Chapter 8
Micah turned, the red glow in his hollow eyes sweeping across the broken assembly. His gaze lingered on none, yet all felt it pierce them—like a blade pressed against the soul.
Then the choir surged.
The never-ending voices swelled in volume, their harmonies twisting into something vast and suffocating. It was no longer background—it was everything. The very air quivered, the ground hummed, and the stone beneath their feet trembled as if struggling to bear the weight of that infinite sound.
And then Micah began to rise.
At first, it was subtle—dust lifting in a ring beneath his feet as though gravity itself had loosened its grip. His skeletal form drifted upward, slow, deliberate, robes and tatters of cloth swaying as though in deep water. Higher and higher he rose, each inch matched by another swell of the choir, until the sound was deafening, vibrating through skulls, chests, and marrow.
To the witnesses below, he seemed less a figure and more an icon—an image ripped from the walls of some forgotten cathedral, lifted into living judgment before their eyes.
He rose, and the earth obeyed.
The choir swelled until it was no longer sound but presence, a tide of voices without number, without beginning or end. It pressed against the marrow of every soul, filling silence, filling thought, leaving no space for breath.
And then he stopped—suspended just above the ground. Not high, not distant. Close enough to be seen, too far to be touched. Hovering as though the world itself had lifted him and would not let him fall.
His crown of thorns cut its silhouette against the bleeding sky, his hollow eyes burning with red fire. In that stillness, he did not seem to float; he seemed to belong there, as if the air itself had always been his throne.
None watching could say whether he was angel or ruin, god or grave. They only knew they could not lift their eyes from him.
And the choir did not end. It held its single, endless note, as if the universe itself had entered into agreement: he was above them now.
Forever.
Every gaze was drawn upward. Some wept, some trembled, some knelt until their foreheads pressed into the dirt. None dared turn away, for his presence demanded sight, demanded recognition.
And then the truth settled upon them like the weight of eternity.
What had been done to Horace was not singular. It was not accident, nor mercy, nor punishment alone. It was the pattern. The precedent. The law.
They felt it before he moved—the certainty that their turn had come.
A shiver of silence rippled beneath the endless choir, as though even that immortal chorus anticipated the harvest. Micah's gaze, burning red within the hollows of bone, swept across them like a blade through wheat. The air thickened. Shadows quivered. The ground beneath their feet grew unsteady, as though recoiling from what must come next.
One man screamed and tried to flee. He made it three steps before his body seized, chest bowing backward in the same awful arc Horace had made. Light flickered through his ribs. His cry turned into a shriek not of lungs but of soul.
Another fell to her knees, clutching her chest as her veins bulged black beneath the skin, her essence bleeding out in trembling filaments that clung desperately to her flesh. She begged—screamed for forgiveness, for mercy, for anything—but the cords kept pulling, stretching toward the figure above them.
And all the while Micah did not flinch, did not hurry, did not speak. Hovering in his terrible stillness, he extended his hand once more, palm open, expectant.
The choir swelled, vast and endless, a cathedral of sound without walls. The witnesses knew then that what they had feared most was true: Horace had not been chosen. He had been first.
And now the rest would follow.
The crowd had swelled beyond counting. Word of the sound, the impossible choir, had drawn thousands through the crooked streets of Manhattan until every alley, every rooftop, every square inch of cobblestone pressed with human bodies. By the time Micah rose above them, more than twenty thousand souls stood in his shadow, craning necks, weeping, clutching children, whispering prayers to gods who no longer answered.
And then his hand opened.
The choir surged in impossible harmony, its voices multiplying, folding over one another in chords too vast for human throats. The endless hymn did not drown the screams—it wove them in.
Light erupted across the multitude. One by one, then all at once, pale threads bled through flesh: through ribs, through throats, through eyes widened in terror. Shimmers trembled above the crowd, like countless lanterns lit in unison—but every flicker was a soul, dragged unwilling from the cage of its body.
