman whose uniform had been shredded into ceremonial tatters. Her voice echoed with something that wasn’t entirely her.

“You come with silence in your mouths and chains in your hearts…”

Another, a male Weapon missing half his jaw, bared bloody teeth, and laughed.

“They think the god won’t wake. They think we don’t know what walks in shadow.”

The Hound among them stepped forward. His black cloak had been slashed into ribbons, revealing carved runes in his flesh—not Hollow Vow sigils, but ancient spirals that pulsed with raw dama.

“Your masters sent you to clean the wound,” he snarled, “but the rot is theirs.”

His eyes locked briefly on Shade’s.

“And yet… she walks in silence.”

Another defector pointed a dagger toward her and whispered:

“The vessel stirs. The stars spoke it. The moon's cry for it.”

“You’re too late,” said the rogue Hound. “She’s already begun to awaken. You hollowed her—but what you buried will bloom.”

“We die gladly for her. For the waking god.”

“She’s not theirs,” hissed another.

That’s when the command dropped—no word spoken, just movement. Weapons were summoned in a moment. Void sang. Shade’s body surged forward, the battlefield ignited into chaos—metal against crystal, dama flares igniting the air, screams of combatants both corrupted and sane. The traitors fought like zealots, reckless and brutal. The Hollow Vows fought with methodical fury. But she had only one target. The rogue Hound turned toward her, grinning.

“They sent a statue to slay me?”

“Come then, statue. Let’s see if you can bleed.”

Her body moved, and the duel began. They collided with such a force that each strike jarred bone. Steel rang, shadows hissed, and dama cracked the air like thunder in a sealed tomb. The rogue Hound met Shade's advance not with hesitation, but anticipation. He had studied the Hollow’s movements. He knew the rhythm of obedience. Knew what she would do before she did. Her body was fast—unnaturally fast—but he was stronger, grounded like a mountain, and moved with the precision of one who had trained to break Vows. Her first strike was with dual daggers—silent, quick, meant to bleed him shallow and slow. He caught her wrist mid-slice, twisted until something in her elbow nearly popped, and kicked her square in the chest. She slid backward, boots scraping sparks from the stone. No pause. Her body conjured twin kama, spinning in a flurry meant to overwhelm, but he blocked low, stepped inside, and slammed a shoulder into her gut, knocking the breath from her lungs. One kama dropped. The other barely scraped his arm.

Why can’t I change pace?! Why can’t I break the pattern?!

Her hand moved before thought. She stepped back, summoned a shortbow mid-motion, and fired a shot to his throat. He deflected it with a twist of his blade, the arrow veering away like it struck stone. She darted left, summoned a scythe, arcing it upward.— He ducked beneath it and raked her across the shoulder with a short, curved blade—too shallow to kill, but deep enough to hinder.

That one will never stop bleeding.

That arm will be weak.

Her body bled, and her mind screamed. Still, it moved. Now came the greatsword, summoned with a hiss of void—the void blade streaked with matte trails of solidified dama. She launched forward, two-handed swing designed to cleave— He sidestepped, but this time, only barely. The edge kissed his armor, cut fabric, and some flesh. He grinned.

“There it is,” he murmured. “The god's little flare.”

Then he stabbed her through the hand. A dagger—curved, cruel, personal—straight through her palm. Her right hand. The one she favored. The greatsword fell with a loud clang beside her. She didn’t scream. She couldn’t. Her body absorbed the pain. Endured. Kept moving. She summoned dual shortswords—forced to fight with a half-dead grip and a wounded leg, her left thigh already torn from a previous clash where his blade caught her mid-leap. Blood soaked her leg, streaked down her arm, and dripped from the impaled hand. Still, she fought. Still, he countered. Every move was measured, predicted, stifled. Every weapon she called, he knew how to crush. It wasn’t just combat. It was domination. And deep within her mind, behind the layers of obedience, behind the silence, Shade cried out, not from the pain. But from the truth:

I cannot win. Not like this.

This is not my fight.

This is theirs.

