The Hollow Choir sang, and the world listened.
Their notes weren't sounds but sensations—loss braided with despair, yearning without hope. Each syllable wrapped around the hearts of Emberfen's army like cold vines, threatening to choke resolve and unravel courage.
Rose stood at the edge of the Divide, flames climbing her arms like living serpents. Around her, soldiers clutched their heads, some falling to their knees. The Choir's song clawed into their memories, weaponizing every regret, every hidden wound.
But not Rose.
She felt the pain. The ache of her mother's absence. The sting of betrayal in her youth. The crushing weight of her own chaotic choices. But she did not let it bury her.
She burned it.
The Bramble Flame burst outward from her chest, a wildfire of crimson and violet, pulsing with her will. It slammed into the edge of the Choir's melody like two waves colliding mid-air. The impact lit the sky with sparks and tore a jagged silence through the air.
Mortain stepped to her side, silver eyes narrowed. "They faltered."
"They'll recover," she said. "Unless we don't give them time to."
The Hollow Choir's front line twisted, reshaped—half-formed bodies becoming more solid, their faces shifting like wax over bone. Creatures born from divine nightmares took form: a woman with six mouths and no eyes, a beast stitched together from regrets, a child's voice trapped in a coffin-shaped body.
"On my mark," Mortain said.
"No," Rose said. "Now."
She launched forward, flame lashing out in a blooming arc. The Bramble Fire didn't just burn—it remembered. Where it touched the Choir, their forms cracked, and fragments of stolen memory escaped like fireflies.
Behind her, Emberfen's army roared back into motion. The Boneglass Archers let loose a volley of arrows carved from memory—each one a sharp echo of past victories. The moss witches chanted in unison, calling vines from the ashen earth to snare spectral limbs. The Cindermarch Riders surged on ember-beasts, hooves cracking stone with every charge.
Mortain unleashed a bolt of lightning that shattered the sky, cutting a line of pure defiance into the heart of the enemy. The six-mouthed woman screamed with all her mouths and fell into a pool of shadow.
Rose turned, searching for the next threat—and found Basil standing atop a broken cart, lobbing enchanted fruit at a voidspawn that had started devouring soldiers' shadows.
"Bad touch!" Basil shouted. "Eat peach!"
Nimbus swirled above him, zapping anything that got too close with indignant little sparks.
The Choir's song wavered again.
Rose pressed her palm to the ground and whispered an old word in Witchtongue. Fire erupted in a circle around her, pushing the Choir back. She stood inside the ring, breathing hard, firelight flickering in her eyes.
She caught Mortain's gaze across the battlefield.
"We can win this," she mouthed.
Mortain gave the faintest nod. "Then let's make them bleed for every note."
And with that, the second wave began.