The sky above the ruins turned black by noon.
Not from clouds.
But from banners.
Black iron standards carried on the backs of armored men, each marked with the same seal:
⛓️⛓️ The Warden's Mark.
The Chainbearers had arrived.
They were not soldiers.
Not assassins.
Not even zealots.
They were examples.
Each one a walking cathedral of pain, body fused with metal, spines woven with living sigils, hearts locked in golden cages. Their mouths had long been sewn shut, replaced by instruments that spoke only one thing: Order.
And their purpose was singular,
To remind the world that the Chains were not broken.
Only buried.
They moved through the city like a plague.
Wherever they passed, silence followed.
Not Nihil's Echo this time.
But fear.
True, wordless fear.
One child tried to run.
The Chainbearers did not chase.
They pointed.
And the child's shadow twisted, wrapped around him, and snapped his body in half.
Nihil saw the first from a rooftop.
They walked beneath him. Nine of them.
Dragging cages behind them, shaped like coffins but made of mirrors. Inside each, people screamed, not aloud, but through their reflections. Each scream twisted the glass, made it fracture and ripple, as though the soul inside was trapped in the act of suffering.
He watched.
Expressionless.
But inside, he listened.
The Whisper of Ash pulsed in his ribs, begging to be loosed.
But he held it back.
Not yet.
This was not a battle for silence.
This was a war of symbols.
That night, he visited an old shrine.
Half-collapsed. Drenched in rust and old prayers.
And there, in the ash,
He built something.
Not an altar. Not a weapon.
A page.
Made of scrap iron. Stained cloth. Blood.
He wrote a single phrase:
"Your chains are lies."
"Pain is not penance. It is proof of your captor."
"The Hollow does not forgive. He remembers."
And then he left it behind.
The next morning, someone found it.
And copied it.
Then ten did.
Then fifty.
Then a hundred.
Within days, it was on every ruin wall.
Etched in dirt.
Carved into brick.
Sung in whisper-rituals before sleep.
Not a rebellion. Not yet.
Just a doctrine.
A belief born of absence, not promise.
And at its center,
A figure with no face.
The Chainbearers tried to stop it.
They found one man carving the creed into a wall with broken glass.
They shattered his hands.
He kept carving with his teeth.
They burned him.
But by morning, a hundred more had taken his place.
And that was when the Warden sent the message:
A horn made of living bone, sounded from the top of the Chains.
A scream that lasted an hour.
And when it ended, the city shook.
He was coming.
Not his priests.
Not his hunters.
Him.
The master of chains.
The collector of gods.
The first who wore silence like a crown,
The Warden.
And Nihil… smiled.
Not in triumph.
But in knowing.
That now, it would begin.
Not a game.
Not a rebellion.
But a reclamation.