The dream came without warning.
Maya stood in darkness. Not the familiar dark of her bedroom with the streetlights filtering through thin curtains, but an absolute, swallowing blackness that seemed to have weight. It pressed against her skin, cold and vast.
Then, light.
A tear in the nothing, jagged and shimmering like heat haze over summer asphalt. Through it, she saw—not another place, but another existence. A city of spires and floating crystals. Creatures with wings of pure light. And in the distance, a mountain that pulsed with energy, its peak crowned by a palace that seemed to grow from the stone itself.
Come home, a voice whispered. Not her brother's. Older. Deeper. The balance falters.
She woke gasping, sitting bolt upright in bed, her heart hammering against her ribs.
The room was empty. The streetlights cast their usual orange glow through the curtains. Everything was normal.
But the words echoed in her mind like a scar.
---
Downstairs, in the basement he'd made his own, Kieran felt it too.
The rift trembled.
Not dangerously—not like before, when it had threatened to collapse and release the Star-Eater's uncontrolled hunger. This was different. A pulse. A summons.
He rose from his meditation, the void within him stirring with something like recognition.
...the balance... the Star-Eater murmured. ...someone calls...
Who? Victus had learned to send messages through the rift, but they were faint, ephemeral—images and emotions, not words. This was different. This was a voice.
He climbed the stairs to find Maya already in the kitchen, gripping a glass of water like a lifeline.
"You felt it," he said. Not a question.
She nodded, her eyes wide. "I saw things. A city. A mountain. And something... someone... said the balance is faltering. Kieran, what's happening?"
He sat across from her at the small table, the weight of three worlds pressing on his shoulders.
"I don't know. But I think... I think someone's trying to reach us. Someone from the other side."
"The empire?"
"Maybe. Or something older." He paused, considering. "The Star-Eater recognizes the call. That means it's connected to the void. To what I am."
Maya set down her glass, her expression shifting from fear to something else—determination. The same look she'd worn as a child, facing down their uncle's rage.
"Then we answer."
"Absolutely not. It's too dangerous. You don't understand what's out there—"
"I understand that you crossed universes for me." Her voice was steady, immovable. "I understand that something in that world saved my life. And I understand that you're not going alone."
He stared at her, this sister who had every right to be broken but had somehow become steel.
"Maya—"
"I'm coming with you. End of discussion."
The void within him pulsed with something like amusement. Even the Star-Eater recognized that Kieran had met his match.
---
Three Days Later
Preparations were minimal. There was no guidebook for interdimensional travel, no checklist of supplies. Kieran packed what he could—food, water, a small medical kit—and taught Maya the basics of void-resonance: how to shield herself from the rift's more chaotic energies, how to stay close to him no matter what.
They stood in the basement at midnight, the air thick with anticipation.
"The rift is strongest at the threshold between days," Kieran explained. "Midnight and noon. We go now, or we wait twelve hours."
Maya adjusted the small backpack on her shoulders. "Now."
He took her hand. Hers was warm. His was cold. Together, they were something new.
Kieran reached into the void within him and pulled.
The rift tore open before them—not the unstable gash of before, but a controlled doorway, its edges shimmering with contained power. Beyond it, the world Maya had seen in her dreams waited.
"You ready?"
She squeezed his hand. "Let's go home."
They stepped through together.
---
The transition was nothing like Kieran's first crossing. No violence, no chaos, no screaming of torn reality. The Star-Eater, sated and purposeful, carried them gently across the threshold between worlds.
They emerged in the Forum.
But it was not the Forum Kieran remembered.
The destruction was gone. In its place stood a city of breathtaking beauty. Crystal spires rose where rubble had once lain. Gardens cascaded from terraced walls. And at the center, where the convergence had torn reality open, a monument rose—not to war, but to healing. A sculpture of two figures, hand in hand, one reaching toward the sky, the other toward the earth.
"The Monument of Two Worlds," a voice said.
They turned.
Victus stood before them, older now, his hair streaked with grey, his robes those of a ruler rather than a schemer. Behind him, a crowd had gathered—Lyra, ancient but sharp-eyed; Elara, no longer a servant but a woman in fine clothes, her face wet with tears; and hundreds more, citizens of a reborn empire.
"Brother," Victus said, his voice thick with emotion. "You came home."
Kieran nodded, then looked at Maya.
She was staring at the monument, at the sculpture of two figures holding hands.
"Is that... us?"
"In a way," Victus said. "The legend of the Hollow Prince who crossed worlds for love. And the sister who waited. You're both heroes here."
Maya turned to Kieran, her eyes shining. "You didn't tell me I was famous."
"You're also terrifying," he said. "Apparently."
She laughed—a bright, free sound that echoed across the Forum.
And in Kieran's chest, the Star-Eater stirred not with hunger, but with something that felt almost like joy.
The family was whole.
The balance held.
And two worlds, once torn apart by void and violence, had finally found their way to peace.
---