The mass grave beneath Eastbridge was never meant to be found.
Hidden beneath layers of fabricated city history and arcane veils, it was a hollow chamber packed with the remains of those the Veil had sacrificed and erased. But now, the ground groaned open.
Lucas and Corin descended through the break in the sewer wall, guided by Neve's whispered maps and the tremors echoing through the Seed in Lucas's chest.
Each step stirred the bones of the dead.
"I can feel them," Lucas murmured. "They're not... at rest."
"They never were," Corin said. "The Veil didn't just kill them. They unmade their souls. Their names are gone. Their memories… scraped out."
They reached the bottom, where the bones had fused together—not randomly, but with intent. Skulls formed the ridges of a vast circular altar. Femurs stood upright like spears. In the center: a well of liquid night.
Neve's voice echoed in Lucas's thoughts. *That's the Choir's root.*
"It's feeding on them," Lucas whispered. "This is where they draw their songs from."
Corin stepped back. "Then we end it."
But before they could act, the altar rose—alive. A mass of bone and voice, a creature composed of all those silenced, their pain bound into a single will. It spoke not in words, but in requiems.
Lucas fell to his knees, overwhelmed. The Seed screamed in resonance. It couldn't devour this pain—it had to *learn* it.
"I see you," Lucas said through gritted teeth. "I hear you. Let me carry your names."
A wave of spectral fire rolled outward, and the bones began to dissolve.
Lucas stood again, eyes alight, skin cracked with golden veins.
The Choir root was gone.
But in its place remained a voice.
Not Malgros.
Not the Seed.
But someone who had died here—his mother.