Ashes of the Forgotten Pact – Part 4

The skies above Hollowmere still wept ash by morning.

Charred rafters jutted like broken teeth from the skeletons of homes, and the once-bright banners of the town square lay soaked and torn in blackened puddles. The Spiral remained etched into the stone, cracked and flickering with pulses of dying light—like a heart refusing to stop beating.

Aric crouched beside the broken glyph, fingertips hovering above the scorched lines.

“It’s not dead,” he said.

Brenn approached from behind, arms heavy with salvaged scrolls and half-melted relics. “It’s dormant. Which, in Spiral terms, means it's dreaming of new ways to eat us.”

Liora knelt nearby, checking her blades with a methodical quiet that was almost meditative. Blood and soot stained her gauntlets, but her hands didn’t shake.

“We’ll burn the rest before it wakes,” she said flatly. “Whatever Verin started, we end it now.”

Aric exhaled, eyes lifting to the gray horizon. “That’s the problem. I’m not sure it was all Verin.”

Liora’s gaze sharpened. “Explain.”

Aric stood, brushing ash from his gloves. “The Spiral—this one, in Hollowmere—wasn’t just feeding off fear or pain. It was bound to something older. Something… singing.”

“Come again?” Brenn asked, looking visibly disturbed.

“I heard it during the collapse. Just before Verin fell unconscious. It wasn’t noise. It was a chant. Something under the earth.” Aric hesitated. “It knew my name.”

Raelyn emerged from the wreckage with a soot-smeared book clutched in her arms. “I think I found why. There’s an older layer beneath the pact—predating the church, even the Spiral glyphs. Some kind of proto-rite called the Dirge of Binding.”

Brenn went pale. “The Choir Below.”

“That’s a legend,” Aric said. “Something old priests used to whisper to keep novices from poking into crypts.”

“Then why is there a full transcribed version buried under Hollowmere,” Raelyn countered, “with the sigils etched in both church script and abyssal bloodrunes?”

No one had an answer. The silence pressed like the air before a thunderclap.

Later that evening, they descended into the catacombs beneath Hollowmere’s ruined chapel—Raelyn at point with lightkindled runes illuminating their path. The tunnel grew colder with every step, the stone weeping moisture from centuries of forgotten sorrow.

The walls were lined with masks—ceremonial, eyeless, leering in the dark. They hung like sentinels, carved from old bone and obsidian. Each was etched with names… and dates long before the pact’s supposed origin.

“The pact wasn’t the beginning,” Liora murmured. “It was a renewal.”

Their path led to a wide antechamber. In its center stood a pillar of saltstone, cracked and hollow. A ring of standing stones surrounded it, each marked with spirals that twisted inward, not outward.

And there stood Verin.

His cloak was gone. His face drawn, blood at the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t casting, wasn’t channeling—he was just listening.

“They sing to me,” he whispered, eyes distant. “They never stopped. We just forgot how to hear.”

Aric stepped forward, heart thudding.

“Verin—listen to me. Whatever’s down here, it’s older than either of our bloodlines. It doesn’t care about the pact. It only wants out.”

Verin turned slowly, sorrow in his gaze. “They’ve already begun to awaken. Hollowmere was just a key. But the vault—the real vault—is beneath our family estate.”

Aric’s blood ran cold. “Blackhollow?”

Verin nodded. “That’s where it began. The first binding. Your ancestor… and mine. They didn’t seal a pact. They imprisoned a god.”

A low rumble shook the chamber. The salt pillar cracked further, threads of red light bleeding from the fractures.

Suddenly, the chamber burst into motion—skeletal figures clad in fractured bone and rusted plate erupted from the walls, drawn by the sigils Raelyn’s light had awakened. Their eyes were hollow, but their mouths moved in harmony—a droning hymn that rattled teeth and split thought.

“The Choir,” Brenn gasped, drawing sigils in the air. “They’re singing the pact back into place!”

Aric, blade in hand, stepped forward to meet the first wraith. Steel clashed against ancient bone, sparks flying in the tight gloom. Liora moved like a shadow, striking low and vanishing before the twisted claws could find her.

“Raelyn, kill the light!” Aric shouted.

“What?!”

“They’re bound to resonance. You’re feeding them!”

With a curse, Raelyn dimmed the rune—a sudden plunge into dark silence.

And in that silence, Aric felt something press against his mind. A voice not his own. Not Verin’s.

Not human.

It whispered not with words, but remembrance. Of blood, of betrayal. Of sacrifice.

Verin dropped to his knees. “It’s showing you the truth, isn’t it?”

Aric swallowed hard. “Our ancestors… didn’t make a pact to stop the Spiral. They traded lives to chain it.”

Verin nodded weakly. “And now the chain is rusted through.”

They managed to escape the crypt, sealing the passage with runeblades and collapsing a portion of the stairwell. Aric knew it wouldn’t hold forever. The Choir would rise again.

As they camped under the skeletal trees north of Hollowmere, silence settled between the group. Only the crackle of flame filled the air, and the creak of Aric’s armor as he adjusted his posture beside the fire.

Raelyn was the first to speak.

“Do you believe it?” she asked softly. “That our entire order… was founded on a lie?”

Brenn didn’t answer. Liora just stared at the flames.

Aric looked to Verin, who lay wrapped in blankets, trembling but alive.

“I believe,” Aric said, “that the truth won’t matter if we can’t stop what’s coming.”

Verin’s voice was hoarse. “There’s still a way.”

Everyone turned.

“I saw it,” Verin said, eyes reflecting the firelight. “In the Choir’s memories. One final rite. The Sundering. It severs the curse permanently.”

“What’s the cost?” Aric asked.

Verin looked at him—and for the first time in weeks, he smiled. Not cruelly. Not bitterly.

Just sadly.

“One of us has to sing it. And not survive the final note.”

Aric stared at him, then looked up at the smoke-flecked stars above.

The fate of the pact—and of the bloodlines bound to it—would be decided at Blackhollow.

And the price had never been higher.

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All Parts of the Series

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 1

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 2

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 3

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 4

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 5