Elsewhere, in the Severed Chamber beneath the city, the old mirrors shattered.
One by one.
Seven shards each.
Each shard contained a version of her.
A path not taken.
A sin refused.
A love never born.
And one of them screamed.
It wasn't human.
It was pure.
And from that scream, the mirror's curse uncoiled.
The curse that bound the first angels into flesh.
The curse that Siranox had stolen to rewrite his fate.
It now belonged to her.
Ravenna was no longer a vessel.
She was the gate.
The song.
The blade.
And every god that had turned their face away from her war?
Now turned back.
Because the Garden no longer burned.
It called.
And the heavens listened.
The Garden shifted again.
Not with fire this time.
But with form.
The ground beneath Ravenna's feet rippled. The soil cracked open in lines too perfect to be natural, revealing a floor of black stone etched with spiraling runes. The wind stilled. Even the smoke seemed to pause mid-air.
The Forsaken stopped. So did the child.
Jace remained where he was, just beyond the edge of the Garden's new center. He didn't dare cross the runes. Not yet.
Ravenna knelt.
She touched the black stone.
And from her palm, blood flowed again. Not red. Something darker. Thicker. Like it remembered dying before.
It trickled into the runes and the stones reacted instantly, pulsing with dim, ancient light.
From the center, a single shape rose from the earth.
A slab.
Old.
Rounded at the edges. Carved with sigils Jace didn't recognize.
An altar.
Not the kind meant for offerings.
The kind meant for resurrection.
She placed the child upon it.
The child didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
But the ground did. It inhaled sharply. As if the Garden itself remembered the ritual.
Ravenna whispered something into the child's ear.
Then she cut her own hand again and let her blood fall onto its chest.
The wind screamed.
All around them, the black flowers bloomed again, but differently this time. Larger. Hungrier. With mouths instead of petals.
Kellin appeared beside Jace, ragged and limping, but alive.
He stared at the scene in silence.
What is she doing?
She's crowning it. Giving it a name.
A name? It doesn't have one?
Not yet. Names are power here. Once it's named, it's no longer just a child. It becomes.
Becomes what?
The first god of the new fire.
Jace shivered.
And Ravenna spoke.
Not loud. Not soft. Just enough to split the air.
She said a name.
And it wasn't in any language Jace had heard before. It wasn't a word. It was a command. A shape of sound so sharp it left a taste in his mouth like copper and glass.
The child opened its eyes.
The runes on its body flared.
And then, without any warning, it spoke back.
Not in a voice, but in thought.
All of them heard it.
Jace.
Kellin.
The Forsaken.
Even the bones beneath the Garden.
The voice was calm, and terrible, and infinitely old.
I see you.
I see all that you have undone to make me.
And I accept.
Ravenna exhaled.
The altar turned white beneath the child, then translucent, then gone.
The child floated again, but taller now. A little older. Its eyes held galaxies.
It looked at Ravenna.
Then it looked at Jace.
And it smiled.
From somewhere behind them, a thousand bells rang at once.
The Forsaken bowed.
The Garden wept.
And the sky cracked with red light as something massive began to descend from beyond the stars.
Jace stepped forward.
What do we call it now?
Ravenna stood, wiping blood from her fingers.
Not it.
Him.
He is the heir.
To what?
To everything that dies from here on.
The sky didn't just crack.
It peeled.
Layer by layer.
First came the red. Like stretched tendons across the horizon. Then gold—thick, melting gold that bled through the spaces between clouds and swallowed every ray of light.
The sun didn't disappear.
It knelt.
Jace shielded his eyes, but it made no difference. The light wasn't meant to be seen by human pupils. It went deeper. Into memory. Into guilt. It lit every part of him that ever tried to forget.
And through that blinding sky... something stepped.
No wings.
No face.
Just a presence.
A shadow that didn't come from anything.
The child looked up at it. Then raised one hand. Not to stop it. Not to command. But to invite.
Ravenna didn't move. Her eyes locked on the heavens. And in that moment, Jace saw her not as a woman or a lover or a weapon—but as a bridge.
A tear ran down her cheek.
She didn't wipe it.
The Forsaken knelt again. Each one murmuring a wordless hymn that didn't echo—not because the Garden was silent, but because the sound refused to be repeated.
The creature descending from the light didn't land.
It hovered.
And from its form, a voice came. But unlike the child's, this one was old. So old it didn't carry meaning—it was meaning.
Do you accept what you've made?
The child nodded.
Yes.
Will you burn for it?
I already am.
Will you carry the gate within your flesh until the stars drown?
Yes.
The sky convulsed.
Lightning didn't fall—it rose. From the graves. From the river. From the mouths of dead saints rotting in their crypts.
The altar blazed again.
And the child lifted higher.
He opened his arms.
And the world... paused.
Every clock in Blackmarsh stopped ticking.
Every phone went dead.
Every window showed only the Garden now, no matter where it pointed.
People fell to their knees in alleys and towers, whispering names they hadn't known they remembered.
Because this wasn't a rebirth.
This was a reckoning.
