The city never truly slept. Even after the storm passed and the rain stopped, Reth Vale breathed with whispers, groans, and the soft crackle of fire in abandoned ruins. Shadows clung to corners, moving where they should not. I could feel the fragment's pulse like a second heartbeat.
Ryven had been quiet all morning, preparing traps and sketches in the Refuge while I practiced with the shard. My hands shook with fatigue, but the fragment responded more subtly, more purposefully. Its hunger had not diminished. Every success reminded me of the cost. Another memory lost, another piece of myself fading into ash.
Ryven finally looked up from their work. "Today, you face the real test. Not a practice. Not a moral exercise. A hunter approaches. You must survive, or the fragment will take more than it has before."
I nodded, feeling the weight in my chest. My dreams were haunted by fire and smoke. The Hollow whispered in every empty street. Yet I knew the choice was mine: to act or to lose everything.
---
We moved through broken streets silently. The fragment vibrated faintly in my pocket, reacting to the unseen presence approaching. The city felt alive in a way I had never noticed. Streets groaned. Buildings shifted slightly. Shadows bent unnaturally toward the source of the fragment.
Ryven's voice broke the tension. "Remember. Control the shard, not the other way around. Anchor your intent. Hesitate, and you die. Or worse, the fragment takes what is left of you."
We rounded a collapsed archway and saw him. The hunter was tall, movements precise and calculated. His black cloak clung to his body from the rain. Eyes sharp like knives scanned the ruins. He carried no ordinary weapons. His hands pulsed with fragments of his own, shards of reality bending subtly around him.
The fragment throbbed violently in my pocket. I felt the pull, the hunger, and the whispers clamoring for action.
"Callen," Ryven said sharply, "now."
---
The first clash was chaos. I barely understood my own movements, letting the fragment respond to instinct while trying to anchor my intent. The air between us bent and cracked. Shards of broken reality flashed like lightning. Rocks, broken glass, and splinters of wood hovered in the street, guided by the pulse of the fragment in my hand.
The hunter moved with terrifying precision. Every strike tested me, pushing toward failure. I dodged, redirected, and manipulated. Each time I acted, I felt edges of my memory fray. Names I knew, small details of my childhood, feelings I thought were mine—gone.
Ryven stayed close, a calm presence amidst the storm of broken reality. "Do not focus on him," they shouted. "Focus on yourself. The fragment responds to your intent, not your fear."
I gritted my teeth and forced my intent to clarity. Protect myself. Protect Ryven. Survive. The fragment pulsed, and a wave of controlled energy erupted from my hands, knocking the hunter back against the wall.
But the victory was fleeting. A tendril of shadow from the Hollow twisted around his legs. He pushed forward again, faster, sharper, and more merciless.
---
The fight continued. The city itself seemed to resist. Every step left cracks in the street. Every pulse of the fragment tugged at my mind. I could barely tell what was real, what was fragment-fed illusion.
Then he spoke.
"You do not belong here," the hunter said, voice cold and cutting. "That shard is not yours. It will consume you."
I hesitated. The fragment pulsed angrily. A second's hesitation, and the hunter lunged. The air screamed, reality splintering around his strike.
Pain lanced through my side, sharp and real. The fragment pulsed wildly, threatening to erase something permanent, something irreplaceable. My vision blurred as I reached deeper into myself. I focused not on the shard, not on the hunter, but on why I fought.
I fought for survival. For the fragment. For what I could still remember of myself.
The pulse responded, controlled for the first time in chaos. Shards of air formed a barrier, redirecting the hunter's attack into a wall of broken stone. He stumbled back, eyes narrowing, lips curling into a faint, amused smile.
"You are stronger than I expected," he said. "But every use has a price. Do you know what you've lost already?"
I did. Pieces of my memory, pieces of my identity, fading into ash with every manipulation of the fragment. Yet I could not stop. I could not hesitate.
---
The fight dragged on for what felt like hours, though it had been mere minutes. Every pulse, every movement, came with a price. I noticed the edges of myself fraying, small details vanishing from memory, faces disappearing into nothingness. The fragment demanded payment. The Hollow always did.
Finally, the hunter retreated, leaving a warning.
The Hollow takes what it wants. Even you cannot hide forever.
I collapsed to the ground, hands shaking. The fragment thumped violently in my pocket. Ryven knelt beside me, silent for a moment.
"You survived," they said quietly. "But this is only the beginning. You will face more hunters, more Binders, and the Hollow itself. None will wait for you to be ready. You must train faster, think deeper, and anchor yourself harder."
I nodded, exhausted. The fragment's weight felt more than physical. It was a weight on my soul.
---
Over the next few days, Ryven intensified the training. I learned to manipulate multiple fragments at once. Small shards of broken reality hovered and moved by intent alone.
I practiced anchoring fragments to memories I wished to preserve, testing the limits of my mind. We patrolled Reth Vale's ruins, watching for signs of hunters or other Binders.
Each exercise came with a toll. Memories disappeared. Feelings faded. Sometimes I could feel parts of my identity slipping through the cracks. But each success reinforced a truth Ryven drilled into me: power is never free. Hesitation is death.
---
One evening, as we rested in the Refuge, Ryven spoke of something I had not considered.
"The Hollow is patient," they said. "It watches, waits, and lures. Your fragment is not unique. Every shard has a pulse, a voice, a hunger. Some fragments take slowly, some violently. You must learn to recognize when it speaks to you and when it lies."
I frowned. "How do I tell the difference?"
Ryven's eyes, pale and sharp, met mine. "Experience. Pain. And loss. The fragment whispers, but it never tells the truth. It shows you what it wants you to see. You must anchor yourself to your intent, to your memories, to what remains. And you must decide, each time, if the cost is worth it."
I looked down at the fragment. Its pulse felt like a heartbeat, almost human, almost alive. I could feel the fragments of my mind still clinging to me, fragile and tenuous. Every step forward was a gamble. Survive or lose myself entirely.
---
The Hollow was patient. Hunters were persistent. I was learning to fight, but at a cost I could not yet measure.
By the time I finally slept that night, the fragment lay beside me. A constant reminder of the world I had entered, the battles I would face, and the pieces of myself that were already gone.
I knew with certainty that nothing in Reth Vale would ever be safe again.
And I also knew that this was only the beginning.