CHAPTER 1563: STORY 1563: THE ASHEN BREATH

The battlefield stilled, the echoes of the hollow chorus fading into the Gate’s convulsing maw. Smoke lingered, coiling around the survivors like a living shroud. The lattice flickered, its scarred light unsteady, as if straining to hold against a storm yet to break.

Kael knelt, every muscle screaming, his blade fused to his arm trembling in rhythm with his heartbeat. He forced his eyes to the boy. The child’s glow was faint, pulsing like a dying ember. His chest rose and fell in shallow gasps, each breath rattling with smoke.

Elara cradled him, tears streaking soot down her cheeks. “He burns from the inside... every voice he took, it’s inside him now.” Her voice cracked. “He’s too small to carry so much.”

The farmer staggered closer, grief-wrung but resolute. “Then let us carry him. Give the weight to us.” He pressed his calloused hand to the boy’s back, and for a moment his own voice bled into the lattice—steady, low, a father’s promise.

The widow followed, her hand trembling as it joined. “We will not let him drown.”

Others hesitated, their exhaustion gnawing at their will. The scarred woman stood apart, her spear digging into the ash at her feet. She glared at the boy, at the glow leaking from his skin. But her voice, when it entered the binding, was stripped of rage. “If he burns, we burn with him. That’s the cost.”

For a fragile moment, the lattice brightened, the boy’s gasps easing as the burden spread. His small voice whispered through the chains, “Not alone.”

The Unborn’s laughter shattered the moment.

From the fissure spilled a new wave—not shards, not hollow echoes, but ash. A choking cloud that poured downward like a tide, seeping through the lattice’s cracks. It crept into their mouths, their lungs, their thoughts. Every breath carried weight, every exhale left them weaker.

Kael coughed, his throat burning. He staggered forward, blade raised, but the ash was not something to strike. It was suffocation given form.

The widow collapsed, gasping. “It’s... inside... can’t...” Her voice faded from the choir, chains fraying.

The farmer gagged, clawing at his throat. “It... steals the breath... the song itself...”

The Unborn’s voice slithered through the ash, thick and gloating. “You wove your song into the boy. Now I choke him, and through him, choke you all.”

Elara clutched the child, pressing her lips to his hair. Her voice was hoarse, broken, yet she forced a lullaby through the ash. The sound wavered, nearly lost—but it carried.

Kael seized it, adding his own roar, jagged and defiant. The scarred woman followed, then the farmer, then the widow, each voice raw, scraped, yet stubborn. Together, their song tore faint channels through the suffocating cloud, letting the boy gasp a single, desperate breath.

The lattice flared dimly, not whole, but surviving.

The Unborn hissed, amused and hungry. “Sing, then. Sing as your throats bleed. Every breath brings you closer to silence.”

Kael’s chest heaved as he pressed closer to the boy, blade trembling, voice steady. “Then let that silence wait. We will spend every breath we have before it comes.”

The ash thickened, the fissure trembled, and the war of voices pressed into its next verse.