The wind no longer whispered.
It howled.
As they walked along the ridge that overlooked the true Grinning Hollow, Dee could feel it—every step brushing the edge of something ancient and buried, like fingernails across the skin of a closed coffin. The threads of fate that once bound them gently now tugged like hooks.
Hiro lagged behind, muttering to himself. Equations. Names. Apologies.
Vampher, usually flippant and absurd, had fallen uncharacteristically quiet. He kept glancing back, not at the canyon—but at the path they'd come from. As if expecting it to vanish.
Dee couldn't blame him.
"Stop," Dee said, raising a hand.
The stone under their feet vibrated, then cracked—thin lines spidering out from where they stood. From beneath the rock, faint golden light pulsed, rhythmic. Not a trap.
A heartbeat.
"The Hollow isn't just a canyon," Dee muttered. "It's a sealed entity. Alive. Dormant. Until now."
Vampher exhaled. "So we're walking on someone's ribcage."
"Someone?" Hiro asked. "Or something?"
No one answered.
Instead, they stared at the glow beneath the stone as it brightened. Symbols began to rise like mist—glyphs none of them remembered learning, but all instinctively understood.
Each one was a name.
Lost gods.
Forgotten titans.
Forsaken guardians.
And one glyph pulsed brighter than the rest—Myla's.
"It's her," Hiro breathed, reaching out.
"No," Dee warned. "That's not her. That's her thread—what's left of her soul. Someone—something—has unraveled her and stitched her essence into this place."
Vampher tilted his head. "To trap her?"
Dee's lips thinned. "To use her. To sing through her."
A tremor rolled across the ridge. Above, the clouds convulsed into spirals. The sky wept strands of unlight—shadows falling in slow-motion threads.
They stood at the edge now.
The canyon's mouth yawned open, and something inside exhaled.
A voice—no, voices—spoke all at once:
"Return what was sealed. Or seal what was returned."
Hiro staggered back. "What the hell does that mean?"
Dee didn't answer right away. He was staring into the Hollow, seeing not stone or mist—but possibility. The prophecy was fraying at the edges. The storyteller had crafted a narrative with holes. And Dee could feel himself slipping through one of them.
"We've been following a script," he said softly. "Each seal, each trial… it's a ritual. Not to prevent something. But to summon it."
Vampher stepped forward, his smile strained. "And let me guess. Once we finish the ritual… the big bad wakes up and eats the multiverse."
Dee looked at him.
Then looked past him.
Because standing just beyond Vampher was a shape—vague, unformed, but undeniably familiar. A figure wrapped in threads of memory, stitched from echoes of those they'd lost. It wore Myla's shape, but not her soul.
"Run," Dee whispered.
Too late.
The ground beneath them ruptured, and the illusion surged again.
But this time, they saw it. Felt the edges. Knew it wasn't real.
Hiro screamed, not in fear—but fury. "She's not yours!"
The figure lunged.
Dee raised both hands, casting an ancient ward—"Telesvarath'kai!"
The spell caught the shade, shattering it into threads. They scattered into the air like ash in reverse.
But something remained.
Myla's voice. Real this time. Fragile.
"It's not the seals… it's the locks. Find the locks. Don't let them—"
The thread burned out.
Vampher collapsed to one knee. "We're not sealing evil. We're binding truth, aren't we?"
Dee nodded grimly. "And the final key doesn't unlock salvation. It locks us inside the story. Forever."
Silence stretched.
Then Hiro stood, steadier now. "Then we break the locks. All of them."
"Even if the truth breaks us?" Vampher asked.
Dee's eyes shimmered, catching some unseen starlight.
"Especially then."
They turned their backs on the Grinning Hollow once more.
But this time, they weren't walking blind.
This time, they walked against the thread.
Elsewhere, Between Unwritten Pages…
The cloaked figure moved its fingers across the tapestry.
The Fifth Thread had dimmed.
But another began to burn. Not the sixth. Not yet.
This one was unmarked.
An anomaly.
A deviation.
It frowned, then smiled again—wider, crueler.
"No prophecy survives contact with the unbeliever," it said.
And the locks began to stir.