A price finally come due.
And as Jace watched, broken and gasping, Ravenna turned to him once more.
She was pale now. Unsteady. The sigil on her wrist was gone. In its place: a scar that looked too much like an eye.
She touched his chest.
He flinched.
But her voice was gentle.
"Don't follow him."
"Why?"
"Because if you do, you'll forget why you ever loved me."
He froze.
And then the Garden split again.
Not with fire.
Not with light.
With space.
A hole opened. Circular. Endless. Lined with thousands of teeth made of cities and bones.
The child floated into it.
And the sky sealed shut.
Just like that.
Gone.
Silence returned.
Even the Forsaken dropped their heads.
And Ravenna?
She collapsed.
Jace caught her before she hit the stone.
Kellin stepped forward, stunned.
"What the fuck just happened?"
Jace didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
All he knew was—something old had been born, and the world had just become its cradle.
And the lullaby?
It was still echoing.
Quiet.
Like breath against a tombstone.
Like blood warming in an altar bowl.
And somewhere, far below the crust of Blackmarsh…
The dead began to move.
Blackmarsh's bones had never been quiet.
Now, they were screaming.
Beneath District Thirteen—once a slum, now a crater of fallen towers and broken neon—a series of ancient cisterns began to stir. Cameras fizzled. Drones dropped from the sky. No signals came out. No light went in.
And from the shattered floor of a collapsed tram tunnel, something crawled.
Not a man.
Not a corpse.
A memory, wearing flesh.
It rose slowly, steam trailing from its joints like breath from a furnace. A sentinel forgotten by time. Runes carved into its ribs. Eyes hollow but burning with something not human.
And behind it, a procession followed.
The Forsaken.
No longer content to kneel.
Their march was slow. Deliberate. They passed through walls that should have stopped them, flickered through barricades like smoke.
Citizens saw them from the windows—gaunt figures dressed in blood-wet linen, walking barefoot over broken glass, whispering prayers in tongues that made radios crackle.
The city didn't resist.
Because Blackmarsh was already half-dead.
Now, it was just accepting.
—
Jace's boots struck puddles of oil and rainwater as he sprinted across a lower bridge in District Eight. He'd been running for hours. Not from something. Toward something.
Ravenna lay unconscious in the back of a stolen hover-cruiser two streets back. Kellin guarded her. His orders were simple: Don't let anyone touch her. Not even me.
Now, Jace needed answers.
Real ones.
Not myths.
Not symbols.
Not riddles buried in Ravenna's grief.
The truth.
And only one person in this city ever came close to it.
He ducked into a cracked stairwell, descended four levels beneath a burned-out metro hub, and found the entrance he'd almost forgotten about.
A red door.
No handle.
Just a slit for blood.
Jace didn't hesitate.
He bit his thumb and smeared it down the steel.
The slit inhaled.
The door unlatched.
And he entered the Den.
—
The Den wasn't a place.
It was a confession.
Every wall was lined with dying screens. Faces blinked in and out. Names. Orders. Coordinates. Broken feeds of satellites that no longer existed.
And at the center…
An old man with metal lungs.
They hissed with every breath.
He didn't look up.
"I told you not to come back, Cross."
Jace stepped closer. "I don't care."
"You should."
"I need to know what the Syndicate buried."
A pause.
Then a slow, broken smile.
"The Syndicate didn't bury it, boy. They tried to. Failed. It buried them."
Jace reached into his coat. Pulled out the sketch Ravenna had made—the child's face, carved in charcoal and pain.
He slapped it on the desk.
"What is this?"
The man stared. His breath hitched.
"God," he whispered. "You saw it."
"No. I watched it be born."
The man's fingers trembled. He pushed aside his interface, leaned in, and drew a single circle with his cracked nail into the photo's margin.
A symbol.
It was a spiral. Inward. Bleeding on itself.
"This isn't a god," he said. "This is a key."
"To what?"
"To what's coming next."
"Tell me," Jace growled.
The old man leaned back.
"You remember the old war, don't you?"
Jace's jaw tightened. "I was a kid. I remember the smoke."
"That wasn't war," he said. "That was a test run."
Jace stepped closer. "Tell me."
The man sighed, then flicked a switch.
A screen lit.
It showed the Garden.
Not now. Not yesterday.
Fifty years ago.
A different woman. Same eyes as Ravenna. Same sigil.
Same altar.
Same child.
Jace stumbled back.
"That's—"
"Her mother," the man said. "And the one before that? Hers. And the one before that? The same."
He looked at Jace.
"They don't birth children. They birth seals."
Jace felt the room spinning.
"And the Syndicate?"
"Built to delay it."
"Delay what?"
The man didn't smile this time.
He just whispered:
"The fall of man."
Silence.
Jace closed his eyes.
Then opened them again.
He was bleeding.
From the ear.
The wall behind the old man was moving.
Not trembling. Peeling.
And through it stepped the first Forsaken.
The Den wasn't safe anymore.
Jace grabbed the old man.
"Move!"
But it was too late.
