The Hollow stopped pretending.
SFX: WHUUM—WHUUM—WHUUM
The world convulsed inward. Shards collapsed, gardens folded, mirrors shrieked into powder. Corridors curled like burning film.
And then—
silence.
What remained was one vast, breathing chamber…
…shaped like the inside of a heart,
…made entirely of graves.
Millions.
Layer on layer, rising into a cathedral dome—each grave sealed under translucent black glass.
Inside each: a curled figure, eyes open, watching.
Every person the Hollow had ever taken.
Every lost kingdom.
Every version of every world that had died screaming.
All of them awake.
All of them staring.
The Woman at the Center
She hung suspended in the chamber's center.
Not a child.
Not anymore.
A woman woven from raw absence—skin like starless midnight, hair flowing like the moment before a scream, eyes reflecting every soul she had ever stolen.
She floated upside-down, perfectly still.
And smiled.
Her voice was a lullaby sung by mothers who never got to hold their children.
"You came back," she said.
The graves below her feet wept black tears that rose upward like reversed rain.
"You sang the chord I lost
when the Horned first put me to sleep."
Her smile widened—too warm, too sharp, too much love for anything that lived.
"I will keep you safe now.
All three of you.
Forever."
Far Above – The Quiet Country
Lirien was already on her knees when the chord hit.
SFX: VOOOOM
The Pale Serpent reared behind her, horns slicing the pearl sky. A soundless scream tore from its throat—a scream that shook the snow loose from the clouds.
Snow that had fallen upward for ten thousand years…
…began falling down.
Lirien clutched her horns as every rune carved into them ignited in violet fire—the same violet that had once lived in Kael's scar.
"No…" she whispered.
"Not that song.
Not the true one."
The serpent slammed its coils into the ground.
SFX: KRAK-KRRAAAAAK
The sky-pool shattered, sending cracks racing across the world.
In every shard of broken starlight, a reflection:
Three broken souls, weaving a chord that was never meant to exist again.
Lirien's expression twisted—
Not triumph.
Terror.
Because the true song was never a weapon against the empire.
It was the lullaby the Horned Silence once used
to put the Hollow to sleep.
And now it was waking up…
…in love.
Inside the Heart-Chamber
Veyra hit the floor first.
SFX: THOOM—KRAK
The impact spiderwebbed the glass beneath her. She didn't let go of the trembling creature in her arms—the Final Mirror, now the size of a terrified girl.
From above, the Keeper drifted closer, still upside-down, hair trailing like widow's veils.
She spoke with warm amusement.
"Hello, little thorn.
You brought me your last sharp piece.
How thoughtful."
All around them, graves rippled.
Hands shoved up through the glass—cold, pale, grasping for Veyra's ankles.
She snarled.
SFX: SHRRRRRKKK—KRAAASH
Thorns exploded outward, shredding the hands into black snow.
More grew back.
Always more.
The Keeper cooed softly.
"I've collected every version of you that ever suffered.
Every time you were alone.
Every time you weren't strong enough.
I kept them warm for you."
She opened her arms.
"Come.
Let me hold all your pain at once.
You will never have to be strong again."
Veyra tightened her hold on the Final Mirror until bones creaked.
The Mirror looked up at her, eyes trembling.
"I was so scared."
Veyra's voice cracked.
"Me too."
She pressed her forehead against her own worst self.
Then she looked up at the Keeper,
and smiled—
a smile that was jagged, ruined, heartbreakingly alive.
"Lady," Veyra said,
"I've spent my whole life being held by things that wanted to break me."
She rose—lifting the Final Mirror with her—thorns braiding around them both, binding them into one cracking, bleeding silhouette.
"If you want my pain," she said,
"you'll have to go through both of us."
The Keeper's eyes glowed like eclipses.
Delighted.
"Oh," she whispered,
"I was hoping you'd say that."
The Storm of Veyras
SFX: BOOOOOOM
Every grave in the chamber detonated open.
An ocean of Veyras—every dead version of her, every broken timeline, every collapsed possibility—rose like a crimson tide, screaming with her voice, her wounds, her rage.
Veyra Thornblade,
for the first time whole—
—laughed.
A wild, defiant, feral laugh—
—and charged straight into herself.
Elsewhere
A child-sized Seraphine felt the thorns singing
and began to run toward the sound.
Far on another broken plane, Kael felt the chord vibrate through bone and blood—
—and sprinted toward it.
The Hollow's Heart
SFX: DM… DM… DMMMMMMMM
The massive heart pulsed.
Once.
Hard.
And every grave inside the Hollow
began to sing the chord back.
A choir of the dead, harmonizing with the living.
The Hollow was crying—
not in fury…
…but in joy.
Because it knew—
it was about to lose
the only three toys
it had ever truly loved.