Sorry for the delay guys, had issues but am good now. Let's continue...
The Hollows screeched,recoiling.
And deep beneath them, something stirred.
Something the forest had buried long ago.
Something waking up.
The golden light from the awakened Heartwood bathed Liora's trembling form, and for the first time she screamed in relief instead of pain.
The inky veins of corruption burned away under its radiance, her Hollow eye dissolving like smoke in sunlight. The remaining Hollows shrieked, scrambling back into the shadows, their forms flickering between monster and memory human faces flashing beneath the rot before vanishing again.
Kael… Liora gasped, clutching her chest where the darkness had been. It's gone! can feel it...
But then—
A whisper.
Not from the forest.
From inside her.
Her hands flew to her temples as a voice cold, ancient, hungry rasped through her mind:
"You cannot kill what is already dead, little sapling."
Her body locked up. The golden light around her twisted, warping into something darker. The roots beneath her feet recoiled as her shadow stretched unnaturally long a crown of thorns forming in its silhouette.
Tari stumbled back. Liora…?
Liora's head snapped up.
Her eyes were no longer human.
No longer Hollow.
Something else.
One burned with Heartwood gold. The other pulsed with abyssal black. When she spoke, two voices overlapped hers, and something far older:
The corruption was never the sickness, she breathed. It was the *cure* for something worse.
The cavern trembled. The Hollows didn't flee this time they knelt.
And then—
The ground where Kael had vanished ruptured.
A single, skeletal hand shot from the earth, gripping Tari's ankle.
Not Kael's.
Not human.
Liora's mismatched eyes widened in dread.
Oh no...
He woke it up.
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