Stepping through the gate of the Hollow felt like walking through a wall of cold, liquid electricity. For a second, my lungs refused to expand, trapped in a vacuum where oxygen was a secondary concern to the sheer density of the Aether. Then, the world snapped back into focus, but it was a world that made my knees buckle. We weren't in a hill; we were in an inversion. The interior of the Hollow was vast, far larger than the hill appeared from the outside—a spatial anomaly that my mind struggled to reconcile. Looking up, I didn't see a ceiling of rock or earth. I saw a swirling, subterranean sky made of pale amber light, crisscrossed by massive, dormant veins of obsidian that looked like the frozen roots of a cosmic tree.
Platforms of white, porcelain-like stone floated at various heights, connected by translucent bridges that shimmered like spider silk. There was no sun here, yet everything was bathed in a soft, shadowless glow that came from the walls themselves. It felt like standing inside the casing of a colossal, living engine. But the air here was different from the city; it was stable. The chaotic, vibrating hum that had been rattling my teeth since the Zero Point had smoothed out into a low, rhythmic throb, like the idling of a perfectly tuned motor.
"Don't stare too long," Elion said, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. "Your brain is still trying to use Euclidean geometry to map a place that grew out of a mathematical error. If you keep trying to find the corners, you'll end up with a permanent migraine."
I took a shaky breath, the air tasting of ancient parchment and something sharp, like crushed mint. "How is this possible? The physics… the mass of this place…"
"Physics is just a set of habits the universe used to have," Elion replied, heading toward a central spire that rose from the floor like a twisted column of smoke. "The Zero Point broke those habits. The Hollow exists because someone found a way to stitch a few of the old rules back together. It's a patch, Niall. A temporary fix on a sinking ship."
He led me toward the central spire, which I realized wasn't stone at all. It was a vertical column of light, densely packed with shifting symbols and glowing filaments. As we got closer, my vision began to fracture again. The threads were here too, but they were orderly, woven into tight, glowing braids that anchored the floating platforms. For a mechanic, the sight was both terrifying and mesmerizing. It was the ultimate wiring diagram, a masterpiece of control.
"This is the Archive," Elion said, gesturing toward the column. "It doesn't store books. It stores the Records—the fundamental code of the things we lost. The weight of a gram. The freezing point of water. The distance between two points. We're trying to preserve the blueprints of reality before the Aether overwrites them completely."
I reached out a hand, my fingers tingling as they approached the light. "Can I touch it?"
"If you want your nervous system to be reformatted into a series of footnotes, be my guest," Elion remarked dryly. He grabbed a small, floating shard of crystal that was orbiting the spire and held it out to me. "Try this instead. It's a Fragment. A low-level Record of a simple alloy. Think of it as a single gear from a much larger machine."
I took the crystal. The moment my skin made contact, my world exploded. It wasn't a flash of light this time; it was a flood of data. I didn't just see the crystal; I saw its molecular tension, its thermal conductivity, its crystalline lattice, and the specific frequency at which it was vibrating to remain solid. It was like looking at the most detailed blue-print I had ever seen, but one that was written in three dimensions and moving in real-time.
"Ugh," I groaned, dropping the crystal. It didn't fall to the ground; it simply bobbed in the air, returning to its orbit. I slumped against the base of the spire, my head throbbing. "It's too much. My head feels like it's going to pop like a pressurized tank."
"That's because you're trying to read the whole thing at once," Elion said, his one arm resting on my shoulder. "A mechanic doesn't fix an entire car in one second. He looks at the individual components. He listens for the knock in the engine. He feels the play in the steering. You have to learn to filter the input, Niall. Your eyes are seeing the raw code, but your brain is still trying to translate it into English. Stop translating. Just observe."
I sat there on the cold, white stone, trying to steady my breathing. The throb in my head was a red warning light on a dashboard, telling me I was redlining. I looked at my hands, at the silver stains that had become part of me. "Why me, Elion? Why was I the one who could see this?"
Elion looked up at the amber sky of the Hollow, his expression unreadable. "Maybe because you spent your life looking for the 'why' behind the 'what.' Most people see a car as a box that moves. You see it as a symphony of tolerances and pressures. You were already primed to see the structure. The Zero Point just removed the blindfold."
