Chapter 24: The Shattering of Veils

The world was collapsing.

Aedric staggered forward, each breath dragging shards of glass into his lungs. The air was thick with the screams of the unburied—shadows of the dead twisting, writhing, tearing at the edges of reality. The sky itself fractured above him, great obsidian veins of nothingness splitting through the heavens, as though the gods had finally given up on holding the world together.

"KEEP MOVING!" Elias' voice was raw, desperate. Blood streaked down his face, but his grip on Aedric's wrist was unyielding. They ran, their feet sliding over crumbling stone and rivers of something darker than blood, something whispering their names.

The Obelisk—the thing that had anchored the world, the thing they had spent everything to reach—was broken.

And something was coming through.

From the gaping wound in reality, a figure began to emerge—no, unravel—spindling into shape from coiling strands of shadow and bone. The Herald of the Hollow.

Aedric's mind cracked the moment he laid eyes on it.

The figure was impossibly tall, its elongated limbs twitching in jagged spasms, head tilted in unnatural curiosity. Where its face should have been, there was only a void, and in that void, Aedric saw everything—the truths buried beneath flesh, the names of every unburied soul screaming for release, the knowledge that he had already died a thousand times before this moment.

Elias was already charging forward, blade flashing like a silver tear in the darkness. "Don't look at it! JUST FIGHT!"

Aedric forced himself to move.

The ground twisted beneath him, stone morphing into skeletal hands that clawed at his legs. He slashed wildly, his blade biting into the grasping limbs, severing fingers that turned to dust. The Herald moved in sudden, jerking motions, one moment across the battlefield, the next inches away, breath like an abyss exhaling against Aedric's face.

Pain exploded through his ribs as he was hurled backward, slamming into the cracked remains of a temple wall. Blood filled his mouth. Elias was a blur of movement, driving his sword into the Herald's torso—only for it to phase through, as if the thing were made of smoke and malice.

"IT'S NOT REAL!" Elias howled. "YOU HAVE TO UNMAKE IT!"

Aedric's vision swam. The whispers in his skull—**the voices of the unburied—**were deafening. They clawed at the edges of his mind, memories surging forth like a flood.

A woman's voice. "Aedric, please… remember."

He gasped as it hit him.

The world was a lie.

The dead had never been dead. The living were the illusion.

The truth came rushing in, drowning him in a tide of unrelenting horror. The cycle wasn't broken. The cycle had never existed. They were all echoes of something long lost, playing their parts over and over, trapped in a war they could never win.

And The Herald was the warden.

Aedric rose, trembling. The blade in his hand felt heavy, as though it, too, knew the futility of this fight. Elias was still slashing, still fighting against a thing that wasn't there, wasn't flesh, wasn't anything but the weight of forgotten souls.

"Elias! STOP!" Aedric shouted, his voice tearing through the chaos.

For a moment, the Herald's head snapped toward him. A silence, deeper than death, rippled outward.

Then, it spoke.

"You see now."

Aedric felt his heart stop. His vision blurred, the world around him fading into flickering memories. His childhood. Elias beside him. The years of running. The war. The blood. The screaming.

All of it… a performance.

The Herald reached toward him. "Join us. Unmake the illusion. Become real."

Elias let out a raw, broken scream. "DON'T LISTEN TO IT!" He threw himself between them, his blade shattering against the Herald's outstretched hand. The explosion of force sent both of them flying. The earth cracked apart beneath them, and the sky collapsed.

Aedric hit the ground hard, the wind crushed from his lungs. The world around him was dissolving into the void. Everything was unraveling.

"This is it," Elias gasped, coughing blood. "We have one chance."

Aedric turned to him, chest heaving. "What do we do?"

Elias forced a bitter smile. "We end it."

Above them, the last remnants of the false sky fell away. The Herald loomed, its body stretching, warping, consuming. The whispers of the dead rose to a crescendo.

Aedric gripped Elias' hand.

And together, they leapt into the abyss.