The city convulsed. Men dropped their tools, falling backward as luminous cords tore through their sternums. Women clutched their infants to their breasts, only to feel the glow bleeding from the tiny ribs as well. Children shrieked as their souls stretched from their small bodies like kites ripped from the ground. Horses reared and screamed as their essence bled from their flanks, glowing filaments pulled skyward.
And all of it rose toward him.
The screams became countless. They did not clash, they harmonized—each voice seared in pain, bent and folded by the endless choir until despair itself became a hymn. The wailing of mothers, the roars of dockworkers, the thin cries of children—all were drawn into one great resonance, shaking windows from their frames, rattling the iron bones of the city.
Bodies fell by the thousands, husks collapsing on cobblestone, on mud, into the gutters. Flesh shriveled, veins blackened, bones tore through skin as corpses mangled themselves in the wake of separation. The air thickened with the stench of bile, blood, piss, and soot as life was stripped bare.
Above it all, Micah hovered—immovable, unshaken, his skeletal crown cutting the bloody sky. His open hand drank in the rising storm of souls, countless strands of radiance weaving together into a writhing tapestry of torment. His other hand traced the air slowly, marking sigils into the light as it came, each line carved into the essence of tens of thousands. Every mark summoned another shriek, another wave of agony, a new chord for the choir to claim.
The city itself seemed to buckle. Glass shattered in tenement windows. Wooden signs cracked and fell. Dogs howled, bells rang without being touched, and the harbor waters churned as if the sea itself recoiled.
In that moment, Manhattan was no longer a city of merchants, of immigrants, of brick and timber. It was a cathedral of torment, every street a nave, every building an arch, every scream a hymn.
And at its altar hovered Micah.
And Micah, bone-crowned and crimson-eyed, hovered above the hollowed city.
The streets were silent of life, silent of color—save three: black, white, and crimson.
Shadows stretched without end, corpses lay husked and drained, and in the sky above, the choir endured. It was not a song of mercy. It was not even a song of victory. It was endless, a tide that bore no beginning and promised no end.
Yet amid that silence, his gaze turned.
There—a house. One house only, standing among the wreckage.
And it glowed.
Not with fire, not with mortal flame, but with a light uncorrupted: a veil of protection that clung to its walls like oil upon water. It did not tremble before him. It did not yield. It was not strong, yet it was divine.
Micah's soul stirred.
Recognition struck him—not in thought, not in memory, but in something deeper, older, chained within him. For a heartbeat, the curse faltered. He remembered. A warmth. A place. A belonging that had not been stolen, but had been his.
But the curse returned, heavy as iron, black as the void between stars. It pressed through him, filling his hollow frame with hunger, with command, with the endless dominion of the choir. The grin returned to his teeth of bone. His hand, still clutching the storm of souls, tightened.
And then—he heard it.
Not the endless choir. Not the shrieks within his ribs. But from below.
A voice.
A song, sung in a cappella.
It rose from that house, frail yet steady, cutting through the eternal hymn like a blade through cloth. Each note trembled, not vast, not infinite—but human. Achingly human.
And the soul inside him quivered. The memory flickered once more.
And lo—above the husked city, where the air was thick with silence and the choir unending, he heard it.
Not the chant of eternity. Not the screams bound within his ribs. But a voice, rising soft and clear, fragile yet untouchable.
It was Mira's.
The song was not sung now, but remembered. A recording upon the air, etched not in flesh but in essence. The house itself remembered her—the walls held her timbre, the stones her breath, the air her sorrow. It was not music. It was presence.
And as it reached him, the God of Death faltered.
His crown of bone dimmed. The crimson glow within his sockets flickered. His grip upon the storm of souls trembled as though the hand no longer knew itself. For her song had always been his shield, his compass, his salvation. It had held him once before, and it held him still.
The veil cracked.
Where once the curse had bound him in endless hunger, a fissure opened. Memories poured in, flooding him without mercy: Mira's eyes in the half-light, her hand in his, her voice singing not to the world but to him. Love unmeasured, unbroken, unyielding.
His skeletal grin faltered. His hollow chest ached with something long forgotten, something greater than torment. The god of death, who had silenced thousands, was undone by a single song.
