The Ninth Fragment waited where the world ended.
They called it the Maw of Light not because of its brilliance, but because of what it consumed. Not darkness. Not shadow. But certainty.
For five days they walked without sky.
Above them: white.
Not clouds. Not light. Just a vast, directionless whiteness, as though the heavens themselves had been erased.
The ground became glass. Then sand. Then nothing.
By the sixth day, even footsteps made no sound.
Rohen halted. "Here," he said quietly. "This is where the world forgets how to hold shape."
Seraya looked pale. "The Ninth Fragment… it blinds the unworthy."
Kael stepped forward.
He was no longer afraid of blindness.
Only of forgetting what he saw before it.
Myth: The First Scar
Spoken in hushed voices by void-sailors and comet-priests.
Before the first fire, before even darkness — there was balance.
Not light and dark. Not good and evil.
Simply is.
Then came a question: What am I?
And that question split the fabric of existence.
The wound it left behind became light.
Not kindness.
Not warmth.
Just exposure. Truth, raw and ruthless.
The First Scar blazed across the cosmos. It did not kill. It did not burn.
It revealed.
And stars were born from the scream.
Ever since, light has never been gentle. It shows too much. Demands too much.
But in the wound's heart…
A fragment was left.
Not of light.
Of understanding.
The Ninth.
Kael entered the Maw alone.
There were no shapes. No up, no down. Just a sea of shining memory.
Then he saw himself, again.
But not the Unfallen. Not the Broken.
Just… Kael, sitting at a kitchen table that hadn't existed in fifteen years.
His mother stirred tea. His brother chased a wooden bird across the floor. A girl he once loved leaned by the window, humming a song she never got to finish.
And Kael stood in the doorway, bleeding from a wound he could not see.
"Why are you here?" asked his mother, her voice made of dust and light.
Kael choked. "I don't know anymore."
She smiled sadly.
"Then you're ready."
The Ninth Fragment did not appear.
It did not speak.
It opened.
A wound in the light itself. A line of gold, split down the center of the world.
And Kael stepped through it.
He emerged not whole, not healed — but seen.
His body still ached. The shards still pulsed.
But now, they sang together.
Not as weapons. Not as burdens.
But as truths.
Rohen and Seraya waited.
"What did you see?" she asked softly.
Kael looked up at the sky, which now shimmered — not blank, but full of meaning again.
"I saw what we fight for," he said. "Not to defeat the dark."
He turned to her.
"But to deserve the light."
The road after the Maw was not marked in stone or dust.
It was marked in names.
Inscribed on the bones of trees, scratched into the undersides of ruined bridges, whispered in the breath of sleeping beasts. Names of those who entered Gavreth's Hollow and never returned.
But Kael did not flinch.
The Ninth had burned away hesitation.
What remained was resolve — tempered, not untouched.
Seraya walked beside him, silent.
Rohen limped. His wound from the Mirrorless Spire had begun to throb again — not from poison, but from memory.
"Are you sure the Tenth is here?" Seraya asked.
Kael nodded once. "I don't know how I know. I just do."
Because in his sleep, it had spoken.
Not in words.
In grief.
Myth: The Last Voice
Etched into a starless obelisk at the edge of Gavreth's Hollow.
Only one ever returned from beyond the Maw.
They had no face. No name. Only sound.
The stars called them the Last Voice, for after them, the heavens fell silent — ashamed, perhaps, of what was spoken.
They brought no treasure. No light. No prophecy.
Only a sentence:
"Nothing is whole. Nothing was ever supposed to be."
And then they fell asleep beneath the roots of the world, mouth still open, a whisper still pouring from it.
Some say that whisper became the wind.
Others say it became the Tenth Fragment.
The Voice That Bleeds.
They reached the edge of the Hollow by dusk.
Gavreth's bones still held shape — towering spires shattered at odd angles, stone walls that bled black moss, windows that didn't reflect but remembered.
Rohen stumbled. "Something's wrong here."
Kael knelt, brushing ash from a collapsed stairwell. Underneath, faint carvings:
"Forgive me."
Hundreds of times. The same two words.
Seraya gripped her blade tighter. "Kael. The shard. It's… crying."
He felt it, too.
Not in pain.
In recognition.
Gavreth had not fallen to war, or plague, or time.
It had fallen to confession.
Too many truths spoken at once. No lies left to hold the walls up.
And somewhere deep within the hollow, the Tenth Fragment waited.
