SFX: WHOOOO—HHHSSSS—
The Hollow Pass cut through the western spine of the Fractured Marches like a wound that refused to scar.
Two sheer basalt cliffs rose a thousand feet on either side, their jagged faces riddled with caves that exhaled cold, corpse-stale wind. Above, the sky was strangled into perpetual twilight by overhanging stone; only thin slivers of the bleeding black sun slipped through, painting the narrow trail in bruised indigo and ash-gray.
The ground crunched beneath our feet.
Shale.
Dust.
Bone.
Human. Beastkin. Demon. Things old enough that names no longer applied.
Every step was an admission of trespass.
Veyra walked first.
The captured Nocturne lieutenant moved with the rigid precision of someone who knew exactly how short her leash was. She had removed her helm, ash-blonde hair falling in uneven strands over her shoulders. Her armor still bore the sigils of command, but her eyes—once sharp with authority—now flicked constantly between the cliffs, the shadows, and me.
I walked second.
Close enough that she could feel my presence pressing into her spine like a held breath. The eclipse threads hummed steadily in my chest, tightening the deeper we pushed into the pass.
Something waited ahead.
Not just the serpent's fragment.
Something older.
Hungrier.
Sylvara kept pace beside me, her moonlight aura brushing against my eclipse mist like oil against water—never mixing, never harmonizing. She hadn't spoken since the reaver skirmish, but her silence was loud. Her fingers twitched toward her hilt, then stilled.
She was weighing me.
Weighing the bindings.
Weighing whether the monster walking at her side was worse than the gods she had been raised to kneel before.
Nyxara drifted ahead and behind in lazy, impossible loops, phasing in and out of shadows that shouldn't have existed in this dim half-light. At one point she reappeared upside-down on the cliff face thirty feet above us, clinging like a spider, violet flames guttering softly around her boots.
"Smells like regret up here," she murmured.
"And something… wet."
Elara brought up the rear.
Axes loose. Shoulders squared. Draconic senses flaring. Every few steps her nostrils flared, tasting the air like a predator deciding where to strike. She said nothing—but the distance she kept from Veyra spoke volumes.
Trust was not on the table.
Time slipped.
The light never changed.
It could have been hours.
It could have been days.
Then—
Veyra stopped.
Ahead, the pass widened into a circular basin two hundred paces across. The cliffs here were carved with eroded archways and ancient faces, eyes hollowed out by time and something far crueler. At the basin's heart stood a single monolith—three men tall, surface etched in spiraling runes that pulsed faint violet-black.
The same color as my aether.
Veyra's voice dropped.
"The Hollow Heart. Old god remnant."
I stepped beside her. "And the fragment?"
She pointed at the stone without looking at me.
"Inside. Or beneath. The serpent once coiled around it. When it died… whatever it guarded woke."
Sylvara's blade slid halfway free with a whisper of moonlight.
"We should go around."
"There is no around," Veyra said. "The pass narrows again beyond this basin. Try to bypass, and the tunnels will funnel us into worse."
Nyxara dropped beside us soundlessly.
"She's telling the truth. I can smell it. Old blood. Older hunger."
Elara rolled her shoulders.
"Then we go through. Fast."
I stared at the standing stone.
The eclipse threads yanked hard—almost painfully—toward it.
"Fast won't matter," I said quietly.
"It already knows we're here."
SFX: THUUUM… THUUUM…
The ground trembled.
Not an earthquake.
Breathing.
From the hollowed eyes of the carved faces, darkness poured.
Not smoke.
Not shadow.
Ink.
Thick, liquid black flowed upward against gravity, pooling mid-air before twisting into forms—long-limbed, multi-jointed, faces that were only mouths, mouths that were only teeth.
Void-touched remnants.
Echoes of a god sealed here long before the Veilfall.
Dozens.
They did not speak.
They sang.
A low, dissonant hum that vibrated in the marrow.
Veyra stepped back.
"We can't fight this many."
"We don't have to," I replied.
"Just enough."
Elara charged first.
Because of course she did.
SFX: FWOOOOOM—
Crimson flame roared along her axes as she leapt into the basin. An ink-thing lashed out; she cleaved through it mid-air. Black ichor sprayed, hissing where it struck stone.
Sylvara followed, moonlight blade flashing in precise, merciless arcs. No wasted movement. No hesitation. Limbs fell before threats could form.
Nyxara vanished.
Reappeared in the densest cluster.
Her daggers danced, violet fire tracing every cut. Where she struck, the void-things didn't just die—they unraveled, darkness pulling apart like rotted thread.
Veyra hesitated—
Then drew her short sword.
She stayed near the basin's edge, movements efficient, ruthless. No heroics. Just survival.
I walked.
Straight toward the stone.
The remnants noticed.
A dozen peeled away, converging on me in a tidal rush.
I raised my left hand.
Eclipse Aether answered.
The air collapsed into absolute black. Light bent inward. The creatures struck the edge of the void and stopped—not blocked, not resisted.
Absorbed.
Their forms stretched, thinned, drawn into my palm like water down a drain. One after another they unraveled, void-stuff flowing into me.
My veins flared violet-black.
Cold power flooded my limbs.
I kept walking.
By the time I reached the monolith, half the swarm was gone.
The rest circled.
Afraid.
I pressed my palm to the rune-covered stone.
It recognized me.
The pulses synchronized with my heartbeat.
SFX: KRRRSH—
A perfect vertical crack split the pillar.
Inside—suspended in a cocoon of azure scales—floated a fist-sized orb.
Pulsing.
Alive.
The serpent's core fragment.
I reached in.
The world screamed.
Not sound.
Memory.
I saw the serpent coiled here for centuries.
Saw the Veilfall tear the sky.
Saw it rip this fragment from its own heart and hide it.
Saw it die.
Saw me.
Choosing.
I closed my fingers around the orb.
The vision ended.
The stone collapsed inward, dissolving into black dust.
The remnants shrieked in unison.
Then charged.
I turned.
Raised the orb.
SFX: WOOOOOM—
Azure light edged with eclipse-black exploded outward.
Not destructive.
Selective.
Every remnant it touched dissolved into motes of light that drifted upward, fading into the indigo sky.
Silence returned.
Absolute.
I lowered the orb.
It thrummed in my palm like a second heart.
The threads eased.
Satisfied.
For now.
Sylvara approached first.
"What… was that?"
"Fuel," I answered.
Nyxara's eyes gleamed.
"Pretty."
Elara wiped her axes clean.
"Did it work?"
I felt the Throne stir—far away.
"Yes."
Veyra swallowed.
"The Sovereign will feel this."
I met her gaze.
"Good."
I turned west.
"The next piece isn't here," I said.
"It's in Lumora."
Sylvara stiffened.
"Your homeland," I added softly.
She said nothing.
But she followed.
We left the Hollow Heart behind—cratered, silent, dust falling like ash-snow.
Ahead lay elven lands.
Behind us, Nocturne would rise.
Above us, the black sun bled one last ribbon of star-blood.
As if even it knew—
What came next.