And the choir—the endless choir—wavered. For the first time, its tones bent, discordant against a melody stronger than eternity.
Her voice. Mira's voice.
The one who had loved him more than anything in this world.
And as before, so now—her song saved him.
And as her voice rose, the God of Death faltered.
The veil cracked, thin as glass under strain. At first, it was only a flicker: a hesitation in his skeletal grin, a tremor in the hand that had dragged thousands into torment. Her song pierced him as an arrow pierces flesh, swift, sure, undeniable.
But it did not stop there.
Her melody lingered, and with every note the veil split wider.
Memories bled through.
He saw her as she had been—the matriarch, Mira—gray hair bound in a braid, her eyes steady with a fire that neither time nor grief could quench. He remembered the curve of her lips when she spoke his name, the strength of her hand as it clasped his own. He heard the warmth of her laughter, the weight of her counsel.
He remembered her voice in its many forms: stern when guiding, soft when comforting, bright when singing. Always singing. For when his heart was weary, when his burdens grew heavier than mountains, she had lifted them with a song.
The cursed form shuddered as if the bones themselves remembered her touch.
The crimson glow in his eyes dimmed, faltered, rekindled—then dimmed again.
More memories came. He saw nights by the hearth, where her presence was not simply companion but anchor. He saw her scoldings that carried no malice, only love disguised as steel. He saw her standing alone in prayer, speaking to the heavens with a voice both fierce and tender.
And above all, he saw her sacrifice—every pain she endured, every sorrow she bore, to shield him from the world's cruelty. Her essence had been woven into his, thread by thread, until even the curse that had made him the God of Death could not unmake it.
Micah faltered mid-air, as though the curse itself was bleeding out through the cracks Mira's voice had made. His crown of bone dimmed, its thorns no longer certain. His hand, still clutching the storm of souls, trembled—not from hunger, but from doubt.
The choir wailed louder, endless, trying to drown her out. But the song remained, stronger in its frailty than the hymn in its infinity. The universe bent to acknowledge it, the eternal dirge twisting against her single melody.
And in that battle, Micah was not death. He was Micah.
Her grandson. Her blood. Her beloved.
Her song had saved him, as it always did.
The eternal choir faltered. Its endless voices, once vast enough to drown the world, began to dim. One by one the tones cracked, bent, and bled into silence. And in their place, another sound rose—frail at first, but steady.
Mira's voice.
The song she had always carried.
The Dreamer's Road.
It wove through the air, each note a thread of gold binding the shattered night. The hymn of despair recoiled against it, the endless dirge unraveling like old cloth before a lullaby. And as the choir weakened, the song grew, filling the silence left behind, until there was no room for torment—only her melody, soft as breath, strong as love.
In the distance, the house shone. The same house that had stood unmoved, its walls remembering her, its stones holding her sorrow. Its light flared brighter with every verse, spilling into the streets, pushing back the red haze. Shadows peeled away from its walls, fleeing before a radiance they could not corrupt.
The Dreamer's Road was not vast, not infinite. It was human. But in its humanity it was unbreakable, and it outshone eternity.
Micah trembled. The crimson fire in his sockets sputtered, guttered, then dimmed. The skeletal grin slackened, his crown of thorns tilted as though uncertain of its own dominion. He swayed, a figure suspended not by power but by memory, caught between abyss and lullaby.
The final notes rang out. The choir broke. Silence fell—silence, save for her song.
And then he fell.
Not as a god descending, but as a grandson collapsing. The earth cracked beneath his weight, stone groaning as his skeletal form struck the cobblestones. Dust rose in a halo around him, settling upon his frame as the glow inside him faded to darkness.
He lay still. Beside him, untouched by the ruin, lay Mira's body. The veil of light around her had dimmed, yet endured long enough to guide him here. His hollow sockets turned toward her, empty now of flame, filled only with ache. A trembling hand of bone reached out, brushing her cold fingers.
