– The Void Hunts Back
The world froze—but Reika's pulse did not.
Every breath felt like ice, every heartbeat a war drum against time itself. The man in black armor stood unmoving, as if sculpted from obsidian and flame. Around her, the rain remained suspended in midair, droplets frozen like stars on pause.
His eyes glowed brighter now. And when he spoke, it was not with his own voice, but with a hundred voices echoing from the hollow places of the world.
> "You've touched the wrong memory, Reika Velar. And now, you've woken something that cannot be put back to sleep."
She gritted her teeth, forcing her body to respond. Muscles screamed. Her fingers twitched. The pendant pulsed hot against her chest.
> "Don't listen when the Void speaks your name."
Too late.
It had already whispered.
And now, it was screaming.
---
Elsewhere — The Crescent Wastes Edge
Aziel crouched beside a shattered drone, his fingers dancing across its neural interface. He hadn't meant to follow the girl. Curiosity, maybe. Or fate. But he was a scavenger—he followed signals like hounds chased blood.
He tapped into the feed—and saw the man in black.
> "No way..."
He recognized the armor. Everyone from the lower rings did.
Obsidian Class.
Voidspawn Enforcer.
Extinct for over a hundred years.
Except they weren't.
They were hunting again.
He whispered into his comm-link. "Echo Protocol is active. We have an awakened target. Repeat—Reika Velar is real."
---
Inside the Time-Locked Crater
Reika did the only thing she could—she screamed.
The sound fractured the frozen reality around her. Glass-like cracks spread across the air, shimmering with light. Her scream turned into a shockwave, and the armored figure recoiled, staggered.
The rain fell again. Gravity returned. The world spun like a wheel unhinged.
She scrambled to her feet, adrenaline drowning her panic. Her fingers brushed against a shard of obsidian from the crater floor—when she picked it up, the ground lit beneath her feet.
A glyph ignited.
Her name, written in a language long extinct.
> "Stop running, child of the Hollow Gate," the figure boomed.
But Reika was no longer listening.
She ran—and the glyph exploded beneath her, sending her flying off the ridge of the crater. Darkness swallowed her.
---
Location: The Cradle of Engines — Undercity of Nova Stratios
Steam hissed through rusted vents. Sparks danced like fireflies across the shattered sky-ducts. Beneath the capital, beneath even the Council Spire, another world thrived—a world built by exiles and ex-soldiers, rogue engineers, shadow-forgers.
A woman moved through this metallic underbelly with purpose.
Her name was Kaelara.
Tattooed wrists. Cybernetic left eye. Cloak made of whisper-thread. She once led a rebellion that nearly toppled the Obsidian Regime.
Now, she hunted whispers.
She had just received one.
> "Reika Velar lives."
Kaelara stopped in her tracks.
Not possible.
Not again.
> "Prep the sky-drill. We're going to the Wastes."
---
Somewhere Beyond the Crater — Void's Edge Forest
Reika woke coughing.
Branches. Mud. Her leg throbbed. Her pendant was dark.
But she was alive.
And someone was standing above her.
A young man. About her age. Pale eyes like lightning storms, hair too silver for his youth. He held a spear that shimmered unnaturally. It was humming.
"Don't move," he said calmly. "You're lucky I found you before they did."
"Who... who are you?"
He crouched, inspecting her leg, ignoring her question.
"You fell through a glyph gate," he said. "You're marked. They'll track you now. You've got maybe three hours before they triangulate your position."
"Answer me!" she snapped.
He looked at her then, really looked. And for a moment, he seemed sad.
"My name is Kyran. And I'm what's left of the Echo Guard."
---
Flashback — The Fall of the Echo Guard
Ten years ago, before the Sundering, before the Gate was sealed, the Echo Guard were chosen protectors of the Balance—a force trained to silence the whispers of the Void and shield the few born with Hollow Sight.
Only thirteen remained when the final breach consumed Fenor.
Kyran was the only one under sixteen to survive.
They had betrayed the Guard from the inside.
And Reika's bloodline had been the spark.
---
Present — Forest Encampment
Kyran's camp was hidden beneath layered shielding—a collapsible dome that refracted sound, heat, even heartbeat signatures.
He handed Reika a mug of something warm and bitter.
"You're not just a girl," he said without looking. "You're a living seal. You don't understand what you are because you were meant to die before you reached awakening."
"Thanks," she said bitterly, "that's comforting."
Kyran didn't smile.
"They'll come for you. The Council. The Voidspawn. Even rebels who think you're a weapon."
"Am I?" she whispered.
He finally looked at her again.
"I don't know. That's what scares me."
---
Meanwhile — Council Spire, Hidden Chamber 13A
High Chancellor Varek stared at the still image.
Reika, unconscious. Kyran beside her.
He turned to the cloaked man standing silently in the shadows.
"Activate the Omen Protocol."
The figure nodded.
Outside, a storm began to form over Nova Stratios. Black clouds without rain. Lightning without thunder.
Something ancient was waking.
And it remembered Reika's blood.
---
Kyran's Confession
"I was trained to kill you," Kyran said later, by firelight. "If you ever emerged. That was the mission. Final Order: Terminate the Hollow-Blood."
She looked at him, stunned.
"Why didn't you?"
"Because when I saw your face, I remembered my sister. She died protecting someone like you."
Silence fell.
Then he tossed her something.
