CHAPTER 10: THE SILENT CHOIR

The wind carried a different silence now—an expectant, reverent hush that settled over Ilyrian Echoes like a prayer waiting for an answer. Night had fallen, but the stars above were dim, veiled behind thin, shifting clouds. Only the silver grass shone faintly, mirroring the quiet awakening beneath the valley.

Kai stood motionless within the ancient sigil, the fading glow of the ritual still clinging to his skin like ash from a dying flame. Every breath felt like he was inhaling history, every blink stitched him tighter into a tapestry too vast to fully comprehend. His shoulders trembled, not from weakness but from weight.

Ysera stood nearby, hunched over the unfurled scroll. The names written in celestial glyphs writhed subtly, as if aware they were being read aloud for the first time in eons.

"The Silent Choir," she whispered, voice reverent. "Each name was once a god, but Azrael cast them into uncreation. Their echoes shouldn't exist. But they do. And if the Revenant is resurrecting them..."

Kai finished the sentence grimly. "Then the war to come is not just against him. It's against the forgotten pantheon."

Ysera nodded. "Against grief that never died."

Elsewhere, far from the grieving valley, the Revenant stood atop a forgotten spire carved into the cliffside of Oathrend Gorge. The stars behind him bled amber. His Echo Legion formed concentric circles, their forms flickering between armor and shadow. At his feet, a glyph pulsed a cracked, forbidden rune forbidden by the Sky Accord itself.

He raised a hand, and from the abyss came seven whispers.

They were not language. They were not song. They were soul-rattling tones like wind howling through the bones of a dead god.

From the darkness came the first.

A woman with no face, draped in living thread. She was once Eriseth, Weaver of Bound Fates, goddess of divergence. Azrael had torn her thread from the Loom and cast her into the Well of Silence.

Next came Halven, the Hollow Speaker. His voice could raise the dead and command silence like a weapon. He bore no tongue, but every word he spoke turned reality fragile.

One by one, five more stepped forward, incomplete, broken, but returning.

The Revenant turned to them. "Your names were stolen. Your temples reduced to myth. I bring you back not as gods, but as vengeance."

They did not kneel. They didn't need to because this was not worship, this was war.

Kai and Ysera descended deeper into the caverns beneath Ilyrian Echoes. Ysera's torch glowed blue, reacting to the starlit residue embedded in the walls. They passed murals massive and intricate showing the ancient Choir before their fall. Some depicted songs being sung into rivers, others forging mountains with their breath.

Kai paused before one.

It depicted a godling kneeling before the Choir, wings folded, a sword shattered in his lap.

"That's Azrael," Ysera said, softly.

"He begged them for aid," Kai murmured. "And when they refused, he ended them."

Ysera sighed. "They saw prophecy as fixed. He saw it as chains."

They entered a round chamber. The floor was inscribed with ancient script. At the center stood a floating shard of a long-dead star a remnant of a fallen celestial weapon. As Kai approached, it pulsed.

He reached out. It didn't reject him. Instead, it vibrated gently.

Suddenly, visions cascaded into his mind.

A battlefield beneath three suns. Ysera as a child, running through blood-soaked snow. A massive godlike figure wreathed in light and thorns, holding Kai in its palm whispering a name not yet his.

Then a shadow. Not the Revenant. Something older.

A Primordial. One even the Choir had feared.

Kai stumbled back. "There's something deeper behind this."

Ysera frowned. "You saw it too."

"Yes. A god that even gods feared."

"The Choir sealed it in the Unforgotten Vault," she murmured. "If the Revenant finds a way to break that seal..."

Kai's voice dropped. "It won't just be a war. It will be the unraveling of creation itself."

Back at the surface, a tremor split the earth.

Ysera and Kai rushed upward, only to find the horizon marred by a column of obsidian flame. It towered into the sky like a broken fang, and its base boiled with shadows.

"The Revenant has begun the Choir's awakening," Ysera said, face pale.

"We need allies," Kai said.

She nodded. "Then we go to the Watchers."

Kai blinked. "They're just myths."

Ysera turned to him, eyes blazing. "So were you."