The rain was falling gently when Arken stood on the rim of the Hollow—a location the maps dared not name, a territory whispered about only in parables and soft songs. Trees were growing upside down from the sky, their roots illuminated with transparent veins of silver light, and the ground sounded as if it was composed of old, abandoned bones. The Hollow was alive in a manner the world was never supposed to be.
The wind didn't blow here. It whispered.
Behind Arken stood Velmoria, her heart-furnace gently humming with pale red resonance, casting a faint warmth over the cold mists. Her face bore no expression, but her eyes were taut with memory.
"So," she said. "You've chosen to come here after all."
Arken stepped forward, feeling the Hollow resist him like a tide moving against the shore. "This is where her voice led me."
Velmoria's eyes furrowed. "Serephine?"
He nodded. "The Song. It exists. I heard it in the Void."
She didn't speak for a long time. At last, she dropped her eyes.
"Then we don't have much time."
They entered the Hollow side by side, though it seemed like the Hollow was entering them.
The Hollow's Truth
Serephine Hollow was a place where memory weighed something.
With each step, revelations came—images, sounds, fragments of thought that had no right to be there anymore. Arken heard a boy with blue eyes whispering a name he had never heard before. He heard Velmoria, not as she was today, but as a child. Bleeding. Running. Singing.
"Do you see them?" he asked.
Velmoria's voice was empty. "Every time.
The trees above moved, and their roots started swaying like the fingers of a weaver tracing a design in the air.
They came to a meadow where the wind at last sang out.
Here, the Song was distinct. And in the middle stood a figure covered in strands of light, her back to them.
Serephine.
Or. something that was left of her.
"Arken," she said, and the pronunciation of his name was music and sorrow all at once.
He moved forward slowly. "Are you really hers?"
The figure turned.
She had a wreath of broken stars, empty eyes, and from her lips spilled not words but notes—each one a fragment of language too ancient to be human. The Song went on, warping the world with each breath she breathed.
Velmoria fell to her knees.
"She's. broken," Velmoria whispered. "Torn between echoes."
"I came seeking answers," Arken said, gazing at the creature who was Serephine and was not. "Why am I tied to the Void? Why was I selected? Why did Northwyn betray us?"
Serephine lifted her hand, and a vortex formed in the air—shaped like a mirror, but it reflected nothing of Arken or Velmoria. It reflected deeper.
It revealed the Origin Crown. Not worn. Not taken. But offered.
"It was not stolen," Arken breathed. "It was offered. freely."
Velmoria's gaze rose, appalled. "Who would offer a crown that warps the fabric of existence?"
Serephine sang the response.
And the Hollow interpreted.
The Pact of the Forgotten
A long time ago—before the Spiral Court, before the Thought-Titan K'Tharion, before the First Betrayer—there was a bargain. The world was too dense with knowledge, with gods, with weight. Men's minds were shattering under the burden of cosmic inheritance.
And so the Crownless One had made a proposal: he would absorb the weight of it all within himself.
The Void.
The cost was forgetting. The songs, the tales, the gods, the names—they would all become specters. Forgotten in a vast ocean of silence.
But some did not see it so.
Northwyn, the former Lore-Keeper of the Spiral Court, opted for remembering. He did not forget. He purloined memory from the bargain and bound it up in himself—into a mirror, into a court, into a curse.
That curse now resonated through Arken.
"That's why the Spiral Court twisted into what it is," Arken explained. "It's a monument to remembering what was supposed to be forgotten."
Velmoria continued, "And Northwyn became a god not by ascending—but by refusing to let go."
The Hollow started weeping. Not with rain, but with light. Pale, starlit tears dripping from the sky above, washing the clearing in silver.
Serephine moved forward.
And she put her hand on Arken's chest.
"Your burden," she breathed. Her voice was no longer a mimicry. "You have to find the Gate of Remembrance. But
only those who have let go can go through."
Velmoria rose. "Then what do we do here?"
Serephine smiled, a regretful curve of her lips that didn't touch her eyes. "You are here to forget."
The Trial of Letting Go
The earth opened up before them and three ways appeared.
One of mirrors.
One of fire.
One of ash.
"You both must tread alone," Serephine said. "And abandon that thing which you are most attached to."
Velmoria walked the way of fire without flinching.
Arken flinched before taking the way of mirrors.
In there, he encountered reflections of himself—not corporeally, but ideologically. Every mirror revealed a version of Arken who had made another choice.
One had taken the Void and applied it to conquer.
One had run away and lived a human life, loved and died without waking.
One had relinquished the crown voluntarily.
Each mirror whispered promises, deceptions, regrets. They attempted to ensnare him, shame him, bedazzle him with ease.
But Arken broke each mirror, one after another, with the recollection of the Song.
He arrived at the last mirror.
This mirror did not display an alternate version of him.
It displayed his mother.
She was singing.
Her lullaby.
The song he'd first ever heard.
Tears scalded his eyes. He recalled it all now.
The burning town.
The spiral sigil.
Her singing, concealing him under the hearthstone as she stood before the Spiral Court alone.
"I cannot let this pass," he breathed.
The mirror answered: "You must."
He went down on one knee. Rested his hand against the cold glass.
And breathed, "I forgive you."
The mirror disintegrated.
And the path brought him back to the Hollow.
Velmoria stood there as well, trembling, hands burned, eyes open.
She did not speak.
Serephine stood in the middle once more, her shape complete. Human.
She took one silver key and dropped it into Arken's hand.
"The Gate of Remembrance is at the world's edge. Past the Black Depth. Past the Pale Memory of Gods."
"And what past it?" Arken questioned.
She leaned forward, voice gentler than the breeze.
"Truth."
And then she disappeared into song.
The Hollow Closes
When Arken and Velmoria departed from the Hollow, the trees that pointed down began to point up again, roots becoming branches. The sky became real once more. The wind lost its voice.
But Arken was still hearing the Song.
So soft.
So guiding.
And deep inside the Void inside him, something moved.
Not a god.
Not a king.
Not even a monster.
But a name.
His own name.
One he had not yet recalled.
But would.