He paused, his gaze darkening. "But don't think of it as a gift. It's a responsibility. And a target. There are things out there—monsters and men alike—who would pay any price to have your eyes. To be able to read the Records is to be able to rewrite the world. And the world is very fragile right now."
As if to emphasize his point, a low, grinding sound rumbled through the Hollow. It wasn't the sound of shifting stone; it was the sound of something tearing. I looked up and saw a jagged, dark line appearing in the amber sky above us. It looked like a crack in a glass ceiling, but instead of air behind it, there was only a void of swirling, bruised violet light.
The threads near the crack began to fray, snapping with the sound of high-tension wires. The platform we were standing on tilted slightly, and several of the floating crystals fell, shattering into dust before they hit the ground.
"What is that?" I shouted, scrambling to my feet.
"A breach," Elion hissed, his hand flying to the hilt of the rod in his coat. "The patch is failing. The Aether is pushing back."
The silence of the Hollow was shattered by a high-pitched whistling sound, like air escaping a pressurized cabin. Through the crack in the sky, I saw them—thousands of tiny, glowing red threads, pouring into the sanctuary like a swarm of angry wasps. They weren't just lines; they were parasites, latching onto the stable silver braids of the Hollow and turning them a dull, necrotic grey.
"Niall, look at the anchor!" Elion pointed toward the base of the central spire, where a massive knot of silver threads was beginning to unravel. "If that knot snaps, the entire inversion collapses. We'll be crushed between the old reality and the new one."
I looked at the knot, and the red warning light in my brain turned into a full-blown alarm. I could see the failure point. It wasn't the whole knot; it was a single, vibrating thread that was carrying too much tension. It was like a bolt that had been over-torqued, its threads stripped and ready to fly off.
"I can fix it," I said, the words coming out before I could think.
"Don't touch it directly!" Elion warned. "You're not ready!"
But I wasn't listening. The mechanic in me had taken over. When a machine is about to explode, you don't wait for a manual; you act. I stepped toward the spire, my vision narrowing until all I could see was that single, screaming thread. It was vibrating at a frequency that was tearing the air apart.
I reached out, my fingers trembling. I didn't touch the thread with my skin. Instead, I focused on the silver lines in my own palm. I felt the Aether in my veins surge, a cold, icy current that made my teeth ache. I tried to synchronize my own frequency with the thread, to become a bridge for the excess tension.
The moment my energy touched the knot, I felt a scream that didn't come from a throat. It was the scream of a law being broken. My vision turned white, then black, then a color I can't describe. I felt my skin start to crack, the silver stains on my palms glowing with a blinding intensity. The weight was unbearable. It felt like I was trying to hold up a falling skyscraper with a piece of string.
"Breathe, Niall!" Elion's voice sounded like it was coming from a mile away. "Don't fight the tension. Redirect it! Find the ground!"
I looked for the ground—not the stone floor, but the Aetheric ground. I saw it—a deep, stable vein of obsidian energy running through the base of the spire. It was a massive sink, capable of absorbing the excess pressure. I reached out with my mind, grabbing the vibrating thread and lashing it to the obsidian vein.
The snap was physical. A shockwave of energy threw me backward, slamming me into a stone pillar. I felt a rib crack, and the world went grey for a moment. But the grinding sound stopped.
I gasped for air, my chest burning. I looked up through blurred vision. The crack in the amber sky hadn't disappeared, but it had stopped growing. The red threads were gone, burned away by the surge of energy. The silver knot at the base of the spire was tight again, pulsing with a steady, rhythmic light.
Elion was over me in a second, his face pale. He looked at my hands, which were smoking, the skin charred and blistered. "You idiot," he whispered, but there was a strange look of respect in his eyes. "You actually did it. You bridged a primary Record without a conduit."
"Did I... fix it?" I managed to choke out, the taste of copper strong in my mouth.
"You patched it," Elion corrected, helping me sit up. "But look up, Niall. Look at the cost."
I looked at my hands again. The silver stains had spread, moving up my wrists like glowing vines. They felt hot, a permanent reminder of the energy I had channeled. But that wasn't what Elion meant. I looked at the sky of the Hollow. The amber light was dimmer now, and the crack remained—a jagged, black scar against the subterranean sky.