The Forsaken spoke.
And every screen in the Den screamed with it.
Blackmarsh was cracking.
And the child's name now echoed from the mouths of every dying machine.
Asphodel.
—
District Thirteen; once a slum, now a crater of fallen towers and broken neon; a series of ancient cisterns began to stir. Concrete moaned under the strain of something waking below. Not with violence—at first—but with memory. The kind that seeped through stone like rot in an old wound.
They moved through it in silence.
The Forsaken.
Barefoot. Mouthless. Cloaked in linen soaked dark with marrow, ash, and rain. Not born of flesh, but called. Their feet never quite touching the ground as they drifted upward through stairwells forgotten by maps, rising like a blight through the belly of the city.
And as they rose, walls cracked. Sirens choked. Language, actual language died in throats that tried to describe what they saw. They were not an army. They were a reckoning.
At the edge of District Seven, a girl of twelve looked out her window and saw one walking across the air. She blinked. Rubbed her eyes. It wasn't there anymore. But her blood had already started to boil beneath her skin.
—
Elsewhere, in the pit of the old Den, Jace didn't run. He fought.
The old man beside him slumped, riddled with sound. Not bullets. Not blades. Just sound—the spoken Word of a dead age, chanted through the Forsaken's gaping throat. One phrase, repeated again and again in a tongue never meant for lungs:
Asphodel.
Asphodel.
Asphodel.
Jace tackled the speaker, shoved him through the flickering screen wall and followed with a combat blade through what should have been his neck. But there was nothing there.
Only mist.
He turned. The others were coming.
"Fuck it," he muttered. "No answers down here."
He reached the controls, flipped the failsafe switch. The chamber flooded with violet light. Ion disruptors engaged. The Den began to collapse. And Jace ran leaping across cracked steel and spiraling smoke back toward the city above.
—
Ravenna opened her eyes.
Not slowly. Not gently.
With fire.
Kellin flinched. He was kneeling beside her, holding her wrist, whispering something about rest and blood loss but now her pupils had vanished. Her breath came in double-time. And when she sat up, it was like watching lightning resurrect a corpse.
"Rav?" he said, barely above a whisper.
Her hand gripped his throat before the word was finished.
Not out of malice. But instinct.
Something else had returned first.
She released him. Crawled to the center of the room. Palmed the floor with trembling fingers. Whispers slipped from her lips half lullaby, half command and the sigil on her forearm began to burn anew.
Outside, the sky tore.
A crack ran through the clouds like shattered glass across a mirror, and from that rupture came the first signs of something not yet whole.
A shape. A voice. A will.
Siranox was no longer whispering.
He was singing.
And the song brought cities to their knees.
—
Jace burst from the underground into the chaos of Sector Line Five. All around him, lights sputtered. Sirens screamed in tongues not programmed into the system. People were missing just gone, leaving only their clothes, their breath, their shadows scorched into concrete.
He wasn't surprised.
This wasn't the beginning.
It was the middle.
He ducked into a side tunnel, pulled out his trans-comm, and opened a direct line to Kellin's biochip.
"Get her out of the bunker," he barked. "Now."
Static.
Then: "Too late."
Jace froze.
"What the hell do you mean, too late?"
Kellin's voice was ragged.
"She's not... Ravenna anymore."
Jace's breath caught.
He leaned against the wall.
"Where is she?"
"She left."
"What?"
"She walked straight out. Every system went dead. The air froze around her. She looked back once. Just once."
"And?"
"She said: 'It's not the end yet. He's just waking up.'"
Jace cursed under his breath.
Then he heard it. That sound again. The one that didn't echo like normal sounds. The one that inverted silence.
Backwards laughter.
It was everywhere now.
—
Above the city, in the Garden where the fire still burned, the Blood Orchid bloomed a second time. But this one wasn't for Ravenna.
It was for the child.
Somewhere in the depths of Blackmarsh, Asphodel had opened its eyes.
And it was hungry.
The Forsaken began their march. No longer silent. No longer whispering.
They sang.
The march began without drums; only the hum of ruined circuits and the rustle of skinless feet on broken glass. The Forsaken spread from the Garden like spilled blood; slow, certain, impossible to stop. At their center: the child.
Not Ravenna's child.
Not even a child, really.
It had no eyes. No mouth. Only a crown of flame above its brow and a womb carved from obsidian ribs. Where it walked, the ground forgot how to hold shape. Buildings sagged. Languages choked. Time staggered like a drunk in a back-alley, then fell completely.
And still it sang.
Not with sound; with memory.
Women across Blackmarsh dropped to their knees without understanding why; men wept at the smell of burning salt; the unborn twisted in wombs, clawing to escape futures they hadn't yet lived.
And above it all, the sky trembled.
Not with thunder; with recognition.
Siranox was no longer inside Ravenna alone. He was in the child. The Gate. The Garden. He was in everything.
Jace ran through District Six, breath ragged, gun still warm. The transmission from Kellin hadn't ended, it had gone dead mid-sentence. That silence scared him more than anything.
