The Hollow spat Veyra into a world with no sky and no ground—
only an endless plain of crimson glass,
reflecting a thousand versions of herself.
Every reflection was Veyra.
Every reflection was wrong.
One had her face but her little sister's dead, accusing eyes.
One wore the melted chains of her village elders, fused into a crown.
One was nine years old, arms budding thorns, smiling like she'd just discovered what fun felt like.
They all held Wrathbinder.
They were all bleeding.
They were all grinning.
The real Veyra hit the glass hard enough to crack it.
A chorus of her own voices rose around her—perfectly synchronized, perfectly hateful.
"Only one of us gets to leave."
"Only the strongest."
"Only the one who deserves to live."
The glass beneath her feet pulsed once—
a heartbeat made of pure, condensed rage.
Then the Thousand Veyras charged.
Wrathbinder met Wrathbinder in a storm of pink fire and screaming steel.
Every blow Veyra landed shattered a reflection into red mist—
but two stepped out of the shards to replace it,
stronger, angrier, more her.
She laughed while she bled.
Because this was finally a fight that understood her.
She carved a path through infinite corpses that re-formed behind her.
She shattered mirrors showing her burning her village,
drowning her sister,
kissing Kael with a mouth full of borrowed blood.
Every death fed the arena.
The glass grew hotter.
The reflections grew faster.
And the thorns inside her real body began to bloom,
ripping through muscle to taste the air—
because pain was the only thing that still felt honest.
A reflection wearing her mother's face drove Wrathbinder through her gut.
Veyra coughed blood, grinned, and wheezed:
"Finally. Someone who hits hard enough to matter."
Then she headbutted her mother into red snow.
Somewhere beyond the mirrors,
the Hollow purred with satisfaction.
It had waited a long, long time
for a soul that loved being broken
as much as it loved breaking things.
Far Above, in the Quiet Country
Lirien stood at the edge of the starlight pool,
watching Kael's silver scar glow faintly in its surface.
The Pale Serpent coiled around her shoulders like a living cloak,
its blind-blue eyes fixed on the same reflection.
She traced one of its horns with a pale finger.
Her expression was not kind.
Ten thousand years ago, the Horned Silence were the jailers of the Abyss.
They built the first seals.
They sang the first lullabies that put the Wound to sleep.
Then the empire stole their songs, twisted them into chains,
and wiped the Horned from history.
Lirien is the last.
She didn't save Kael out of mercy.
She saved him because the Hollow Beneath the World
is the only place left where the original lullaby still echoes—
the one that can unmake every seal the empire ever forged.
Kael—empty of Hunger—
is the perfect tuning fork.
When he finds Veyra and Seraphine,
when the three of them sing together again—
without the empire's leash,
without the Hunger's corruption—
the Hollow will remember the true song.
And every seal on every Rift
will shatter at once.
The empire will drown in what it tried to cage.
Lirien's smile was small, sharp, and ancient.
She had not lied to Kael.
She had simply not told him that freedom and annihilation
sound exactly the same
when sung by three broken voices
in the dark beneath the world.
The Pale Serpent tightened around her shoulders,
almost affectionate.
"Soon," she whispered to the pool.
"Sing for me, little key.
Sing until the world forgets how to scream."
Snow continued falling upward.
And somewhere in the crimson arena,
Veyra Thornblade laughed herself hoarse
as the thousandth version of herself
finally learned what it felt like
to lose.