CHAPTER 1572: STORY 1572: THE HOLLOW CHOIR

The cavern yawned vast and formless, its ceiling lost in shadow. The red veins that lined the fissure now converged into a single monstrous pattern across the walls, glowing like arteries feeding a living body. The floor was slick with ash and strange residue that crunched, then squelched underfoot—neither solid nor liquid, but something caught in between.

At the center, the maw pulsed. It was no mouth of flesh but a rift of shifting dark, widening and contracting as though breathing. From it poured not air but voices—countless, broken, layered until they formed a living fog of sound. The echoes of all who had fallen before swirled here, bound into a choir without form.

Kael raised his blade, its fractured glow shivering as if recoiling from the presence. He spat blood, wiped his mouth, and muttered, “This is where it feeds.”

Elara clutched the boy closer. His glow flared faintly, flickering in rhythm with the cavern’s pulse. His chant came weak, yet every syllable seemed to cut the fog slightly. She whispered in his ear, steadying him, “Don’t let it take you—sing through it.”

The widow coughed, blood on her lips, her ruined throat straining to shape words. Instead, she let out a raw scream, jagged and short. It was swallowed almost instantly, but the fog twisted at its intrusion. “It knows us,” she rasped. “Knows what we sound like, how we break.”

The scarred woman slammed her spear into the ground, ribs cracking audibly from the force. Her voice rose hoarse but firm: “Then we scar the choir like we scarred silence.”

The farmer struck his drum, uneven, hollow beats that spread into the cavern. Each one came back warped, layered over with dozens of phantom echoes. He gritted his teeth and struck harder, deliberately off-beat, forcing discord into the fog.

The cavern writhed. The Unborn’s voice rose above the storm of echoes, vast and unrelenting:

“You walk in the hollow of my lungs. Every breath you take is mine. Every word you shape, every scream you bleed, returns to me. You are already sung into my flesh.”

The ground lurched. Shapes emerged from the fog—figures molded of ash and echo. Twisted imitations of the survivors themselves: a hollow Kael, his blade shrieking instead of ringing; a broken Elara cradling not a boy but a glowing husk; a widow screaming with no mouth; a farmer whose drumbeat was the sound of shattering ribs.

Kael snarled, staggering back as his hollow twin lifted its shrieking blade. “It’s us,” he spat. “What it thinks we are.”

The boy stirred, his glow pulsing jaggedly. His fractured chant grew louder, no longer only breath and syllable but defiance laced with silence between. The false forms faltered at the sound, their edges unraveling.

Elara held him steady, whispering, “That’s it—burn through the hollow.”

The Unborn roared, the maw flaring wide. Shadows rippled outward like a collapsing lung, hurling the survivors toward their own echo-born doubles.

And so began the battle not only against the Unborn—but against themselves.