Choir's Song

Chapter 12: The Choir's Song

The chanting reached me before I could see them. A sonorous, unnatural rhythm that vibrated through the twisted streets of what had once been a thriving village. Each syllable felt like a needle against my decaying skin, a reminder of how far I'd fallen.

*The Veil must fall. The Veil must fall. The Veil must fall.*

My glass-shard eye throbbed painfully as I peered around the crumbling wall. The village square had transformed overnight. Where yesterday stood empty market stalls and abandoned carts, now a sea of bodies swayed in unison. At their center, perched atop a makeshift altar of broken furniture and rotting wood, stood a child no older than eight. Her eyes—completely black, no whites visible—scanned the crowd with ancient malevolence.

The Eclipse's prophet. The rumors hadn't exaggerated.

"You shouldn't be here," I muttered to myself, the words scraping against my throat like shattered glass. The White Chord withdrawal was getting worse. Three days without a dose, and already my joints creaked with calcification. Soon, I'd be unable to run.

Not that running had ever saved me.

I pressed my hand against the rough stone wall, watching as tiny glass fragments fell from my fingertips. The corruption was spreading faster now. Elias had warned me: *"First your hands, then your heart."* Another week without finding the Citadel's hidden entrance, and I'd be nothing but a hollow statue of broken glass and regret.

The crowd's chanting grew louder, more frenzied. Blood trickled from their eyes, black and viscous—not unlike the Chord that now constituted half my bloodstream. I should leave. Find Liora. Tell her what I'd discovered about Aidan's maps.

Instead, I edged closer.

---

Liora Merrick stared at her reflection in the broken chapel mirror, watching as crystalline patterns spread like frost across her forearm. The Grey Chord's corruption advanced despite her best efforts, transforming flesh into something cold and brittle. Something beautiful and monstrous.

She flexed her fingers, listening to the soft *tink-tink* of crystal against crystal. Three weeks ago, the transformation had been limited to her fingertips—easy to hide beneath bandages and gloves. Now it reached her elbow, catching the dim light filtering through the burnt chapel's collapsed roof.

"You're running out of time," she whispered to her reflection.

On the makeshift surgical table lay her bone saw, meticulously cleaned and sharpened. Beside it, a tourniquet and enough White Chord to numb the pain. Amputation was the logical solution. Cut away the corruption before it reached her heart.

But without both hands, how would she tend to the wounded? How would she fulfill her oath to the Dissidents? To herself?

The vial of Grey Chord sat in her palm, its contents swirling with hypnotic patterns. One more dose might push back the crystallization temporarily. Enough time to find Alden, to locate the Citadel entrance. Enough time to matter.

*Every dose erases memories,* Alden had warned. *You might forget why you're fighting.*

Liora uncorked the vial with her teeth, the familiar scent of rotten roses filling her nostrils. What memory would she lose this time? Her mother's face? The name of her first patient? The reason she'd joined the Dissidents?

Did it matter?

She pressed the needle into the crook of her arm, into the last patch of unmarred skin, and pushed the plunger.

Coldness spread through her veins, a momentary relief as the crystallization receded. Then came the emptiness—a blank space where something important had once existed.

Liora blinked at the surgical tools on the table. Why had she arranged them so carefully? What procedure had she been planning?

She shook her head, gathering the instruments into her medical bag. No time for distractions. Alden needed her. The Dissidents needed her.

Something caught her eye—a movement in the broken mirror. Her reflection, smiling when she wasn't. Winking conspiratorially.

Liora stumbled backward, knocking over a burnt pew.

"What in the--"

The chapel door burst open, cutting off her words. A Dissident scout—Maya, one of the younger messengers—stood framed in the doorway, chest heaving.

"They've found him," Maya gasped. "The Choir has Alden."

---

The crowd parted as I was dragged forward, my feet scraping against the cobblestones. Two villagers gripped my arms—ordinary people once, now puppets with black ichor leaking from their eyes and ears. Their strength seemed inhuman, their fingers digging into my flesh like iron bands.

"The alchemist returns," the child prophet said, her voice echoing strangely as if multiple people spoke through her small body. "The maker of chains."

I tried to break free, but my body betrayed me. Weeks of Chord abuse had taken their toll, leaving my muscles weak and atrophied. The glass fragments that had replaced portions of my left arm caught the mid-morning light, refracting it into painful prisms across the square.

"I don't make anything anymore," I growled, the words tasting like ash on my tongue. "I'm just a junkie with bad luck."

The child—no, the thing using the child—tilted its head like a curious bird. Its smile revealed teeth stained black.

"The Eclipse remembers you, Alden Renshaw. It remembers your brother too."

The mention of Elias sent a spike of rage through my body, momentarily burning through the weakness. I lunged forward, only to be yanked back by my captors.

"Don't you dare speak his name," I hissed.

The prophet stepped down from her altar, bare feet leaving wet, black footprints on the cobblestones. The crowd's chanting intensified, becoming less a human sound and more a discordant vibration that seemed to penetrate my very bones. My glass-shard eye pulsed in rhythm with their voices, sending excruciating pain through my skull.

"The Eclipse speaks through many mouths now," the child said, reaching for my wrist. "Soon it will speak through yours as well."

