The ruins no longer hummed with the same unnatural presence, but Orion could still feel it. A pulse. A whisper at the back of his mind. The Hollow had recognized him.
It had remembered him.
Lyra shifted beside him, still catching her breath. "We need to move."
He nodded. The abyssal bridge was gone, but the ruins stretched further into the unknown. There had to be another way forward—one that didn't require stepping into the Hollow's grasp again.
They pressed on.
Each step felt heavier. The stone beneath their feet no longer radiated cold but something worse—emptiness. As though it had been touched by the same consuming force that had tried to take Lyra.
Orion clenched his fists. The symbiont inside him remained quiet, but he could feel its presence watching. Waiting.
Then he heard it.
A voice.
Not an echo of the Weavers. Not the Hollow. Something else.
"He does not belong here."
Orion froze.
Lyra saw the shift in his posture immediately. "What is it?"
He turned his head slowly, scanning the ruins. The air shimmered—just for a moment.
And then they appeared.
Figures, draped in the same golden energy that had surged through him when he severed the Hollow's grasp. They stood at the edges of the ruins, their shapes flickering like dying embers.
Weavers.
Or what remained of them.
Orion took a slow breath. "They're watching us."
Lyra followed his gaze but saw nothing. "What do you mean?"
The figures did not move, but their presence pressed against his mind. The Hollow had been made. But so had the Weavers.
And now, both had taken notice of him.
"He is not one of us."
The voice came again, clearer this time. A presence brushing against his mind, seeking something within him. Judging.
"And yet, he bears our mark."
Orion clenched his jaw. The Hollow had tried to claim him. But the Weavers…
They had already left something inside him.
Lyra stepped closer. "Orion, you're scaring me."
He exhaled sharply. "They're here. The Weavers. Or what's left of them."
She stiffened, hands moving toward her sword. "Are they hostile?"
The figures didn't advance. They simply watched.
Then, one of them raised a hand.
And Orion's mind fractured.
---
The ruins vanished.
For a single, impossible moment, he stood somewhere else—somewhen else.
The Hollow was gone. The Veil was intact. And before him, the Weavers stood in their full form, their golden radiance unbroken.
A city stretched beyond them, an impossible structure of shifting lights and endless skies.
It was beautiful.
It was dying.
The Weavers stood in a circle, their forms flickering as the edges of their world unraveled.
And at the center of it all, something watched.
A presence beyond comprehension. Nameless. Endless.** The thing the Hollow had tried to mimic, but could never fully contain.
Orion's breath caught in his throat. The Veil had not been created to trap the Hollow.
It had been created to keep that thing out.
And now, it was failing.
The vision shattered.
---
Orion collapsed to his knees, gasping. The ruins returned. The Hollow still loomed at the edges of reality. But the weight of what he had just seen remained.
Lyra caught his shoulders. "Orion! What happened?"
He looked at her, eyes wide. "The Veil… It's not just breaking."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
He swallowed hard.
"It's being torn open."
The ruins pulsed again. The Hollow stirred.
And deep in the abyss, something stirred with it.