Leira took one more step forward, her was still breath shallow, her fingers were still wrapped tightly around the glowing Clock Root. Its white gold light pulsed in a slow, with a steady rhythm, warming her palm and tugging at her bones as though urging her onward. Above her, the Hollow Star hummed softly, its fractured shards of broken time drifting lower, almost relieved, as if the entire space were finally exhaling after being stretched beyond its limit.
But she wasn't relaxed… not even close.
Her legs still trembled beneath her, her chest still burned faintly, a reminder of the agony she had just escaped, a reminder of how close she was to death. And Kael's absence was silent, unexplained, crushing, it bit into her harder than the poison had. She had made it through the last echo alone, yes, but standing now beneath the dimming glow of the Hollow Star, surrounded by a silence that felt eerily alive, she didn't feel victorious… she felt watched.
Leira tightened her grip on the Clock Root.
"I have to get to the last echo," she whispered to herself, because she knew that if she stopped now, if she allowed a single second of hesitation, she wasn't certain she would find the strength to start again, especially without Kael.
The Hollow Star's light dimmed further, the air pulsed once… then again. The ground beneath her responded with a soft tremor, the kind that felt like a heartbeat slowing after a long, desperate run. The shards of broken time shivered where they drifted.
Something was happening, something was… changing.
Leira raised her eyes. The Hollow Star was cracked, ancient, weary from holding the fabric of time together, began to sink, slowly and quietly, like a dying creature lowering itself into its final rest. Warm gold changed into pale silver, the air deepened, thickening until her breaths felt heavy. A new kind of silence pressed around her, sharper, tuned to something she couldn't see. She felt the shift before she understood it, a pull, faint but insistent, rising from the Clock Root and threading itself through her bones.
Her pulse jumped. "What the…" she breathed, not in fear, but recognition. This was the next echo.
A soft crack split the chamber, delicate as ice. Leira turned sharply, the fractures along the Hollow Star glowed brighter, light bleeding through the cracks like veins filled with molten fire, and then the Hollow Star collapsed inward.
No boom, no flash, no shattering explosion, just a silent implosion of blazing light, rushing toward her like a tidal wave. Leira gasped and raised her arm as the shards folded into the star's center, the world twisted sharply, time stretched like hot glass, air bent around her as though she'd stepped into the heart of a storm, she staggered, clutching the Clock Root to her chest.
Then the light hit her… not violently, not painfully, but entirely, it swallowed her whole.
For a moment, she felt weightless and in the next, heavier than stone, then she felt as if she were falling, even though she wasn't moving at all.
"Kael…?" Her voice trembled into a place where sound didn't belong. She knew she wouldn't hear him, she knew he wasn't here. Only the hum answered her, it was vast, ancient, cold, and unmistakably alive. The last fragments of the Hollow Star dissolved, and the ground simply vanished beneath her, and the Leira… dropped.
But her scream never escaped her throat. The light was too thick, too sharp, too overwhelming. It pressed against her skin like stardust and memory. Wind seemed to rush past her, except it wasn't wind at all, it was time brushing by, ages shifting like currents. And then just as quickly, she dropped. She wasn't caught, she wasn't supported, her body just simply halted in midair, suspended as if the world had paused her existence.
She gasped as the light slowly drifted back, thinning enough for her to see. Leira opened her eyes.
Everything was white. Not snow, not fog, not the blinding flare of magic, just white, it was pure, endless, consuming. A color without shade, a distance without horizon, an existence without texture.
She felt something like ground beneath her feet, but she couldn't see it. It was like standing on the idea of ground, on a surface defined only by the fact that she wasn't falling anymore. She looked down, yes, her feet were still her own, her hands too, the Clock Root still pulsed softly, anchoring her in the formless void, but everything around her…
Her throat tightened.
One careful step forward and nothing changed. Then another step, still nothing.
A soft tremor moved through her chest, not fear, but a creeping awareness that this place was not a place at all. "Hello?" she called, her voice was shaky.
The white swallowed her words… no echo, no bounce, no return, just silence, complete and heavy. A silence that watched her.