He reached the rim of Thirteen; stopped.
The air was different here. Not cold. Still.
He could hear his heartbeat. And the city's. Out of sync. A second rhythm rising beneath the surface of all things. Something ancient. Something holy in all the wrong ways.
He pulled out his tracking slate; Ravenna's signal flickered, then vanished.
"Fuck this," he whispered.
Then he heard it.
Not a scream.
Not a voice.
But a question—the kind that lived in your gut long after someone had stopped asking it aloud.
Why did you let her burn?
He spun. No one there.
The shadows moved. Not like people. Like intent.
He ran again.
Through the collapsed tunnel of Sector Delta. Past the flooded ruin of the Feral Markets. Through the shattered checkpoint near the Cathedral Vaults.
Until he reached the mirror.
He didn't remember there being a mirror.
But it was there.
A full-length slab of glass standing upright in the middle of nothing. Dustless. Untouched. And inside it—
Not him.
But someone who looked like him. Bleeding from the mouth. Crying in reverse. Holding a child made of smoke.
Jace stepped back.
The mirror cracked. Not once. Not like glass.
It sighed.
And a voice, too close to be real, whispered from behind him:
"She's already opened the next one."
He turned.
No one.
Only the smell of orchids burning.
—
Back in the Garden, Ravenna stood at the center of the sigil circle.
Her body swayed, humming. Every few seconds, blood slipped from the corners of her eyes; not from pain, but from pressure.
Kellin lay nearby; not dead. Not awake.
She didn't look at him. Couldn't. If she did, the thing inside her might stop pretending to be human.
She raised her hand.
The sky answered; not with lightning—but with flame that dripped upward.
Each drop peeled back layers of the heavens.
And through the cracks, a hundred other gates stirred. Not opened. Not yet. But aware. The way an animal wakes when it smells its predator nearby.
Then she spoke; or the voice within her did.
"Bring them."
The Forsaken turned in unison.
Their eyes glowed violet; their mouths tore open—not lips, but folds of reality parting.
And from their mouths came the war-song of Siranox:
Ash to breath; flesh to fire; soul to seed.
The Garden burned. The world waited.
And Jace—still running, still breathing—had no idea what he was about to find next.
—
Jace crossed into Thirteen; the moment his boots hit the ash-veined concrete, something shifted. The shadows didn't follow physics here. They stretched against the grain; reached toward the corners of memory. He held his sidearm steady, but the barrel trembled—not from fear, but from something else. Something like gravity with a vendetta.
The last time he stood in this district, it had been alive; neon bars flickering with life, cartel runners shadow-trading relics under veil-light, children dancing through graffiti-laced alleys. Now? Silence. Stillness.
A dead god's cathedral.
He walked further, scanning with his wrist console. No signs of life; no body heat, no neural signatures—except one. Faint. Fragmented. Glitching in and out of the HUD like a dying heartbeat.
Ravenna.
Still here. Still burning.
He pressed on.
Past the collapsed metro tunnel where Forsaken lay curled in fetal clusters, their bodies twitching to rhythms only they could hear. Past the blood-drunk mural that bled new faces each time you blinked.
And then—he saw it.
A stairwell, leading down, deeper than anything marked on the Syndicate's maps.
On the wall, painted in something that wasn't quite paint, were the words:
YOU ARE LATE TO THE AWAKENING.
He took the first step.
The second.
Then the silence screamed.
—
[Ravenna – Garden Core]
Her arms were stretched outward now; not in surrender—but in invocation. The sigils around her were no longer stable; they twisted, pulsed, evolved. Blood had stopped leaking from her eyes. Fire poured from them now; gentle, golden fire, like sunlight through ruined stained glass.
The Garden wasn't just a place anymore. It was a beacon.
Above her, suspended like a fetus in some terrible divine womb, the child hung—rotating, limbs limp, wrapped in umbilical cords made of radiant bone and black silk.
And it was growing.
Not in size. In presence.
She whispered names. Not hers. Not human.
Each name fed the child.
Each breath invited another god to wake.
Kellin stirred behind her, coughing blood and smoke. He tried to rise; Ravenna didn't stop him.
He had to see it.
"Ravenna…" he rasped. "What... is this?"
Her voice came like thunder wrapped in lace:
"Not the end."
He blinked.
"The beginning?"
"No," she said, smiling as her teeth turned to silver. "The price."
—
[Jace – Sublevels Below Thirteen]
The air was thicker now.
He moved through passageways carved from obsidian veins and wet bone. The light came from nowhere and everywhere—like God had forgotten where He'd left His eyes.
Then he entered the chamber.
He knew it was a trap.
Didn't care.
In the center: a table. Surgical. Stainless. Stained.
And upon it—
A child.
Not the child.
Another.
Eyes sewn shut with thread made of prayer. Chest open. Heart missing.
But it breathed.
He stepped closer. Reached.
A whisper behind him: "You can't save what was never alive."
He turned.
A man stood there. Or something that once had been.
Tall. Thin. Wrapped in a cleric's robe woven from blindfolds and birth certificates. His face was made of hands—constantly shifting, pressing against the invisible wall of his own skull.
