Mist bled from the trees.
The forest that framed the Grinning Hollow was not mapped in any book, nor spoken of in any sane tongue. The path to it shifted behind them as Hiro, Vampher, and Dee Megus advanced, each step sinking into soil that remembered too much.
Roots twisted above like skeletal hands, the branches swaying as if in silent judgment. And in the distance, it grinned.
The Hollow.
It wasn't a place so much as a tear in meaning — a crooked scar in the world shaped like a grin, one that bled shadow and echoes with every breath.
"This place… doesn't want to exist," Vampher muttered, shivering beneath his coat despite the warmth that clung to the air.
"It shouldn't," Dee said. His voice was soft but hollow, like it had been used too many times in places where nothing should speak.
They walked closer.
The Hollow pulsed.
Cracked stones formed a jagged circle around the opening. Runes lay scrawled across them, in languages that didn't exist in any sane dimension. Yet they read them. Felt them.
And above it all, drifting like smoke between layers of the torn veil — an echo.
She stepped out of a ripple in the air, barefoot, cloaked in strands of silver and sorrow.
"Myla," Dee whispered.
She turned.
And this time, she recognized him.
Her eyes—glassy with stars, too ancient for her young face—met his and widened.
"Dee… Dee Megus," she breathed.
Vampher stepped forward cautiously. "That's not just an echo this time. That's her. She remembers."
Dee took a step closer. His hand trembled. "How are you here? You were—"
Myla raised a hand. "Don't ask questions with answers. They unravel things."
The grin of the Hollow stretched wider behind her. The shadows seemed to move in rhythm with her breath.
Hiro frowned. "Why does it feel like we're being watched?"
Dee didn't answer. He was focused on Myla. On the tremble in her lips. On the fear behind her recognition.
She stepped toward them, and her voice warbled, like broken glass being mended mid-sentence.
"You came for the fifth seal," she said. "You brought the fourth within you. Still humming. Still bleeding."
Dee blinked. "You know?"
"I know many things. But I cannot speak them."
Her face twitched—eyes flickering between planes—and for a moment, she looked afraid.
"I tried to fight the prophecy once. It broke me into echoes."
The grin behind her pulsed.
"You must follow it."
She turned to the Hollow and extended her arm. From within the dark, something rose — a seal not made of metal or stone, but of pure threaded light, tangled and snarling like something desperate to breathe.
Dee stepped forward, entranced. It called to him—not like the other seals, which had fought against being touched—but as if it recognized him. Welcomed him.
He reached out, fingertips grazing the fifth seal.
Light lanced upward, spiraling.
Myla screamed—but no sound came. Her voice folded in on itself like paper crumbling in fire. Her mouth moved, and her body flickered—glitching like an image corrupted by truth.
Dee turned to her in alarm. "What—what is it?"
She opened her mouth.
And vanished.
No burst of light. No final words. Just gone.
The fifth seal floated in the air now, humming and drifting into Dee's palm like a loyal pet returning home.
"She… she tried to warn us," Hiro whispered. "Didn't she?"
Dee shook his head. "She couldn't. She wasn't allowed. The prophecy won't permit it."
Vampher stepped back from the grin. "We sealed it tighter, right? That's what we're doing?"
Dee looked at the glowing mark now etched faintly along his wrist — the sign of the fifth seal joining the fourth.
He nodded, slowly.
"Yes. We're tightening it. That's what this is."
But the grin widened.
And Elsewhere, in the Threads Between Worlds…
A figure cloaked in time and contradiction stood in a realm of broken causality. Threads wept around him — not of silk or fate, but of potential. The First Seal pulsed anew in the distant aether.
The cloaked figure touched one of the shimmering strands.
"The fifth joins the fourth."
His grin mirrored the Hollow.
"And they do not even know."
From behind him, a voice whispered.
"Should we intervene?"
He turned his crowned head — a crown of forgotten decisions, of lives never lived.
"No. Let them believe they are binding it."
He returned to the threads.
"The Fiend stirs. The Thread hums. The locks they touch… are keys."
Back in the Grinning Hollow, the fireflies returned.
Silent, mournful.
Dee held the seal in his hand, the weight of it somehow heavier than anything he'd ever carried — heavier than time, heavier than immortality.
He didn't speak.
But in the quiet between heartbeats, he thought of Myla. Of how her form twisted when she tried to speak. Of how the Hollow had grinned when he touched the seal.
And deep inside, something in him knew.
He just didn't have the words for it.
Not yet.