It did not hide.
It sang.
Not a melody. A single note, long and low — the kind of sound you feel in your teeth, in your regrets.
They descended.
And there, in the Hollow's heart, stood a statue — tall, eyeless, with hands held open, mouth frozen in scream.
The shard floated above its head.
Not pulsing.
Bleeding.
Kael stepped forward. The statue's mouth moved.
And from it came the Voice.
"Speak what you never dared."
Kael's throat closed. His breath caught.
But then, slowly, he spoke.
"I wanted to let them die."
Seraya stiffened.
"I was tired. I was afraid. And I thought… just this once, let someone else save them."
He looked at the shard.
"And I hate that I almost did."
The shard fell into his palm.
Not burning.
Warm.
Kael turned.
Seraya met his eyes. She did not speak.
She just placed her hand over his heart.
And whispered, "You didn't."
Rohen bowed his head.
The Tenth was now his — not as a curse.
But as permission:
To feel guilt,
To speak it,
And still go on.
Gavreth's Hollow did not release them easily.
They left with footsteps heavy as tombstones, silence stitched between them like old scar tissue.
Kael didn't speak for a full day.
The Tenth Fragment pulsed against his ribs like a second heart. It didn't burn, didn't ache.
It… listened.
Everything he thought, feared, regretted — it heard.
And it held no judgment.
Only presence.
Rohen, walking behind, muttered, "This land smells like a question that never got an answer."
Seraya gave him a look. "You sound like Kael."
He shrugged. "That's what happens when you share the road with a myth."
Kael said nothing.
He was listening again — not to the land, but to the fragment inside him.
Fable: Ashrin the Hollow
Told in fragments across forgotten verses, always ending with a whisper.
Before Kael, there was Ashrin.
He found the First Shard buried beneath a tree that bled light instead of sap.
He did not wield it.
He swallowed it.
Not out of courage, but despair. He thought if he became the shard, he'd become something else.
He didn't.
He stayed Ashrin.
But the shard began to dream inside him.
It dreamt of peace, so Ashrin felt sorrow.
It dreamt of truth, so Ashrin lost sleep.
It dreamt of fire, and Ashrin burned everything he loved, just to quiet it.
He wandered the Waking Waste until even his shadow abandoned him.
They say he still walks there.
Smiling.
Because for the first time… the shard is silent.
The Waking Waste stretched before them — a desert not of sand, but memory.
Every dune shimmered with scenes from lives not lived.
Kael saw himself, older, wearing black, holding a crown he swore he'd never touch.
He turned his eyes away.
"Ignore the mirages," Rohen said. "They're not dreams. They're wants."
Seraya knelt, pressing a hand to the ground.
"It's dreaming again."
"The land?"
"No," she whispered. "Kael."
And then — suddenly, violently — he collapsed.
The world inside him opened like a wound.
He stood in a room made of breath, stars stitched into the walls. The Tenth Fragment pulsed in midair, and Kael realized:
He wasn't alone.
Ashrin stood before him.
Tall. Hollow-eyed. Smiling.
"You heard me," Ashrin said.
"No," Kael replied. "I felt you."
Ashrin nodded. "The shard wanted to sleep. I let it. Now it wants to wake. Will you let it?"
Kael hesitated. "What happens if I do?"
Ashrin's smile was kind. Too kind.
"It stops being a shard. And starts being you."
When Kael woke, he was on his knees.
The desert around him had shifted. The mirages were gone.
Seraya helped him stand. "What did you see?"
He looked to the horizon.
"No more pieces," he said.
"The shard?" Rohen asked.
Kael opened his hand.
There was nothing there.
Only light.
Living, breathing, and his.
He was not collecting fragments anymore.
He was becoming them.
And far to the north, the final war began to stir.
Not with fire.
But with a prayer.
The wind changed first.
It no longer rustled. It spoke.
Words without sound. Meanings without language.
Kael felt it like a hum in his chest, low and vast—as if something older than silence had finally begun to sing again.
"We're near the Threshold," Rohen muttered. "You feel that too, don't you?"
Kael didn't answer.
He could barely breathe.
The air was heavy with expectation, like a stage moments before the final act.
They were three steps from prophecy.
And two steps from something worse:
Knowing it might be wrong.
Hymn: The Forsung
Written not in ink, but in the pauses between breaths in dying temples.
Before the war of shards, before the naming of sky, there were gods.
They did not rule.
They sang.
Creation was a chord.
