The world had gone silent after the awakening. The sky still burned faintly where the energy ring had formed, the clouds drifting like ash from a divine forge. Jin stood at the edge of the crater that now marked the place where the ground had opened. The spiral of black and gold energy had cooled, leaving behind a massive chasm that descended into darkness without end.
He could feel it calling him. Every pulse, every flicker of light in the air resonated with the beat of his heart. It wasn't simply power drawing him downward—it was memory. The Hollow was older than the world that had buried it, and within its depths, he could feel something familiar. Something waiting for him.
He stepped closer, the air thickening around him. His hair lifted slightly as static energy rippled through the atmosphere. The void within him vibrated in response, aligning with the pulse beneath the earth.
"You've been waiting," Jin whispered.
The chasm answered with silence, but it wasn't empty. The silence itself felt alive—dense, heavy, like the breath before speech.
Jin closed his eyes and stepped into the abyss. The ground vanished beneath him, but he didn't fall. The void caught him, carrying him downward in slow, weightless motion. The walls around him glowed faintly with veins of light, not mana, but something older—pure creation energy twisting in endless spirals.
As he descended, fragments of the past shimmered around him. Visions of cities before Aurea, civilizations that lived in balance with both mana and void. He saw people weaving light and shadow together, forming songs instead of spells, shaping reality through harmony rather than domination. Then came the great sundering—a war that split the world in two. Magic rose above, building towers of light, while the Hollow sank below, forgotten, sealed beneath the surface.
He reached out, touching one of the glowing patterns in the stone. The image shifted, showing a child standing in a temple of black glass—eyes violet, hair silver, surrounded by both light and shadow.
Jin froze. The child looked like him.
A whisper followed. You were born from the echo, not the origin.
He stumbled back, breath catching in his throat. The void around him trembled, sensing his confusion.
"What does that mean?" he whispered. "Who am I really?"
The voice didn't answer. Only the Hollow pulsed, deeper and deeper, urging him forward.
In Aurea, chaos had taken hold. The sky above the floating city flickered with unstable mana currents, and the pillars that kept it suspended shone with dangerously erratic light.
Director Seo stood at the heart of the command hall, surrounded by projections of collapsing energy grids. The air smelled of ozone and burnt crystal.
"Stabilizers failing in sectors twelve through nineteen," reported one technician, voice barely steady. "The entire leyfield is misaligned. We're losing power to the gravitic anchors."
Seo's mind raced. She had known this was coming, but not so soon. "Reroute energy from the east conduit. Engage manual dampeners on the outer rings. We hold the city together as long as we can."
Her aide approached, pale and shaking. "Director, the resonance readings… they're changing again. The frequency has shifted."
"Show me."
The projection zoomed in on the southern continent. The spiral where Jin had awakened now radiated in waves, each pulse stronger than the last. But instead of expanding outward, the energy was being drawn inward—into the Hollow.
"He's going down," Seo said quietly.
"Should we pursue?"
Seo shook her head. "No. If we enter the Hollow unprepared, we'll be erased like the others. We need to understand what it's doing to him first."
Her gaze drifted to the ancient Codex fragment still hovering nearby. Its final line glowed faintly in red.
> 'And when the bridge descends, the world will hear its own creation once more.'
Seo clenched her fists. "He's not destroying the world. He's rewriting it."
Far below, Jin reached the bottom of the chasm.
The Hollow stretched out before him like a vast underground sea of starlight. Every droplet of energy shimmered with black and gold luminescence, suspended in the air like frozen rain. It wasn't dark—it was endless. The air felt thick with possibility, with potential waiting to be given form.
Jin took a slow breath. The void inside him pulsed once, and the air responded. Ripples spread outward, bending the light in slow waves.
"So this is what came before mana," he murmured. "Before order, before laws."
He stepped forward, his feet touching the glowing surface of the Hollow as if it were solid. With each step, faint echoes of sound followed—notes that weren't quite music, vibrations that seemed to speak directly to the soul. The further he walked, the louder it became.
It wasn't just a song. It was a heartbeat.
He closed his eyes and let the rhythm move through him. The void no longer felt separate from his body. It was him—the same substance that filled this place, the same force that creation had once feared.
A figure appeared ahead, walking across the light toward him. Tall, indistinct, made of shimmering shadow. Jin tensed, but the figure raised a hand in peace.
"You've come home," the voice said. It was layered, echoing through both his ears and his mind.
"Who are you?" Jin asked.
"I am what remains of the first silence," the figure said. "The Hollow was once whole, but when the world chose mana, it tore itself apart. You are the fragment that remembers what was lost."
Jin shook his head. "I'm not part of this. I was born powerless. A mistake."
The figure stepped closer. "You were never powerless. You were unfinished. The world wrote its laws, but it forgot the pause between them—the breath between every spell. You are that breath."
Jin's chest tightened. "Why me?"
"Because you listened," the voice said softly. "When the world shouted with magic, you heard what it buried. The silence. The balance. The truth."
The Hollow pulsed again, and the light flared around them. For a heartbeat, Jin saw through everything—the surface world, the Bureau, the leylines twisting like veins of gold through the earth. And beyond that, he saw the fracture forming in the sky above Aurea.
If the balance broke completely, the world would collapse into either void or mana—creation or erasure—with no harmony left between them.
The figure's voice grew distant. "The choice is yours, bridge. You can restore what was lost—or erase what never should have been."
Jin reached out, but the figure dissolved into light. The Hollow fell silent once more.
He stood there for a long time, breathing slowly, feeling both infinite and impossibly small. He finally understood what the voice meant. The world wasn't dying. It was waiting to be remembered.
And he was the memory.
Above ground, Director Seo stared out over the trembling city. The sky had turned the color of dusk though it was midday. Every Bureau mage was working to stabilize the leylines, but nothing held.
"Director," an officer said breathlessly. "New signal—originating from beneath the surface. It's… singing."
Seo looked up sharply. "Singing?"
"Yes, ma'am. The resonance is harmonic. Every leyline is vibrating to the same frequency."
She closed her eyes. "Then he's made contact."
"What do we do?"
Seo hesitated, then whispered, "We listen."
Deep below, Jin knelt on the glowing surface, placing his palm on the Hollow's heart. The song rose higher, surrounding him completely. He could feel both the world's pain and its longing, the centuries of imbalance finally reaching their breaking point.
He didn't resist. He let the void open, merging his essence with the ancient rhythm.
The Hollow's voice spoke one last time, softer than before. To create is to remember. To remember is to change.
The light erupted upward, a pillar of black and gold piercing the crust of the world, shooting toward the heavens.
Aurea trembled. The Bureau's towers shook. And every creature attuned to mana or void felt the same thing at once—the heartbeat of the planet awakening after millennia of silence.
Jin's voice echoed through the vast chamber, steady and calm. "Then let the world remember."
And the Hollow sang louder than ever.