Jace raised his weapon.
"You know me," the thing said, without moving its lips.
"I know what you were," Jace replied. "One of the Saint-born. Heretics."
The thing smiled.
"No. We were the cure. She—" he pointed skyward "—is the infection."
"You mean Ravenna?"
"I mean the gatekeeper."
Jace fired.
The bullet dissolved before it left the barrel.
Then the walls began to melt.
And Jace realized: he hadn't been walking in a tunnel.
He'd been walking inside a throat.
It convulsed.
He was swallowed.
—
[Ravenna – Outer Circle of the Garden]
The time had come.
The Forsaken had begun their march; their limbs no longer moved like flesh, but like storm-clouds possessed.
Each one carried a name on their back. A name burned into them. Yours.Mine.Ours.
Above them, the sky tore open—not like paper, but like memory unraveling.
And through it came horns. Long. Wretched. Beautiful.
The Gathering had begun.
—
The Garden pulsed like a living wound; each heartbeat echoed into the spines of every Forsaken soldier, each pulse synchronized with the rise of the unborn god suspended above Ravenna. Its crown now blazed brighter than the moonlight, casting the city in hues that bent time—red where there should be blue, violet where there should be none.
Ravenna stood beneath it, arms still raised, but her body—no longer entirely hers—was shifting. Her skin rippled like silk underwater. Her veins burned golden. Each breath she took summoned thunder. Each blink stirred clouds.
She wasn't summoning a god.
She was one.
The Forsaken began to chant—not in language—but in memory. Forgotten birthdays. Final kisses. Deathbed confessions. All of them woven together in a choir that cracked the sky.
Then the child opened its mouth.
And spoke.
No words. Just a name.
"Jace."
—
[Jace – Inside the Throat of the God]
He fell through darkness; not the absence of light, but the absence of logic. A world where gravity no longer served mass but memory; where forward meant yesterday and down meant regret.
His mind should've broken.
It didn't.
Something in him had already shattered long ago; now it simply reassembled in shapes that made sense in this place.
He landed—not hard. Like being laid down by invisible hands.
And in front of him: a door.
Not wood. Not steel.
But flesh; breathing.
A door that wept at its hinges and pulsed with every secret he never dared speak aloud.
He reached forward.
The second his fingers touched it—
He remembered.
The truth behind the child.
Behind Ravenna's fire.
Behind his own betrayal.
He saw himself—ten years ago—standing over a crib in the Bastion Orphanage, holding a silver blade.
He had orders.
"Eliminate the anomaly."
But the child looked at him.
No eyes.
No voice.
Just understanding.
He couldn't do it.
So he fled.
And the Syndicate buried the truth.
But Ravenna found it. Nurtured it. Loved it.
And now?
That same child was no longer a child.
It was the apex of all divine horror. A deity born not from prophecy—but from failure. From mercy. From Jace.
He screamed.
Not in fear.
In grief.
—
[Ravenna – The Garden, Now Ascended]
She felt it.
His scream.
His awakening.
The flame around her crown dimmed for a moment; not weakness, but focus. She turned her eyes upward, into the wound in the sky—and saw him there, inside the old god's memory, grasping for sense in a world built on broken truths.
She whispered something.
Not a spell.
A promise.
"You're not too late."
Then she raised her left hand—where the mark of the first Gate burned—and tore open the veil completely.
And the gods came.
Not one. Not two.
All of them.
Fleshless. Dreamless. Starving.
Descending like guilt from a forgotten prayer.
The world screamed.
Blackmarsh trembled.
The first of the high towers began to bleed.
And still—the child smiled.
—
[Jace – Between Memory and Godhood]
The door opened.
He walked through.
And found her.
Not Ravenna.
Not the child.
But the woman who birthed the lie.
The High Warden of the Bastion Order.
Clad in bone-white silk. Her eyes made of mirrors.
She spoke without moving her lips.
"You never should have let it live."
Jace raised his weapon. This time it didn't dissolve.
It glowed.
He fired.
The Warden's chest erupted in light, but her face didn't twist. Instead, she smiled.
And as her body fell away into dust, she whispered:
"Too late."
Then—behind him—
The child.
But not small anymore.
Not weak.
Ascended.
It looked at him, through him, into him.
And it understood.
As it whispered back:
"You chose me."
—
The Ash Spire cracked as the sky above it collapsed inward like a lung refusing to breathe. The Citadel's upper ring—once a sanctuary for the war council—now lay torn open, its foundation riddled with divine rot. The iron-framed halls twisted, melting in the heat of a power too ancient to be called magic. It was memory incarnate; grief turned into gravity.
Ravenna hovered just above the collapsing dais. Her fingers trailed gold and shadow behind her like ribbons, her skin now a script of impossible runes—burning softly across her collarbones, curling beneath her breasts, vanishing behind her hips. She had never looked more herself.
A single war priest dared step forward.
"By the Flame Doctrine, I command you—"
She blinked.
And he ceased.