And so the God of Death lay faint beside the body of his grandmother—no throne, no dominion, no choir. Only the Dreamer's Road carrying him back to her, as it always had.
The last note of The Dreamer's Road lingered, faint as breath, steady as heartbeat. The endless choir shuddered, fractured, then collapsed into silence—its voices snuffed out like candles in a gale.
And in the silence, the city lay dead.
Every witness who had screamed, prayed, clawed, or fled was now hushed. Corpses stretched from gutter to rooftop, husks sprawled in grotesque bows where their souls had been torn free. Windows gaped empty, streets ran thick with the stink of blood and bile, and all of Manhattan stood hollow.
Only one sound remained.
Her song.
The veil of light around Mira's body glowed faintly, the house beyond shining brighter and brighter, as though remembering her with each note. The lullaby did not erase the ruin—it sanctified it, stitching meaning into a wound that would never close.
And Micah—no longer floating, no longer crowned in fire—fell.
His skeletal frame struck the cobblestones with a thunder that cracked the street. Dust plumed upward, his bones shuddering against stone, the remnants of his dominion collapsing in fragments around him. He lay in the ruin he had wrought, the endless choir gone, leaving only silence and her song.
Slowly, painfully, he turned. The hollow sockets that had burned like furnaces dimmed now to shadow. His hand, skeletal still, dragged itself across the stone until it brushed against hers. The matriarch's hand—cold, still, fragile as porcelain.
He clutched it as though it could anchor him against the abyss.
The storm of souls he had claimed still circled faintly above, pale lights wavering in the night. They pressed at the edges of reality like a tide waiting to collapse—but as his bony finger traced a single line through the air, the fabric of the world split. A seam yawned open, black and endless, and with a sweep of his hand, the storm was drawn inward. Thousands upon thousands of souls vanished into the rift, swallowed like dust in wind.
Silence.
The tear sealed itself behind them.
And Micah—bone and shadow and ruin—lay still beside his grandmother's body. The glow of Mira's veil flickered, dimmed, and at last faded, leaving only him and her in the quiet.
His skeletal hand clutched hers tighter. His frame trembled. And slowly—agonizingly—his body began to change. Bone creaked, marrow groaned, and the faintest flicker of flesh began to coil back across his form, as if the abyss itself were loosening its hold.
His bones groaned as if reluctant to release him. Cracks spread through his ribs, not of breaking but of mending, splinters knitting, marrow seething with heat. A faint pulse stirred in the hollows of his chest—a beat, fragile, irregular, but alive.
Flesh crawled across him like dawn breaking over ruins. Veins, dark and wet, coiled back through the lattice of bone, carrying warmth where there had been only emptiness. Muscles shuddered into place, twitching spasms binding tendon to marrow, sinew to joint. His jaw, once locked in an eternal grin, softened as skin stretched over teeth, lips trembling into form.
The crown of bone crumbled. Thorn by thorn it split, shards falling away in chalky dust, until only his sweat-matted hair remained—black, heavy, human. The crimson glare in his eyes dimmed, and in its place bloomed the first wet glint of pupils, shimmering with tears he had not felt in centuries.
The air shuddered with the echo of what had been. The endless choir was gone, yet its phantom lingered like a storm beyond the horizon. And through that fading storm, The Dreamer's Road carried him, one fragile note at a time, until his form was no longer god, nor monster, but grandson.
Micah gasped. His first breath rattled sharp and wet, choking on air as though lungs themselves were a miracle too heavy to bear. His chest convulsed, dragging in another gasp, another, until sobs broke through—raw, human, mortal.
He turned his head, cheek pressed to cobblestone still warm with ruin, and his hand—flesh now, trembling, dirt-lined—tightened around hers. Mira's fingers, stiff in death, lay within his palm. He pulled them close to his chest, to the heart that now beat again, a drum returned from silence.
Tears streamed down his face, cutting through soot and blood. No crimson flame, no hollow sockets, no crown—only a boy reborn in the ashes of a god.
And there, upon the dead streets of Manhattan, Micah wept beside the body of his grandmother.