A chill climbed her spine. She wrapped her free arm around herself and forced her breathing to steady. This had to be the Heart of the Veil, nothing else could be this vast, this impossibly empty, and still feel conscious. Leira pressed the Clock Root to her chest, grounding herself in its warmth.
"Where do I go?" she whispered but nothing answered.
Her lips parted again, softer this time.
"Kael?"
Still nothing.
The silence tightened around her like a closing fist, she inhaled sharply.
"Okay," she murmured. "Just… walk. One step."
She took one, then another, ten… twenty.
The world refused to shift, the whiteness didn't ripple, didn't stretch, didn't change in any direction. Her heartbeat quickened the longer she walked, she rubbed her arm, trying to fight the rising panic.
Then… something brushed against her mind.
A flicker, a whisper, a thought that wasn't hers.
She froze.
The white brightened, subtly, but unmistakably, and her breath hitched.
"Who's there?" she whispered.
But no voice responded and yet something moved behind her.
Leira turned…
… and came face to face with herself.
Her same hair, her same sharp jawline, her same gray eyes. The only difference was that this version held no emotion at all, no fear, no anger, no curiosity, just emptiness. Leira stumbled back, her heart was jamming against her ribs. "Not this again…"
The other Leira blinked. The moment she blinked, another Leira appeared beside her… then another… and another, and just like that, there were then hundreds, cloning themselves in perfect, silent formation. They were all standing in white, all identical and all staring.
Leira's breath broke. "What is this?"
The copies didn't move, didn't breathe and now, they had stopped blinking. Until… their mouths opened, every single one, but no sound came out, just a hollow, suffocating silence.
Leira's hands shook violently around the Clock Root. "What is happening?" She whispered, her voice barely holding. Her copies tilted their heads in the same eerie, synchronised motion.
Then… they stepped forward. First one, then another, then all of them, walking in perfect unison toward her.
Leira's throat tightened, her vision blurred, she opened her mouth to scream… the white snapped. Light cracked beneath her feet like a shattering star, the ground dissolved, ripping away from her as if it had never existed.
She fell, hard, landing on cold stone with a jolt that drove air from her lungs. She gasped, blinking the dizziness away.
And then the white was gone, her vision steadied, and she stood in a village.
There were children laughing, women chatting, smoke was rising from cooking fires, a man was waving hello from across the street.
It was a living, breathing world, but she knew instantly it wasn't real, the edges shimmered faintly, like there was heat, or some kind of illusion or memory… no… like an echo. That made her stomach twist. And then she saw it, a thin tear in the sky, stretched open by invisible claws, a ripple of darkness slithering through it, a shape pulling itself into the village. It was twisted, distorted, starved. The villagers walked passed it without flinching, the couldn't see it. But Leira could, she had always been able to see what others couldn't.
Her breath stilled, she knew what happened next. The shadow crouched, its claws curled, its body tensed for the strike. A small child waddled into its path, laughing at nothing. Leira's heart began beating violently, she lifted her hand, the Clock Rook was blazing in her palm.
She could stop this, she could save them, she could break the rules one more time. She took a single step and suddenly, the world snapped like a whip. A voice that was deep, resonant, absolute, filled the air:
"Do not interfere."
She froze, her ribs practically hurt from the hammering of her heart against it. "No," she breathed. "No, please… don't make me watch…"
The shadow rise to its full, horrific height, a woman smiled somewhere behind it, a child chased a butterfly, a man liften a bundle of firewood, humming softly.
And Leira finally understood; this was the trial, this was the Heart of the Veil, this was what it wanted from her. Not strength, not power, not even pain… it wanted restraint, obedience, the discipline to watch helplessly while fate unfolded without her, and worst of all… it wasn't her to witness every scream, every moment, every death. The Veil chose who lived and who didn't… not her and it wanted her to understand that more than anything.
Her breath cracked in her chest. "I understand what you want but please don't make me do this," she yelled, tears gathering in her eyes. "Please, don't…"
The Shadow lunged.
A child looked up… smiling, unable to see the doom that was about to descend on him.
Leira screamed…