The Hollow did not wake gently.
By dawn, the inner courtyards seethed with movement.
Disciples armed themselves under thin pretenses.
Gray Division agents stalked the halls with cold efficiency.
Councilor Marren issued sealed orders to the guard captains, each scroll inked in black wax—the mark reserved for matters of "irreversible deviation."
The air stank of burnt sage and iron.
Kael was no longer a problem to be questioned.
He was a threat to be ended.
Elric stood at the edge of the Assembly Hall, hands folded in the sleeves of his worn gray robe.
He watched without speaking.
Without interfering.
Until Varra approached.
She bowed, only slightly.
"Master Elric," she said, voice polished smooth. "Your pupil has broken sacred law. His containment now falls under Gray Division jurisdiction."
Elric regarded her for a long moment.
Then said, voice even:
"You never planned to contain him."
Varra smiled thinly.
"We contain what we can. Destroy what we cannot."
For a moment, the old master said nothing.
Then he inclined his head the barest fraction.
"As you will."
He turned away.
And for the first time since Kael had entered Verdant Hollow, he offered no shield, no guidance.
Only absence.
Deep below, beyond the old herb tunnels where sunlight never reached, Kael rested against the cold curve of a forgotten arch.
His breathing was shallow but steady.
The bottle pressed warm against his ribs.
It hadn't pulsed in hours.
Hadn't needed to.
Its presence was enough.
He listened to the Hollow shift above him—the distant scrape of boots, the muted clang of weapons.
No alarms yet.
But they were coming.
He didn't need Sariel's warnings anymore.
He could feel the Hollow turning against itself.
He moved cautiously.
Following tunnels mapped more by instinct than memory.
Several times, the paths forked.
Dead ends.
Collapsed halls.
Twisting ways that led nowhere.
Each time, as he hesitated, the bottle would pulse faintly—left, not right.
Down, not up.
Not a voice.
Not command.
Just… a nudge.
As if it remembered the way.
At one such fork, Kael paused before a heavy door half-swallowed by roots.
Thick, gnarled tendrils wrapped the frame, pulsing faintly with residual life.
He touched them lightly.
Felt the way they recoiled—not violently, but respectfully.
The bottle at his side glowed once, dim and steady.
The roots pulled apart just enough to allow passage.
Kael slipped through.
And the tunnel swallowed him whole.
Back at the Assembly Hall, the final decision was made.
Kael was now an Unbound Threat.
Classification: Gold Tier.
Retrieval orders modified.
Alive—preferable.
Dead—acceptable.
Varra accepted the decree with the same calm she had worn since her arrival.
She turned to her assembled operatives.
"No hesitation. No mercy. Bring me the vessel."
They saluted in silence.
Elric lingered after the others had departed.
Alone in the hollowed hall, he exhaled slowly.
Not in regret.
Not in grief.
But in inevitability.
He withdrew a small packet from his sleeve—a folded slip of old parchment.
Written in hand not seen in decades.
He whispered to the empty air:
"I told them you would awaken too soon."
He tucked the parchment beneath a loose stone in the western wall.
A place Kael might find.
If he survived long enough.
Far below, Kael crouched beside an ancient drainage cistern.
The bottle pulsed in his hands.
Steady.
Urgent.
Not fear.
Not command.
Direction.
Beyond the cracked stone lip, an old escape route opened into the outer forest ravines.
Collapsed in places.
Flooded in others.
But not impassable.
Not yet.
Footsteps echoed behind him—faint but growing.
Gray Division was close.
Too close.
Kael tightened the pouch around the bottle.
Stood.
Shouldered the worn cloak Sariel had hidden in the supply cache.
And ran.
Not for safety.
Not for freedom.
But because somewhere beyond the walls of the Hollow, a different war waited.
One he hadn't chosen.
One he couldn't refuse.
Above him, unnoticed in the chaos, the western wall of the Assembly Hall shifted.
A loose stone fell outward.
Landing soundlessly in the grass.
And the folded parchment hidden within whispered promises into the cold morning air.