The sun did not rise the next day.
Instead, the sky dimmed—clouds curdling in unnatural spirals as if the heavens themselves recoiled from what was about to come. Magic hummed in the air, taut and sharp, like a blade freshly unsheathed.
Rose stood at the front of the gathered army, her cloak crackling with Bramble Flame, her eyes fixed on the northern path where the Hollow Choir would descend.
Mortain stood beside her, silver and storm, his presence grounding. Behind them, Emberfen's forces stretched out in organized rows—Cindermarch Riders astride ember-beasts, Boneglass Archers shimmering with spectral light, and the moss witches cloaked in layers of creeping vines and spell-songs.
Even Basil looked halfway respectable in a stolen general's coat. "I've written my will," he muttered. "It's mostly just snack debts and emotional curses."
Nimbus hovered nearby, puffed up like a small, anxious cumulonimbus. "I'm ninety percent sure I'm not supposed to be in a war."
Rose ignored them all for a moment, focusing inward.
The Bramble Flame pulsed beneath her ribs. It wasn't just fire—it was memory, fury, hope. A thousand witches burned before her, and a thousand more waited to rise from the ashes. She would not be the one to snuff them out.
Mortain raised his voice, steady and deep. "We march to the Black Divide. We make our stand on the edge of the world. Let the gods look down and know: their dominion ends here."
A ripple of sound echoed through the army—battle cries, drumbeats, chants in old tongues.
Rose stepped forward, her boots sinking slightly into warm ash. "No matter what comes, don't forget who we are," she shouted. "We are not relics. We are not sacrifices. We are fire. And fire remembers."
The earth shuddered beneath them. In the distance, shadows twisted. The Hollow Choir had begun their descent.
"Move!" Rose ordered.
The army surged forward like a rolling flame. Dust and heat swirled around them. The closer they came to the Divide, the more the world seemed to bend and break—trees wilted into skeletal husks, and the sky bled unnatural colors.
Basil caught up beside her, panting. "So, quick question—what's the plan if the Choir sings us into a puddle of cosmic despair?"
"Then we scream louder," Rose said.
They crested the last ridge before the Black Divide—an endless canyon of charred stone, deeper than memory, older than gods. Across it, emerging from a fold in reality, came the Hollow Choir.
They didn't walk. They floated. Wreathed in voidlight, their mouths never moved—but their song vibrated inside the bones of every living thing.
Rose staggered as the music hit—pure sorrow, like being unmade. A reminder of every failure, every regret.
Mortain stepped in front of her, lightning crackling from his hands.
She pushed him aside.
"No," she growled. "They don't get to rewrite me."
And with that, Rose raised her hands—and the Bramble Flame surged to meet the song.