The air staggered. Orion felt it like a pulse in his chest, the ruins responding to the choice he hadn't even spoken aloud. The Hollow Remnants waited, silent figures standing at the edge of unreality, their flickering forms inviting him deeper into the unknown.
Lyra stepped closer, her spectral blade still humming with energy. "You hear it, don't you?" she whispered.
He nodded. He didn't need to say it.
"Enter the Hollow, Child of the Erased."
The words still burned in his mind, and as if in response, the ground beneath them shuddered.
The obelisks pulsed with erratic silver light, and a pathway unfurled before them—a bridge of nothingness. Orion wasn't sure if it was solid ground or simply a trick of perception, but when the Hollow Remnants stepped forward, their feet did not sink. They glided across the abyss as though they were moving across memory itself.
Lyra's grip tightened on her sword. "If you're thinking of stepping into that, I hope you have a plan."
Orion swallowed hard. "I don't think it works like that."
The choice wasn't just a physical one. It was something deeper. The Hollow wasn't simply a place—it was a state of being.
And it was calling to him.
He took a step forward.
The moment his foot touched the abyssal bridge, the world collapsed inward.
The ruins, the sky, even Lyra—all of it shattered. The Hollow devoured reality, and for the first time, Orion understood what it meant to stand between existence and oblivion.
And then—he saw.
---
His mind reeled as visions poured into him. Memories that weren't his.
A civilization, long before the Veil fell. People wrapped in shimmering cloaks of woven starlight, their voices singing in harmonic resonance with the universe itself. They were not warriors. Not conquerors.
They were Weavers.
They did not rule.
They did not obey.
They simply understood.
And then—he saw the end.
The Hollow did not always exist. It was made.
By something older. Hungrier.
Orion gasped as his body slammed back into itself, his vision tunneling as he stumbled back onto solid ground. Lyra caught him, her expression stricken. "What happened?"
He looked past her to the Hollow Remnants, still waiting, still watching.
He understood now.
This was not an invitation.
It was a warning.
And something far worse than the Hollow Ones was still waiting beyond the veil.