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Nightveil – Temporary Camp
The fire sputtered under the weight of what was coming.
Marrow stood with her feet planted wide, her staff digging into the earth like a banner of defiance.
Dax crossed his arms, the flickering light painting scars across his heavy frame.
Sera slipped through the edges of the camp like a wraith, eyes sharp, mouth set.
Nyra faced them all, the boy standing at her side, silent but watchful.
Kael leaned back against a broken pillar, arms folded, saying nothing—but his attention never left Nyra.
"You said you needed us," Marrow rasped, voice like gravel dragged through old blood.
"We're here. What war calls you?"
Nyra didn't hesitate.
"I need to tear down gods."
The fire snapped like a scream.
Sera whistled low under her breath.
Dax only grunted, as if he'd expected nothing less from Nyra Vale.
Marrow's smile was slow, cracked. "About time."
Nyra stepped closer, silver still pulsing faintly through her veins.
"The old pacts are broken. Nightveil's heart bleeds Hollowfire. The gods are stirring. And soon, the Council will turn against us to protect their throne of bones."
She lifted her palm — the thread of silver, the mark of her survival, burned visibly under the skin.
"This is our time. Our fight. No courts. No kings. No old chains."
The boy looked up at her, his voice a whisper only the broken would understand.
"No mercy."
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Elsewhere – The Gathering Storm
Far beyond the crater, where frost clung to dying trees, a different kind of army was gathering.
Not Nyra's.
Not Kael's.
These were creatures twisted by old magic — things left behind when kingdoms fell and gods wept.
Aberrations born of forgotten oaths.
The white-haired girl — the one with cracked gold veins — led them with a smile sharper than knives.
Each step she took resurrected another horror from the dirt — skeletal wolves, eyeless ravens, ghost-lords wrapped in decayed banners.
She was no savior.
She was a herald.
And the world was already bending to her will.
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Nightveil – Camp Meeting
Nyra sat cross-legged by the fire, Marrow and Dax across from her, maps and old bloodstained scrolls spread between them.
Veila leaned over her shoulder, her wings twitching every few seconds as if sensing something in the night beyond.
Varek circled the camp perimeter with Sera, sharp-eyed and alert.
Iris tended the boy, tracing protective runes over his arms in ancient ink.
Kael watched it all.
Nyra pointed at three locations on the map — dead zones where the fractures in reality had started to leak Hollowfire into the land.
"We strike first," she said.
"Seal the gates before they bleed more poison into the world."
"And if something's already crawled through?" Dax asked, one eyebrow rising.
Nyra's smile was cold.
"Then we remind them who the broken bow to."
Marrow tapped the edge of the map. "And the Council?"
Nyra's gaze flickered to Kael — brief, sharp — before returning to Marrow.
"We deal with them last.
After the gods."
The fire crackled.
Veila muttered something under her breath — a prayer or a curse — and the ground shivered faintly in response.
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Hollowfire Beneath Nightveil
Deep below the crater, the fracture pulsed faster now.
A heart without a body.
A scream without a throat.
The gods were no longer merely watching.
They were moving.
And in the Void where the Crowned Nothing once ruled alone, something new was taking root.
A power stitched from broken promises and blood-soaked dreams.
A power that would not be bound by threads, oaths, or mercy.
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Camp – Final Scene
Nyra rose from the fire, the boy at her side.
She met every eye in her new army — Kael, Iris, Veila, Varek, Marrow, Dax, Sera — and spoke the words that sealed them together not by oath, but by survival.
"No one's coming to save us."
Her silver-threaded hand lifted toward the black sky.
"So we will save ourselves."
Above them, the fractured heavens trembled.
Far in the distance, the white-haired girl smiled and turned toward Nightveil.
The broken were waking.
And war was coming.