A map. Old. Faded. Marked with one word: Threshold.
"What is it?"
"A key," he said. "To your past. And maybe to the truth about the Gate."
---
Twist — Arrival of the Sky-Drill
The ground shook.
Reika shot up. Kyran stood, spear drawn.
Above them, the canopy tore apart.
A sky-drill descended—half-ship, half-machine, teeth spinning with flame. It landed hard, metal groaning.
Kaelara stepped out, flanked by two resistance fighters.
"Kyran," she said. "Didn't think I'd find you playing babysitter."
"She's not a threat," he replied sharply.
Kaelara's eyes locked on Reika.
"No. She's worse. She's a variable."
Kaelara drew her gun.
"I've seen what her kind brings."
---
Cliffhanger Ending
Before anyone could speak, the pendant around Reika's neck lit up again—violently.
The ground cracked.
A portal opened.
Not like before.
This one was screaming.
Something came through.
It didn't walk. It crawled.
A thousand eyes. No skin. A voice that bled backwards through time.
The Void had found her.
And it was hungry!
The creature slithered out of the rift like a nightmare escaping a coffin.
Limbs too long. Eyes that blinked in patterns. Its skin was made of nothing—a folding shadow of stars that bent the trees and light around it. Reika couldn't move. Her body responded like prey faced with a predator beyond instinct.
Kyran stepped in front of her, spear leveled. Kaelara hissed a curse under her breath and signaled her team to fall back. But the creature was already sniffing, tasting the air like it could smell Reika's blood even through time.
> "It's not real," Kaelara muttered. "It can't be. This thing—this thing belongs to the Void Age. We sealed those things away with the last Gate—"
"No," Kyran interrupted grimly. "We buried them. There's a difference."
The creature lunged.
Kyran met it mid-air, spear colliding with un-flesh. The shockwave sent Kaelara and Reika flying backward into the dirt. Reika rolled, gasping, her pendant now glowing like it held a sun inside. Her fingers instinctively grasped it, and the moment she did—everything around her stopped.
---
A Rift in Time — The Pendant's Memory Trigger
Suddenly, she was no longer in the forest.
She stood inside a glowing white corridor suspended in space, mirrors bending infinitely in every direction. In the mirror to her left—her child self. To the right—a version of her older, with golden eyes and a crown of thorns.
> "This isn't real," she muttered.
But a voice responded.
> "It's memory. Not yours. But one you carry."
Before her stood a woman.
Tall. Regal. Familiar.
Reika gasped.
> "Mom?"
But this version of her mother wore Voidsteel armor and a crown of static flame. Her eyes were mirrors themselves.
> "Not quite," the vision said. "But close enough to break you."
The mirror shattered. Reika screamed. And she was pulled violently back into her body—
---
Back in the Forest — The Fight Unleashed
Kyran was bleeding. The creature had pierced through the side of his torso, and dark violet blood spilled out, evaporating into mist before hitting the ground.
Kaelara shouted, unloading her sidearm into the beast—but bullets phased through it like fog. One of her guards was caught and unmade. Not killed. Erased.
"Fall back! Fall back now!" Kaelara roared.
Reika stood, shaking. The pendant still hummed in her grip. Then it spoke.
Not aloud. In her head.
> "You are the door and the lock. The breaker and the key."
"Do something!" Kyran gasped.
Reika closed her eyes.
And she listened.
The Void hissed her name. But deeper still… there was another voice.
One that didn't scream.
One that sang.
She repeated the song.
A single word.
A name that echoed across creation and through her bones like thunder:
> "Vel'Aran."
The beast froze.
It trembled. Twitched. Then began to shrink—folding in on itself like a memory being erased in reverse. In seconds, it was gone.
And the rift sealed shut with a silent snap.
---
Aftermath — Echoes and Questions
Kyran collapsed. Kaelara ran to him, pressing her scarf to the wound.
"You were lucky," she muttered.
"No," Kyran whispered. "We were doomed. Until she said the Name."
Kaelara looked at Reika with new eyes. "Where did you learn that?"
Reika was shaking, dizzy. "I didn't. It was inside the pendant. It—it knew the thing. It knew what I had to say."
"That wasn't a name," Kaelara whispered. "It was a command word. From the original Gatekeepers."
"But how would I know it?" Reika asked. "Why would it obey me?"
No one had an answer.
But they all knew one thing:
This wasn't just about awakening.
This was about control.
And Reika might be more than a living key.
She might be the only one left who could lock the Void again.
---
Cutaway — Obsidian Labyrinth, Beneath the Capital
The man in black armor stood in the dark.
He removed his helmet slowly, revealing a face half-rotted, half-mechanical.
His eyes bled ink.
Behind him, other shadows stirred—ancient, sealed. Monsters of flesh and machine. Puppets of the Void.
He smiled.
> "The Hollow-Blood awakens," he rasped.
> "Then the Void shall walk again."
---
Final Sequence — Kyran's Vision
That night, as Kyran lay in Kaelara's medpod, unconscious, he dreamed.
He saw Reika standing at the edge of a starless sea, wearing armor made of her own shadow. Thousands bowed before her.
Behind her, the sky split open—and the gods of the Void reached through, eyes endless, mouths open in song and sorrow.
And Reika turned to them—not afraid—but commanding.
Kyran jolted awake.
He whispered, "She's not the seal. She's the Gatekeeper reborn."