The newborn thing that had been Lucien Virell inhaled.
The sound was wrong—not air rushing into lungs, but the wet, guttural suction of a leech attaching to flesh. The Maw's chamber trembled as its newest apostle rose from the pooling darkness, his silver mask-eyes now fused to a face of living shadow.
Orlan's waxen hands trembled as he pressed them together in prayer. "What does it remember?"
Kael tilted his head. The Hollow Crown dripped void onto the newborn's brow.
"Nothing useful."
The thing that was Lucien opened its mouth—and the estate screamed through it.
The sound tore through stone and flesh alike.
The walls bled black ichor, their veins pulsing in time with the shriek.
The servants clutched their ears—then their eyes, as their pupils dilated into perfect silver circles.
The Scourge Knights at the gates staggered, their blessed armor singing in harmonic resonance.
Kael watched, impassive, as the scream carved its message into reality.
I see you.
The words weren't sound. They were contagion.
The lead knight, Vareth the Unbroken, made three fatal mistakes.
He ordered charge. His company's lances gleamed with Eclipse magic—useless against the estate's new flesh. The ground swallowed their warhorses whole.
He drew his sword. The blessed steel shattered the moment it touched Lucien's shadow-form. The shards rearranged midair into a grinning mouth that whispered: "You brought the wrong god."
He prayed. The moment Vareth invoked the Church's final rite, his own armor turned inward. The steel plates fused through muscle, the holy inscriptions burning backward into his skin.
Kael crouched beside the dying knight.
"Tell your pope," he murmured, "we'll return his herald shortly."
He pressed a finger to Vareth's forehead.
The knight's body dissolved into a swarm of silver flies—each carrying a fragment of the scream.
By dawn:
The nearest village woke with Lucien's voice whispering from their wells.
The Church's pigeons returned to their roosts with hollowed-out skulls, their feathers now edged in black.
The Eclipse Twins, still gestating in their lab, kicked violently. Their glass tanks cracked.
Orlan watched the horizon darken with storm clouds that moved against the wind. His third eye wept hot wax down his cheeks.
"Will it hurt them?" he asked.
Kael adjusted his crown. The void dripping from it formed tiny, shrieking faces as it hit the ground.
"That's not the right question."
Some messages aren't heard with ears.
They're felt in the hollow places between heartbeats.