The ashes of the Hollowed didn't cool. They pulsed faintly, as if still clinging to memory — or waiting to be reclaimed.
Selene stood over them, her eyes distant. "They weren't warriors. Not at first."
Cael crouched beside her. "Who were they?"
She brushed her fingers across the broken shard, now split into two uneven halves. Inside the stone, fine script twisted and looped in a forgotten dialect. "The first Reclaimers," she said. "Volunteers… or sacrifices. Sent into the breach when it first opened. But they didn't come back out the same."
Cael let the weight of that settle. These weren't monsters born from the breach. They were people—twisted, repurposed, hollowed.
"How did they survive this long?" he asked.
"They didn't." Selene's voice was quiet. "They were preserved. Anchored by the stones. Like keys turned backward."
He didn't ask what that meant. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.
They moved on, deeper through the winding corridors. The architecture changed—slowly, subtly. The stone became polished, smoother, no longer carved by hands but shaped by intention. The breach's presence wasn't seeping through here. It was originating.
They arrived at a fork: one path descending into complete darkness, the other lit faintly by an amber glow.
Cael pointed to the lit path. "We go that way."
Selene hesitated. "It's a lure."
"Everything down here is."
The tunnel opened into a vault. A circular chamber lined with alcoves, each containing a coffin wrapped in iron bands and painted with sigils that shimmered just beyond focus. In the center: a pedestal, on which rested a single book, bound in rough leather and sealed by seven locks.
The cover bore no title — only a symbol: a spiral devouring itself.
Cael stepped forward, the air growing colder with each breath. He could feel the presence in the room now — vast, slow, aware.
Selene touched one of the locks and flinched. "This isn't for us."
"I think it's for me," Cael said. The words escaped before he even thought them.
She stared at him. "Why would it be for you?"
Cael reached out, his hand hovering over the book.
The first lock clicked open.
Not by touch.
By recognition.
The breath caught in Selene's throat. "Cael… what aren't you telling me?"
He stared down at the book, heart pounding.
"I don't know."
But something inside him — something buried deep — whispered otherwise.
You always knew.