Korath Draegmar: The Contained Pulse
The sky above Vael’Thera had no stars. only the pale glow of drifting ash and the vast ribcage of something that once tried to swallow the world.
Korath Draegmar stood upon the outer ridge of Khor’Mhalok, the bone-citadel capital carved into the titan Theramos. Wind screamed through hollow vertebrae behind him, carrying with it the low chant of the Ossuary Triune below. The city pulsed faintly. an almost imperceptible tremor that only Titan-hunters could feel.
Korath could always feel it.
He had been born during a bone-quake. His mother liked to say the Titan had roared to greet him. The Ghulvorn elders said it was an omen.
Korath did not believe in omens.
He believed in fractures.
Another tremor rippled beneath his boots.
Not a quake.
A heartbeat.
Vael’Thera was never quiet. Even in stillness, the Grave-Shard whispered. Bone corridors hummed with echo-magic. Dust carried memory. The Maw Bastion loomed behind him, built into Theramos’ ribcage, its towers etched with runes that shifted when the shard’s pulse changed.
Tonight, the runes were changing.
Korath knelt and pressed his gauntlet against the bone surface. Cold. Then warmth.
Something beneath the ossified plains was moving.
"You feel it too," came a voice.
He didn’t turn.
Mirael Hollowforged approached with measured mechanical steps, bronze joints whispering softly. Hollowforged constructs were born of broken Mechanarch relics and titan residue, and Mirael bore both in equal measure. Faint sigils glowed along her metal spine.
"The pulse is mapping irregular," she said. "It matches no previous pattern in the White Dune Archives."
"It’s not instability," Korath murmured. "It’s intention."
Mirael tilted her head. "Define intention."
"Something down there is trying to remember how to breathe."
The Ossuary Triune summoned them before the third tremor.
The chamber lay within a colossal hollow knuckle-bone suspended over a chasm. Mortarch-General Vaelos of the Ghulvorn stood at the center, flanked by a scarred human war-chief and a Hollowforged emissary whose face bore no mouth.
"The Maw Devout have taken a relic," Vaelos said without preamble. "A knucklebone shard from the Choir of Hollow Voices."
Korath’s jaw tightened. The Choir was sacred. caverns where ancient battle echoes resonated through walls.
"They claim it carries Theramos’ dormant heartbeat," Vaelos continued. "And they intend to awaken it."
The Hollowforged emissary projected an image into the air. deep beneath Vael’Thera’s plains, a fissure glowing faint red.
"The fracture extends toward the Hollow Verge plane," Mirael observed. "If activated, the pulse could planeslip the entire district."
Korath exhaled slowly.
"Where are they?"
"Akrath’s Fall," the war-chief replied. "The battlefield city. The ground there reenacts old wars at night. They believe the Titan’s memory is strongest in that place."
Korath smiled faintly.
"Then they’ve chosen the worst place possible to make something remember."
Akrath’s Fall smelled of iron and regret.
Even by day, the air shimmered with phantom clashes. Korath and Mirael moved through streets where half-formed soldiers flickered into view before dissolving.
The Maw Devout had gathered in the central crater. the original wound where Theramos’ skull had shattered against the shard.
Torches lined the pit. Cultists painted their faces in ash and bone dust. At the center stood a priest holding the stolen knucklebone fragment.
It pulsed.
Slow.
Deliberate.
"Children of the Grave!" the priest cried. "Theramos is not dead. He waits. We will give him voice!"
Korath did not wait for the ritual to crest.
He leapt.
Bone-echo magic surged from his gauntlets, drawn from the ossified ground. Memories embedded in the Titan’s skeleton flared around him. battle cries, the shattering of divine teeth, the final scream of a Vael’tharim.
He channeled it into a shockwave.
The first row of cultists fell.
Mirael descended behind him, mechanical limbs unfolding into bladed constructs, refracting faint Ethric light.
The priest drove the knucklebone into the ground.
The world stopped.
Then the heartbeat struck.
The crater split open.
A fissure of molten red light tore downward, revealing something vast beneath the plains.
An eye.
Not open.
But forming.
Korath felt it then. not sound, not tremor.
Hunger.
Theramos had been the Hungering Maw among the Vael’tharim. His final act had been to devour another Titan whole before being slain.
If even a fragment of that will remained.
The fissure widened.
Mirael’s voice cut through the chaos.
"The fracture is stabilizing toward manifestation! Korath!"
He made a decision.
Not a warrior’s decision.
A sentinel’s.
He drove his gauntlets deep into the bone ground and pulled.
Bone-echo magic flared violently. The memories of Theramos’ death flooded him. divine rage, betrayal, the crushing silence after annihilation.
Korath did not resist it.
He anchored it.
"You died," he growled into the widening abyss. "You bled into this shard. You are part of us now."
The eye twitched.
Korath forced the echo of the Titan’s final scream back into the fissure.
The priest shrieked as the knucklebone shattered.
The heartbeat faltered.
Then reversed.
The fissure began to close.
But something changed.
As the red light receded, a single pulse remained. not beneath the earth, but within Korath.
Mirael caught him as the crater sealed.
"You have absorbed a resonance," she said softly.
Korath coughed ash.
"Not absorbed," he whispered.
"Contained."
Back in Khor’Mhalok, the bone-runes shifted again.
But not in warning.
In harmony.
Korath stood once more upon the ribcage ridge.
The shard was quieter.
Not silent.
Never silent.
But steadier.
Mirael joined him.
"The White Dune Archives record no Titan-hunter surviving direct resonance anchoring," she said.
Korath flexed his fingers. Faint red light pulsed beneath his skin.
"Then record one now."
Far below, deep within the Titan Grave-Shard, something slept.
Not dead.
Not alive.
Balanced.
For now.
And in the Hollow Verge, something vast shifted its attention. aware that a mortal heart now beat in rhythm with a Titan’s grave.
