Story 1200: The Last Chant of the Dead Star

The sky was a wound. No longer black, no longer starless—but bleeding light that had no source, no warmth, no mercy.

From the rift above, the Dead Star pulsed once more. Not a sun. Not a celestial body. A heart—ancient, godless, and dead—still beating in defiance of silence.

The chant began with no mouth to start it.

Low. Vibrating through the bones of the world.

The Hollow Ones—no longer walking, no longer needing to—hovered in slow spirals around the fallen cities. Their shapes indistinct, made of memory and failure, shaped like grief. Each one chanted in a different voice: a lover’s last breath, a child’s forgotten song, a scream stifled too long.

At the center of all, beneath the collapsed cathedral, Clara stood.

Or what remained of her.

Her arms had become chains of light, tethering her to the altar—the Throat of the World, where the chant was focused. Her eyes were stars extinguished. Her voice sang backward.

She was no longer just Hollow.

She was vessel.