And their voices wove stars into maps and hearts into stories.
But then came grief.
One god fell silent.
Another followed.
And soon, there were only echoes.
The remaining called themselves The Forsung—the unsung, the unfinished.
They sing still, in the cracks between realities.
But their song has no end.
Because the one they sang for… never arrived.
Each note they sing now is a question.
Will you be the one?
The Threshold looked like nothing.
No gates. No altar. No sign.
Just a plain of stone, cracked and weathered, with a single object at its center:
A broken lute.
Kael knelt before it. Dust clouded the strings.
"It's not a weapon," Seraya said gently.
"No," Kael replied. "It's a memory."
He strummed once.
No sound.
He strummed again.
A scream.
Not of pain.
Of relief.
As if the lute had waited a thousand years to speak—and had too much to say.
And then: a single voice.
"Finish it."
Kael stood.
The sky trembled above them—clouds unraveling like threads, stars visible where sun should be.
The world was coming undone.
Not in chaos.
In preparation.
The voice returned.
"You carry the shards. Now carry the song."
"It ends with you."
Kael whispered, "I don't know the words."
"Sing anyway."
And so he did.
A single note.
Soft.
Uncertain.
But honest.
And something in the wind answered.
The ground cracked.
Light spilled up, not down.
And the Forsung, wherever they hid, wept.
Because someone had finally sung back.
Kael turned to his companions.
Seraya's blade was already drawn. Not in fear.
In faith.
Rohen lit a fire with a touch, not for warmth—but for signal.
The war had heard.
And it was coming.
Kael looked at the broken lute, now glowing faintly.
"The Eleventh Fragment," he whispered. "Isn't a thing."
Seraya nodded. "It's a choice."
The sky turned inward.
Not dark.
Just closer.
As if the stars had bent low to watch.
Kael felt it behind his ribs, beneath his scars: the Eleventh Fragment no longer flickered. It breathed. With every step, it exhaled warmth that wasn't heat—just being.
"Where are we going?" Seraya asked.
Kael answered without thinking: "Where they burned."
Rohen didn't need to ask who they were.
Because every soul knew the story—even if they were never taught it.
Elegy: The Ember Saints
Not written. Only ever sung once, as the stars dimmed to listen.
When the gods fell into silence, it was not war that broke them.
It was mercy.
In the city of Varn, where light refused to die, twelve mortals gathered.
Not warriors.
Not priests.
Singers.
They called themselves Ember Saints. Not because they were divine—but because they still believed something sacred could remain in the ash.
When the gods rained fire upon them, they did not scream.
They sang.
Not a hymn of vengeance.
But of forgiveness.
The fire hesitated.
For the first time in eternity, the divine doubted itself.
And that's when the Ember Saints burned.
But the echo of their song remains—in every silence where pain could become peace, if someone only dared to sing again.
The land shifted.
They reached the ruins of Varn by nightfall—if nightfall still meant anything beneath a breathing sky.
Nothing remained of the city but voices.
Not ghosts.
Not memories.
Just a feeling, in the space behind sound.
Kael stepped into the center of the ruin. A circle of melted stone still hummed with warmth, as though fire had only just passed.
He placed his hand on the ground.
It didn't burn.
It welcomed him.
Rohen whispered, "You hear it too?"
Kael nodded.
Twelve voices.
Soft.
Familiar.
Unfinished.
A figure rose from the ash.
Not flesh.
Not spirit.
Something in between.
A woman in robes of smoke and gold. Her face was a mosaic of many—age, youth, sorrow, joy.
She was every one of the Saints.
And none.
"Why do you come?"
Kael did not kneel.
But he bowed his head.
"To forgive what I was."
"And what were you?"
He paused. Looked to the stars. Then:
"Angry. Afraid. Small. Hungry for power. Tired of hope."
"And now?"
Kael looked her in the eyes.
"Still those things. But singing anyway."
The figure smiled.
And with a single motion, she touched his chest.
The Eleventh Fragment pulsed.
Not with light.
With song.
A chord only he could hear.
Not loud. Not triumphant.
But true.
The woman faded.
Not vanishing.
Just rejoining the note.
Kael turned. Seraya was weeping silently. Rohen had fallen to one knee, hand over heart.
"I felt it," Rohen whispered. "For a moment… I forgave myself."
Kael said nothing.
He just looked out across the blackened ruins.
And whispered the last line of the Ember Song:
"Let the fire sing you whole."