"The Hollow is dying," Elion said quietly. "The cracks aren't just in the sky out there. They're everywhere. The Aether is reclaiming everything, and our patches are only buying us time. The world after Zero isn't a new beginning, Niall. It's a slow, agonizing dissolution."
I looked at the scar in the sky, and for the first time, I felt the true scale of the disaster. This wasn't a broken car. This was a broken universe. And I was a mechanic trying to fix a leaking nuclear reactor with a roll of duct tape.
"So what do we do?" I asked, my voice trembling. "If even this place isn't safe, where do we go?"
Elion looked at the central spire, at the flickering symbols of the Archive. "We find the Source. We find the Record that started the collapse. The Zero Point wasn't a natural disaster, Niall. Machines don't just explode; they're sabotaged or they're pushed beyond their limits. Someone—or something—triggered the flash. And they're still out there, rewriting the world to their own specifications."
He turned back to me, his gaze sharp. "You saw the code today. You felt the tension. You're the only one who can track the sabotage back to the source. But you need to be stronger. If you try to bridge a high-level Record again with your current capacity, you won't just burn your hands. You'll cease to exist."
I gripped my wrench, which was lying on the floor beside me. It felt heavy, a piece of the old world that was increasingly useless in the face of the new. "I'm tired of being afraid, Elion. I'm tired of the silence."
"Then use that fatigue," Elion said, standing up and offering me his hand. "Let it be the fuel. We leave for the Great Library in the morning. If there's a blueprint of the original world left, it's there. But the road is full of Aberrations and worse. The cracks are growing, Niall. And the sky is falling, one thread at a time."
I took his hand and pulled myself up. My body screamed in pain, but I ignored it. I looked at the obsidian moon through the crack in the sky, its jagged shape a constant reminder of the broken reality. I wasn't just a witness anymore. I was an actor. And the stage was a world that was falling apart at the seams.
We spent the rest of the night in the shadows of the Archive. Elion showed me how to dampen my own frequency, to hide my 'scent' from the things that hunted the Aether. It was a tedious, exhausting process, requiring a level of mental discipline I didn't know I possessed. I had to visualize my mind as a series of valves, slowly closing them one by one until my internal energy was just a pilot light.
"Good," Elion whispered as the amber sky began to fade into a deeper gold, signaling the 'morning'. "You're learning. But remember, Niall: a dampened engine has no power. When the time comes to fight, you'll have to open all the valves at once. And that's when you're most vulnerable."
I nodded, my eyes heavy with exhaustion. I looked at the silver vines on my arms, glowing softly in the dim light. They were a part of me now, like the grease under my fingernails used to be. I was a different kind of mechanic now. I dealt in souls and laws, in light and shadow.
As I drifted into a restless sleep, I thought of Oakhaven. I thought of the stone people and the flickering green fire. I thought of the world that was once solid and predictable. It was gone, and it wasn't coming back. But as I closed my eyes, I saw the lines again. This time, they weren't a threat. They were a path.
A path that led through the cracks, beneath the falling sky, toward a truth that was waiting to be read.
I was Niall Arkan. And I was going to find the sabotage. Even if it meant breaking the rest of the world to do it.
The humming in the Hollow changed as I fell asleep, becoming a low, mournful song. It was the sound of a world that knew it was dying. But beneath the song, I could hear something else. A heartbeat. A steady, rhythmic pulse that came from the deep obsidian veins of the earth.
The universe wasn't dead yet. It was just waiting for someone who knew how to turn the key.
The first crack had been patched. But a thousand more were waiting. And the sky was only the beginning. I dreamt of a great machine, its gears the size of planets, grinding to a halt because of a single, missing bolt. In my dream, I held that bolt in my hand. It was made of silver and it tasted like blood.
I woke up before I could put it in place, the taste of ozone still on my tongue. The morning had arrived, and the road was waiting. The cracks were still there, but so was I. And that was enough for now.
"Ready?" Elion asked, his tattered coat fluttering in the artificial breeze of the Hollow.
"Ready," I replied, gripping my wrench.
We stepped out of the sanctuary and back into the crystalline wilderness. The world was a nightmare, but for the first time, I felt like I had the tools to navigate it. The mechanic was on the move. And the sky, falling or not, would have to wait its turn.