Her touch burned like acid. I screamed as her small fingers wrapped around my wrist, branding my flesh with impossible heat. The smell of burning skin filled my nostrils as a spiral pattern formed, black against my reddened skin—the same symbol I'd seen painted on walls throughout the dying city.

A Shroudmark. Like Aidan's. Like Liora's.

"You belong to it now," the child whispered, her black eyes reflecting my horrified expression. "The Eclipse is patient. It waits in the spaces between your thoughts. It grows in the cracks of your fractured soul."

The mark pulsed on my wrist, sending waves of strange sensation up my arm. Beneath my skin, my corrupted veins writhed like live snakes, black Chord pushing against tissue, seeking escape. The pain drove me to my knees.

"What do you want from me?" I gasped, watching in horror as the veins in my forearm bulged and twisted.

The prophet child crouched before me, her head tilted at an impossible angle. "The Eclipse wants what it has always wanted, alchemist. It wants the Veil to fall. It wants to be whole again." Her small hand caressed my cheek with mock tenderness. "And you will help us."

Behind her, the crowd's chanting reached a fevered pitch. Blood poured more freely from their eyes now, staining their clothes, pooling on the ground. Some collapsed, their bodies twitching, yet their voices never faltered.

*The Veil must fall. The Veil must fall. The Veil must fall.*

"I'd rather die," I spat.

The child's laugh was ancient and hollow. "Death is not an option the Eclipse offers you. Service or suffering—these are your choices now."

A commotion erupted at the edge of the square. Shouts, followed by the distinctive *whoosh* of an Artificer's flamebow. The crowd's seamless chanting fractured as people turned toward the disturbance.

"We found another one!" a villager cried. "A marked one!"

The prophet's black eyes narrowed. "Bring them."

The crowd parted once more. Through my pain-blurred vision, I saw a familiar figure being dragged forward—tall, gaunt, with a spiral mark vivid against his pale wrist.

Aidan Blackwood. My hunter. My judge.

Our eyes met across the square—his filled with accusation, mine with stubborn defiance. Both of us now caught in the Eclipse's web.

The prophet looked between us, her unnatural smile widening. "The investigator joins the alchemist. How fitting." She gestured to the villagers. "Prepare them both for the communion."

As they dragged us away, toward a large building at the far end of the square, I felt something I hadn't experienced in months: hope. Not for rescue—I was long past such delusions. Hope for answers.

If anyone knew what the Shroudmark meant, what the Eclipse truly wanted, it would be Aidan. The man had been hunting me, yes, but he'd also been hunting the truth.

And now we were both caught in the same trap.

---

From the chapel rooftop, Liora watched the procession through a spyglass. Her crystallized hand glinted in the sunlight as she adjusted the focus, tracking Alden and Aidan as they were led into the village's former meetinghouse.

"How many cultists?" asked Maya, crouched beside her.

"At least forty," Liora replied, collapsing the spyglass. "All civilians, except for the child."

Maya shuddered. "I've heard stories about that one. They say she predicted the Froststorm that hit the eastern district. Told everyone to evacuate the day before."

Liora nodded absently, her mind racing. The Grey Chord had cleared her thoughts, sharpened her focus, even as it erased... something. Something important. The blank space in her memory throbbed like a phantom limb.

"We need reinforcements," Maya said. "Even with the element of surprise—"

"No time," Liora cut in. From her bag, she withdrew a vial of Black Chord—her emergency supply. "The communion ritual takes less than an hour. By then, Alden will be beyond our reach."

"What are you planning?"

Liora studied the Black Chord, its contents darker than night. She'd sworn never to use it. Had made Alden promise the same, though he'd broken that promise countless times.

*Some oaths matter more than others,* she thought, though she couldn't remember who had first spoken those words to her.

"Get back to the safehouse," she told Maya. "If I'm not back by nightfall, tell Serafina what happened."

"But—"

"Go," Liora said firmly. "This isn't a discussion."

As Maya reluctantly departed, Liora removed her medical coat, revealing the light leather armor beneath. She checked her bone scalpels, her tourniquet, her last vial of White Chord. Preparations for the aftermath, assuming she survived.

The Black Chord would grant her temporary invincibility, the strength to fight through dozens of cultists. But Alden had warned about the voices—the Eclipse's taunts that accompanied the surge of power.

*Your veins are my roots.*

Liora took a deep breath, watching as the crystallization at her elbow began creeping forward again. The Grey Chord's effects were already fading. Soon, she'd be unable to move her arm at all.

With practiced precision, she found a vein in her thigh and inserted the needle. The Black Chord entered her bloodstream like liquid fire.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then pain exploded behind her eyes—blinding, overwhelming. Her muscles seized, her back arching in a silent scream. The crystallization on her arm pulsed, spreading rapidly up to her shoulder, then receding just as quickly.

When the pain subsided, a voice that wasn't hers whispered in her mind: *I've waited for you, healer.*

Liora stood, her body thrumming with unnatural energy. The world around her seemed sharper, colors more vivid. She could hear heartbeats from the meetinghouse below, could smell the copper-sweet scent of blood from fifty paces away.

"Not today, Eclipse," she murmured, drawing a scalpel from her belt. "I'm coming for my friend."

She stepped to the edge of the rooftop and leaped, her body light as air, ready to rain destruction on the Choir below.

In the broken chapel mirror behind her, her reflection remained standing, watching with a hungry smile as she descended into chaos.