Not fell.
Ceased.
Time never touched him again.
She turned to the rest.
"None of you believed in the old gods," she said softly. "And yet you caged one in your vaults, fed it orphans and blood, and called it research."
She raised her hand.
"And now…"
She clenched her fist.
"…you'll worship it."
The floor vanished beneath them.
All twenty-three ministers of war, the High Vizier, the Clockwork Bishop, the Speaker of Salt—all plunged into a screaming spiral of flame that didn't consume, but replayed.
Every death they'd ever caused.
Over.
And over.
And over.
Until their minds begged for silence.
And the gods, finally merciful—
Granted it.
—
Jace emerged from the wound in the world like a blade dragged through ash; his breath caught fire in his throat, lungs tearing as he reentered the living realm. He collapsed onto the cracked stone of the Bastion's outer edge—just below the shattered sigil of the Order. Smoke curled from his fingertips; his eyes—darker now, like burnt gold—trembled with knowledge that didn't belong to mortals.
He looked up.
And there she was.
Ravenna. Floating above the ruins like vengeance wrapped in velvet flame. Her hair no longer black but midnight itself; not strands but currents. Her eyes met his—and for a second, she hesitated.
Her voice came low. Not cruel. Not warm.
Just true.
"You saw him, didn't you?"
Jace nodded.
"He showed me everything."
Ravenna descended slowly—her bare feet touching the obsidian floor with the weight of a final chapter. Around them, the air thickened with prayers never spoken. The kind that ended in blood.
"He was always meant to come through," she whispered. "But I... I made it too easy."
"No," Jace said, rising. "You made it possible."
A silence passed.
She looked tired now. Not weak, just done—the kind of fatigue that comes after birthing both love and catastrophe.
Then her fingers grazed his jaw.
And she said—
"I won't survive what comes next."
He held her hand.
"I will."
They didn't kiss.
They didn't need to.
The war had already made their hearts bleed in the same rhythm.
And that was enough.
Beneath them, the Dead Choir stirred.
They rose from the roots of Blackmarsh like breath returning to a drowned body—one by one, wrapped in robes sewn from grief and silence, mouths stitched with sigils, eyes hollow but seeing far too much. Each footstep they took echoed without sound; the echo wasn't heard but felt, crawling beneath the skin like guilt.
The Forsaken had begun their march.
And in their center…
A girl.
Barefoot. No older than nine. Wrapped in a pale shroud stained with ash and roses. Her skin glowed faintly, as if her blood had turned to amber. Her eyes—two orbs of obsidian starfire—remained fixed ahead.
Not left.
Not right.
Only forward.
The child didn't speak. But the world listened.
Around her, the wind carried words that had no tongue. Truths that shattered teeth. Promises made by dying stars and kept by the bones of angels long since defiled.
The Forsaken parted for her.
They bowed—not to her face, but to what loomed behind her. A shape not fully formed; a throne of ribs and cinders, hovering just beyond the visible. It pulsed with intent. Hunger. Patience.
And in its shadow…
The city wept.
Not because it feared her.
But because somewhere, in its twisted arteries, it remembered her.
—
Jace stood alone at the fractured edge of the pipeyard, smoke curling off the barrel of his pistol, blood drying on his knuckles. Around him—stillness; not peace, but the breath before the scream.
The mark on his shoulder burned again.
Not from Ravenna.
From her.
The child.
She was closer now.
He could feel her presence like gravity. Like being watched by something that hadn't yet decided whether to devour him or spare him.
His comm sparked once—static.
Then a voice broke through.
Low.
Feminine.
Not Ravenna.
"Run."
The signal died.
Jace turned his gaze toward the east, where a second moon had begun to rise—black, haloed with veins of gold.
That wasn't a moon.
It was her.
And the city… knew it.
Somewhere in the depths of Blackmarsh, the ancient cisterns wept flame again; in Thirteen's old chapel, the bells rang backwards; and the Forsaken, now thirty-thousand strong, began to chant.
Their song?
A single word.
Not in any tongue Jace knew.
But its meaning bled into the air.
Welcome.
Jace tightened his grip.
And walked toward the apocalypse.
Smoke curled from Jace's coat as he walked — not from fire, but from the mark. It pulsed now, a black sigil branded beneath his collarbone, veins flickering like circuits gone mad. Every step eastward sent a current through his body, like walking against gravity, like each breath he took didn't belong to this world anymore.
Deadman's City wasn't dead.
It was waking.
And every goddamn building remembered what he'd done.
The ruins of Sector Twelve bent in silence as he passed; towers once proud now leaned like drunks whispering secrets. Shadows lingered too long in his periphery. Neon signs sparked and died as he approached. The air thickened, metallic — full of rot, static, and ozone. Something holy. Something wrong.
He reached the bridge above the Bonewater Canal, where the bodies of the early resistance fighters had once been crucified upside down for three nights before the rain came and erased their names. He stopped.
The water below shimmered gold.
Not from moonlight.
From memory.
And in it, he saw her.
The child.
