The storm rolled in faster than expected.
Not rain. Not thunder.
This was the kind of storm that howled without wind, the kind that pressed into bone and soul, thick with whispers and promises of oblivion.
The Pale Choir had arrived.
From the cliffs above the Iron Cradle, Liora watched the horizon bleed. Choir banners snapped against a wind that didn't touch the ground. Processions of bone-masked clerics descended in perfect lines, their skin alight with glyphs that pulsed like infected wounds.
"Three regiments," Dareth muttered. "Maybe more."
"They're not here to siege us," Eliane said quietly. "They're here to erase us."
Liora didn't speak. She didn't blink. She simply stared into the tide of enemies and let the tension settle like dust in her lungs.
Her fingers curled slightly.
Silver lines shimmered beneath her skin. The Veil-tier had changed her. Not just her magic, but how it thought. How it felt. Her soul was a storm now, split between light and hunger. A walking contradiction held together by sheer will and a memory of a girl who once believed in mercy.
That girl was dead.
"We hold the Cradle as long as we can," she said. "Then we collapse it."
"You want to bury the entire mountain?" Dareth asked.
"If we fall, they don't get what's underneath."
Eliane grimaced. "And if we're still underneath?"
Liora smiled faintly. "Then we hope the gods are real after all."
They set the wards. Five layers deep. Etched in blood, bound with soulstone dust, anchored by Liora's own energy. The air shimmered unnaturally, thick with promise and threat.
"Do you feel that?" Eliane whispered. "Like the air's alive."
"It's not alive," Liora murmured. "It's listening."
"To what?"
"To what I might do next."
At dusk, the first wave hit.
Choir zealots, naked except for bone charms and face paint, ran screaming toward the Cradle's gate. They carried no weapons—only themselves. Walking bombs, their bodies hollowed out and filled with volatile spirit fire.
"Cover!" Dareth barked, hurling a spear of obsidian-tethered magic.
Liora stepped forward.
She didn't chant.
She didn't breathe.
She simply raised one hand—and spoke their souls into silence.
A dozen zealots fell at once, their bodies crumbling into ash as silver fire danced along her palm.
Dareth stared.
"You didn't even touch them."
"They didn't want to live," she said. "I just gave them permission."
Then came the real threat.
Choir knights. Masked in ivory, wielding weapons forged from bound spirits and ancestral grief. They moved like dancers, each step a ritual, each blade a hymn.
Liora met them head-on.
And for the first time, she didn't hold back.
The Veil-tier didn't just enhance her magic—it let her merge with the dead. Not just their power. Their instincts. Their memories.
In the middle of the battlefield, she flickered.
One second Liora.
The next, a ghost-armored warlord from the Fifth Cycle.
She ducked a blade, moved inside a stance she shouldn't have known, and shattered a knight's spine with a twist of her wrist.
"She's channeling again," Eliane said, awe creeping into her voice.
"No," Dareth whispered. "She's becoming something else."
The battle turned ugly. Fast.
The Choir's second wave brought a soul-drum—a construct of bone and misery that pulsed a sound too low to hear but deep enough to make men bleed from the eyes.
Eliane fell to one knee.
Dareth staggered, coughing blood.
Liora didn't move.
She stared at the drum and narrowed her eyes.
Then she screamed.
But not with her voice.
With a thousand voices.
The scream of every soul she'd ever fused. Every memory. Every fury.
The sound cracked the air like lightning, tore the drum apart in a single, agonizing pulse.
And then… silence.
The Choir retreated.
But it wasn't over.
Not yet.
Because someone stepped forward from their ranks.
A woman.
Tall. Pale. Wearing no mask.
Her hair was white. Her eyes were gold. And her smile was too familiar.
Liora froze.
"Mother?" she whispered.
Dareth blinked. "What?"
"That's not possible," Eliane breathed. "You said she was dead."
"She was," Liora rasped.
The woman stepped closer, raising a single hand.
Choir soldiers fell to their knees in reverence.
"Hello, Ashalira," the woman said. "You've grown… cruel."
"Don't call me that."
"Why not? It's the name I gave you."
"You died."
The woman—Ashael, High Choir Seer—smiled faintly.
"No. I ascended."
Liora staggered back a step.
It wasn't just her mother's voice.
It was her soul.
Wounded. Changed. But real.
And something inside Liora began to fracture.
"You lied to me," she whispered.
"I prepared you," Ashael said. "Everything I did—every memory I let burn—was so you'd survive."
"By becoming this?"
She held up her hands—glowing silver, still damp with blood.
"Yes," her mother said. "You've never looked more like me."
Later, after night fell and the Choir pulled back again, Liora sat alone in the ruined courtyard.
Eliane approached, silent as always.
"You okay?"
"No."
"Want to talk about it?"
"No."
Silence.
Then:
"She's not lying," Liora said. "That's really my mother."
"What does that mean?"
"It means my past is the enemy now. And my future…" She looked up at the stars. "I don't know what it is anymore."
"Do you want to kill her?"
Liora didn't answer.
She didn't know.
And that scared her more than anything.
Because if she hesitated… she might not survive what came next.