The dawn crept over the Hollow Wastes, but it brought no warmth, no light.
Time passed-----Elara could feel it settling in her bones like dust---but the sky remained a filthy smear of rust and shadow. No sunrise. No clarity. Just endless haze that swallowed up the world and spat it back twisted. Even the shadows misbehaved, stretching and twitching when nothing else dared to move.
By the time the others stirred from uneasy sleep, Elara was already awake, running her fingertips over a carving on the shrine wall. A name""Aeyndral"---etched deep into the black stone, in letters so old they hummed with forgotten power. As she traced the grooves, the sigil on her wrist flickered softly, like a heart remembering how to beat.
She didn't know the name.
And yet, it felt close---like a word she'd almost spoken in a dream once, and woke up mourning.
"Don't linger," Thorne's voice rasped behind her, thick with sleep and something heavier. "Names stick to you here. Like sand. Or scars. Enough of them, and you'll forget your own."
Elara didn't turn. Her fingers stayed on the stone. "Is that what happened to the statues?"
"No," Thorne said, coming to stand at her side. His voice dropped lower. "They remembered too much."
She turned now, searching his face for some scrap of mercy.
"Which is worse?" she asked.
Thorne's mouth quirked into a grim, tired smile. "Depends what you're more afraid of, girl. Forgetting who you are---or learning who you were always meant to be."
The words sank into her like stones tossed into deep water, leaving ripples she couldn't calm.
Behind them, the others broke camp with the kind of silence that spoke volumes.
Kael adjusted Talon's harness with steady hands.
Vaelith checked her blades as if willing them not to betray her.
Nyra, ever the ghost, sharpened her knives until they gleamed like slivers of regret.
And so, under a dead sky, they marched on.
The deeper they walked into the Wastes, the less sense the world made.
Trees became pillars.
Stones shaped themselves into half-built temples, arches that led to nothing but empty air.
The horizon buckled and blurred, as if reality itself was struggling to hold form.
At the heart of it all, black against the bleeding sky, rose a jagged spire that clawed at the heavens.
"The Spire of Hollowed Names," Thorne murmured when they crested the ridge, reverence and dread twining in his voice. "That's our gate."
Talon frowned, sweat cutting lines down his dust-caked face. "I thought the Nexus lay east."
"It does," Thorne said. "But the Hollow guards its secrets. The Spire's the key. The last key."
Vaelith spat into the dirt. "Another test. Grand. Haven't bled enough already?"
Thorne's gaze sharpened like a blade drawn too fast. "The Hollow doesn't test your strength. It tests your soul."
And with that, even the brave ones fell silent.
They moved like ghosts now, cautious, brittle.
Then the voices came.
Not whispers, no---not the sly secrets that had haunted them before.
These were louder. Clearer.
Their own voices---but wrong, twisted, dripping poison they hadn't dared to speak aloud.
"You can't protect them all."
Elara's heart seized. That was her voice---sharp as broken glass.
"You'll destroy everything you love."
Kael's hands clenched until his knuckles bled white.
"You were never meant to lead."
Nyra stiffened, the air around her snapping with silent anguish.
"You were born to be forgotten."
Talon flinched as if struck, his bravado stripped away in an instant.
"Don't answer!" Thorne barked, the command slamming into them like a whip crack. "Not even in your mind. They feed on what you believe."
But it was too late.
The ground split open with a scream.
And they fell---not into darkness, but into memory.
.
.
.
Elara hit cold stone hard enough to drive the air from her lungs. She scrambled upright----and her stomach twisted.
Home.
Her childhood courtyard, perfect and whole.
The gardens. The fountains. The ivy climbing the walls like a living memory.
But the sky was wrong----too still, too silent.
Birds hung midair like statues.
Time itself seemed to hold its breath.
And at the center of it all stood her mother.
Tall. Radiant. Dressed in silver robes Elara had only seen once, on the day everything burned.
"Elara," she said, voice soft, sweet. "You've come home."
Elara stumbled back a step. "No. You're dead. This----this isn't real."
Her mother's smile faltered. Shadows lengthened behind her. "Why would you say that? Haven't you missed me? Don't you wish I had stayed?"
Elara's throat tightened. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but her feet rooted to the stone.
"I miss you every day," she whispered. "But you're not her. You're something else."
Her mother's face twisted, something ancient and awful rising behind her familiar features.
"And yet you drag me with you," the thing whispered, voice like knives under the skin. "In your blood. In your fear."
The wind picked up, cutting cold.
The sigil on Elara's wrist pulsed, answering the call.
She raised her chin. "You're right. I do carry you."
A breath. A beat.
"But I am not you."
The figure shrieked, its form fracturing, dissolving into ash and moonlight.
"You'll never be enough!" it howled.
Elara stood tall, the sigil flaring so bright it seared the sky.
"I already am."
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she was falling again-----and then, with a jarring snap, back into her body, gasping against the cold Hollow wind.
Kael was kneeling nearby, dazed but breathing.
Nyra leaned against a rock, blood trailing from her nose but her eyes steady.
Talon rocked back and forth on his heels, whispering something only he could hear.
Vaelith clutched her arm, blood staining the cloth, her jaw locked against a scream.
Only Thorne stood tall, arms folded, untouched.
"You passed," he said, voice low but fierce. "The Spire will let you through."
Elara stumbled to her feet, every muscle trembling, every breath scraped raw.
"That was real," she rasped.
Thorne's eyes were steady. "Real enough to kill. The Hollow doesn't need to touch your body to end you. It just needs to break your heart."
Kael's gaze found her through the dust and the ruin. "What did you see?" he asked softly.
Elara shook her head once, clearing the last of the memory from her mind.
"I saw a ghost," she said. "And I chose to be stronger than it."
No one spoke after that.
They just walked---toward the black Spire clawing at the sky, toward whatever waited beyond it.
The silence that followed wasn't empty.
It was heavy.
A silence made of fear.
A silence made of respect.
And something new, too.
A silence made of unbreakable resolve.