Not walking this time — floating inches above the surface, her arms folded across her chest like a corpse in state. Her hair moved like it was submerged in oil; her eyes still held the same void-starlight, but now they blinked. Slowly. As if waking.
She didn't look at him.
She didn't have to.
Behind her, the rib-throne loomed higher. No longer suggestion. Now form. Bones that didn't belong to any species he recognized curved like a cathedral into a shape of unspeakable reverence. Something sat upon it — unseen — but its weight dragged the stars closer.
And the water…
Began to boil.
Jace drew his weapon — slow. Not to fire.
But because instinct screamed.
Because the wind changed.
Because she finally turned her head.
The child's lips did not move.
But Jace heard her in his bones.
"You bear his echo."
He didn't respond. He couldn't. The words weren't sound. They were pressure. Like grief you didn't earn but had to carry anyway.
His vision flickered.
The city trembled.
And from the air itself, a shape fell — Ravenna, black flame trailing her descent like the wings of something that used to be human. She landed between Jace and the water with no sound, knees bent, blades out, eyes glowing with the fire of a thousand broken promises.
She didn't look at him.
Only at the girl.
"I told you," she said softly. "Not yet."
The girl blinked.
And the throne receded — just enough to stall the pulse that had begun rising in Jace's chest like a heart set to explode. The gold in the water vanished. The stars above dimmed.
And the child whispered only one thing:
"Soon."
Then she vanished.
Not teleported.
Not fled.
Just unmade.
The air cracked. The water dropped a full meter in a blink. Somewhere far off, a man began screaming and didn't stop. A bird dropped from the sky, twitching, feathers scorched black from nothing.
Ravenna collapsed to one knee.
Jace rushed forward, catching her.
"Rav—"
She gripped his shirt, teeth gritted, sweat cold as stone. "She's not a child," she hissed. "She's remembrance. That thing behind her—that's the original sin. The first lie. The breath before betrayal."
He held her tight, lifting her to her feet. "Why did she speak to me?"
"Because you still believe you're redeemable."
The silence that followed weighed heavier than a gun to the head.
Then he asked, "And am I?"
Ravenna didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Because from the sky, something began falling — ash first, then rain, then bones. Small ones. Teeth. Pieces of prayers.
The city was coughing up its secrets.
And the Dead Choir?
They weren't singing anymore.
They were listening.
To her.
To the girl.
To the god still dreaming behind her eyes.
And as Jace looked to Ravenna, saw her bloodied smile flicker in the dark, saw the burn across her cheek that looked too much like a crown—he knew.
There was no winning this war.
Only choosing who to lose it with.
The sky didn't bleed — it peeled.
Layer by layer, the clouds above the Pipeyard split like old wounds reopening, revealing veins of gold lightning stitched through a black heaven that had forgotten the sun. Screams echoed not from pain but recognition — the kind of sound cities make when their nightmares step into daylight.
Jace didn't flinch as the first rib fell from the sky, spearing the earth like a divine harpoon, shattering a rusted tower in the distance. Ravenna turned toward the impact, her hair whipping like a banner made from midnight, eyes narrowed. She didn't move.
She'd seen it before.
Not in this life, but another.
The memory returned like a gunshot.
A room without walls. A bed of ash. A voice, neither man nor god, whispering promises into the marrow of her spine. "You will be the ruin that rebuilds the world."
She had believed it once.
Now, she wasn't sure the world deserved rebuilding.
Jace steadied her, but his hand lingered too long at her waist — not from need. From fear. Touch was the last language they hadn't ruined.
Then the sirens started.
Real ones.
Mechanical.
Coalition war drones descended from the east — sleek black vultures spitting blue plasma and searchlight beams across rooftops. The air crackled with encrypted commands and cold intent. Ten of them. No insignia.
Not Coalition standard.
Not anymore.
Private.
Which meant only one thing.
"Black Seraph," Jace muttered, stepping in front of Ravenna.
She grabbed his wrist. "No. You're marked. They'll smell you before they see you."
He paused. "Then what do we do?"
Her smile was razor-thin. "We cut the sky open first."
The first drone locked on. A red dot lit her shoulder.
She didn't duck.
She sprinted.
Jace moved just a breath behind, heart racing, lungs burning, feet pounding over rusted scaffolds and the bones of a city that no longer wanted them. Plasma fire rained down — blue spears of heat slicing through concrete. One blast slammed into the street ahead, throwing Ravenna sideways.
She rolled, came up crouched, and threw the dagger she'd hidden in her boot.
It wasn't meant to pierce.
It was meant to sing.
The soundwave burst mid-air — a frequency tuned not for human ears, but for machine minds. The drone that had marked her swiveled once, twice… then dropped, twitching like a gutted angel, circuitry screaming as it shorted out in the dirt.
The others swarmed.
Jace knelt, flipped open the modified emitter on his belt — a dirty Coalition trick from his double-agent days — and held it to the sky. One burst of coded light.
Two seconds.
Three.
The sky shimmered.
And from behind the hollow moon, something emerged.
It wasn't a plane.
