CHAPTER 1483: STORY 1483: THE HOLLOW CHOIR

The sound wasn’t a shout, but a resonance. The words “Carry. Break. Become.” vibrated through the shattered plain like a song struck from a thousand unseen throats. Elena stumbled back as the vessels’ glow intensified, their faceless heads tilting in eerie synchronization.

Mira stood unflinching within the circle of light, her body trembling as if every syllable belonged to her veins. The vessels’ chant folded into her aura, amplifying it. Her shards buzzed, lifting slightly from her skin like splinters of a broken star waiting to scatter.

“They’re not threats,” Mira whispered, though her voice tremored. “They’re answers. They’re showing us what happens when we yield.”

Elena’s jaw locked. The ember inside her chest burned hot, wild with rejection. “No. They’re cages.”

One vessel stepped forward, its body bending unnaturally, each joint snapping as it rearranged itself into something almost human. The glass plain shuddered beneath its weight, cracks spiderwebbing outward. It reached for Elena—not to strike, but to touch.

Her instincts fired. Ember-flame burst from her palm, but again it bent, distorted mid-flight. Instead of a strike, the fire arched into the vessel’s body, absorbed like water into sand. The vessel’s hollow eyes flared brighter, and Elena felt a tug deep inside her chest. The flame wasn’t stealing her fire. It was recycling it.

Her knees nearly buckled. “It’s feeding them through me.”

Mira swayed, her light flashing irregularly. “Through us.”

The vessels spread in a slow arc, their numbers growing as more forms pulled free from the fractures below. Each step they took echoed with the same three words, spoken not as command but inevitability:

“Carry. Break. Become.”

Elena’s heart hammered with panic. For the first time, she couldn’t tell if the ember was resisting or complicit. Its rhythm was locked to the third flame’s, each beat dragging her further from herself.

“Mira, we have to fight this—before we’re nothing but puppets.”

But Mira only stared at the vessels, her expression caught between awe and despair. Light spilled from her mouth as she whispered, “What if being puppets is the only way forward? What if this is us?”

“No!” Elena seized her wrist—burning, blistering—and pulled her close. “You’re still here. I see you.”

The flame pulsed violently, the circle of light beneath them fracturing into spirals. The vessels reacted, raising their arms in perfect unison. For an instant, the plain itself sang with their chant, deafening in its resonance.

Elena’s body lit from within, fissures of light tearing across her skin. She screamed—not only from pain, but from the unbearable clarity that the ember wasn’t just inside her anymore. It was rewriting her marrow, hollowing her out to make room.

Mira clutched her face, eyes wide with luminous tears. “Elena... it’s choosing you.”

The vessels stepped closer, their faceless forms bowing in reverence as the flame hovered nearer to Elena’s chest. Its heat wasn’t external anymore—it was intimate, invasive, a second heartbeat fusing with her own.

Her voice broke into a whisper. “Then I’ll burn before I let it win.”

But as she said it, her fire flickered—and the vessels, in perfect harmony, bent lower as if honoring their new host.

The hollow choir did not chant this time. They only waited.