Blood stained the floor in dark crescents. Her wounds bled freely—right shoulder useless, left thigh torn deep, and the dagger still buried through her palm. Still, her body moved. Worn now. Slower. Reacting, not predicting. The rogue Hound circled her, breathing evenly, grinning like a priest at the altar of sacrifice.

“She can’t win,” he said. Not to her. Not to anyone. Just… to the world.

“She’s not in there. Just a doll dressed in blood.”

And then—

A voice.

It wasn’t her own. Not a command, order, or control.

It came from deeper. Older. Worn like sea stone and memory.

An echo.

“Now.”

“The right side. He drops his left. Again.”

Her body twitched, but it wasn’t the rote reflex of a Weapon. It was something sharp. Something intentional and driven by instinct. She launched forward—not fast, but with wrong rhythm, broken timing. He stepped to intercept, —predicting her movement— And missed. Because her intention changed mid-motion. He brought up his blade—too late. And her hand opened. The summon circle flared black beneath her. From nothing, from shadow, from the hushed breath of the impossible, it came— Tenebrae. The greatsword of pure void. The weapon forged of dama itself—not hardened, but born. It did not clang. It did not gleam. It breathed.

The hilt was smooth, black, velvet-dark, and cold to the soul. A purple gem pulsed in the pommel like a heartbeat.

And the blade…

The blade was darkness given shape. Not black, but hollow, as if the world behind it ceased to exist. A cut from it would erase, not wound. The Hound froze, eyes wide.

“Wait—”

She swung. Tenebrae sang once. Not loudly. But the sound was final. The Hound was cleaved clean through, from hip to shoulder. But there was no blood. No scream. His body stopped—hovering, unfallen. Then, like a whisper caught in reverse, he was pulled inward. Tenebrae absorbed him. Body. Soul. Crimes. Gone. The gem in the hilt flared violet—bright, hungry. Then dimmed. Her body dropped the blade. It didn’t fall. It vanished. The battlefield had become still. The traitors were dead or dying already. The Hollow Vows were silent, with the loss of three Tools, the group was smaller. And she stood in blood not her own, gaze forward, mind buried. Inside her, something said:

You are not free yet.

But something else, someone else, had just taken notice. The battle was over. The miasma shifted, curling upward like steam from the mouths of the slain. The Hollowzone had quieted, as if sated. And through it all, Shade remained upright. Her right shoulder burned. Her left thigh throbbed. Blood soaked her leg and arm. Her right hand still trembled from the dagger that had gone clean through. But her body moved. Not with urgency. Not with care. Just… movement. Like a routine she had practiced a thousand times. She knelt by one of the fallen Tools, tore a strip of cloth from his uniform, and wrapped it around her shoulder in a tight binding. A second strip went around her thigh. A third, more carefully, was knotted over her impaled hand. No flinch. No wince. Just precision. Her gaze didn’t shift. Her steps were steady. She didn’t falter. She didn’t fall. She turned and began walking. Back through the corrupted hall. Back past the bloodstained door she had opened with murder. Back toward Containe. As though it were any other day. Behind her, the three surviving Weapons lingered. Kaelith, whose armor had been cracked down one side, watched her with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow. He wiped blood from his face, but never looked away.

“Did you see what that blade did?” he muttered.

“It didn’t kill him. It erased him.”

Ymir, silent for once, adjusted the vambrace on his forearm. His crimson eyes followed Shade’s retreating form—not with fear, but something close to recognition. Maybe respect. Maybe dread.

“She’s bleeding out,” Serin muttered.

But she wasn’t.

Serin, the youngest of them, sat on a broken slab, catching his breath. He looked at the smear of darkness on the stone where the rogue Hound had vanished.

“That wasn’t dama,” he whispered.

“I’ve seen a dama weapon break. Burn. Shatter.

That… that was something else.”

Kaelith crossed his arms.

“And she didn’t even speak.”

Ymir finally spoke, his voice low and toneless:

“Weapons don’t need words.”

By the time they stepped through the final door, the corpses were already cooling. Shade was gone. She had left alone, like a golem recalled to its maker. The others would report. The mission would be logged. The kill would be confirmed. But none of them would forget the sound of that blade. And none of them—not even the Hounds—could explain what happened when the void took the Hound whole.