It wasn't mercy.
It was a ship shaped like a blade, blacker than guilt, older than any government, branded with no flag — only a single emblem: a broken crown and a slit eye.
The city gasped.
Even the Forsaken paused.
Because that ship had only come once before.
During the Fall of Praxis.
Before the Bone Circle rose.
Before Ravenna had even learned to kill.
She froze. "You didn't," she whispered.
Jace didn't meet her gaze.
The ship's hull opened, and out stepped a woman in ivory combat mesh, skin too perfect, smile too wide — eyes empty of everything except command.
General Caelin Vor.
Coalition blacksite director.
And Jace's former handler.
Her voice echoed across the ruins, amplified by the city's own bones.
"Ravenna Noir. Jace Cross. You've both interfered long enough. Step forward, surrender the mark, and you'll be spared the purification."
Ravenna laughed.
Not sweetly.
Not bitterly.
Just like someone who'd already decided how the story ends.
She stepped toward the light.
Jace grabbed her arm. "What are you doing?"
She glanced at him, voice soft.
"I'm going to show them what hell looks like from the inside."
Then she whispered something that turned his blood cold.
"I'm going to burn their gods down to the roots."
And with that…
She walked into the light.
Not to surrender.
To end it.
The light swallowed her.
For a moment, Jace saw nothing but her silhouette—shoulders square, hands loose at her sides, the edges of her coat flickering like wings about to unfurl. Then she was gone, absorbed into the belly of the hovering ship, and the ramp sealed behind her like a coffin lid kissed shut by war.
Jace didn't move. Not yet. He could feel the weight of her decision settling into his ribs like a second heart.
Ravenna Noir had never walked into a room to talk.She walked in to end it.
And the General… had no idea what she'd just invited aboard.
The ship hissed as it ascended, smooth and silent, black paint glinting faintly as it rotated on grav-thrusters and disappeared into the layers of cloud overhead. But Jace didn't look away. His ears were full of blood. His mind—rage. And something else.
Fear.
Not for himself.
For her.
Because Ravenna wouldn't let herself die.She'd let herself become.
—
Inside the ship, the light was sterile. White. Dead.A hallway stretched ahead, lined with automated turrets and blood-slick floors disguised as polished chrome. The silence was unbearable—like the kind found inside sarcophagi before the first scream.
Ravenna walked slowly. Calm. Her weapons had been taken. Her coat removed. Her wrists bound by mag-chains that burned with every pulse.
She didn't care.
Weapons were redundant when vengeance sat behind your teeth.
Two guards flanked her—faceless, armor-plated, loyal to protocols older than most wars. But neither dared walk too close. They could feel it. Whatever heat shimmered off her skin wasn't human.
And Ravenna?
She was thinking of her mother.
Not the one who raised her.
The one who birthed her beneath a ruined temple in Blackmarsh, with screams instead of prayers and knives instead of midwives. The cult had called it a prophecy. A cleansing.
They'd called her "Red Sin."
And now, the prophecy was walking into the serpent's mouth.
—
The doors opened.
And the General stood waiting.
Caelin Vor looked like the future dressed in wrath: silver-trimmed uniform, posture carved from steel, and that same perfect smile she always wore right before she signed someone's death warrant. Her eyes shimmered like synthetic sapphires—coalition-grade enhancements. No soul behind them. Just programming.
"Ravenna," she said, like she was greeting an old student who'd disappointed her. "You look tired."
Ravenna smiled. "I look like your reckoning."
General Vor stepped forward. "You've caused a lot of damage, you know. Broken sectors, ignited insurgents, destabilized Blackmarsh… and now this thing—the girl. The Choir. The throne. What exactly are you hoping to prove?"
"That gods can die," Ravenna replied.
Vor raised a brow. "Then let's test that."
She motioned to the guards. "Take her to Containment Six. Let's see how long the sin bleeds before it repents."
The chains dragged her down the hall. Cold steel under her feet. Fluorescent lights flickering like dying stars.
But Ravenna didn't scream.
She was counting.
Three corridors. Left. Right. Down. One door. Two seconds of mag-lock.
Boom.
That was how long it would take her to turn this ship into a tomb.
She'd hidden it inside her body—the last gift from the Bone Circle. An ignition shard. A shard forged from the melted blades of fallen gods, implanted just beneath her ribs. Undetectable. Unstoppable.
And once activated?
It wouldn't just destroy the ship.
It would open the veil.
Let them through.
Every forgotten deity.Every banned scripture.Every hell she kept inside her bones.
She closed her eyes as the cell door slid open and the guards shoved her inside.
They thought she was caught.
They thought they'd won.
But Ravenna Noir wasn't a prisoner.
She was bait.
And the thing she'd summoned?
Was already here.
—
Outside, Jace stood atop a fallen satellite tower, wind ripping at his coat as he stared at the sky. The air vibrated. His mark pulsed.
Then it stopped.
Dead.
Cold.
A silence he hadn't felt since Praxis fell.
And that's when he knew.
The gods were listening.
And Ravenna had just knocked.