Chapter 25: The End of Echoes

Aedric fell into the abyss.

There was no air, no gravity—only the endless spiraling void that swallowed everything. He could feel Elias beside him, their fingers still locked together. But the further they fell, the more the world unraveled.

The whispers of the unburied grew deafening, ripping into his mind, into his soul. Faces emerged from the blackness, half-formed and screaming, their mouths stretched in agony. They weren't ghosts. They were him.

Every version of Aedric that had ever existed. Every failure. Every cycle. Every lie.

He choked on his own breath, his body twisting, unraveling like the sky above. "Elias!" he gasped, reaching out—but his brother was slipping away, dissolving like dust in the wind.

"Aedric." Elias' voice was distant. Fading. "You have to wake up."

Wake up?

Something shattered.

Light exploded from within him, a radiant fracture piercing through the abyss. The Herald of the Hollow was waiting—watching. Its form had stretched across the void, endless, all-consuming. It reached for him with fingers like broken glass.

"You are nothing but an echo," the Herald whispered. "A shadow of what was. Let go."

Aedric clenched his fists. His body was unraveling, but his will remained. His entire life had been a lie. The world had been a lie. But that didn't mean he wasn't real. Not yet.

"NO!" He roared into the abyss. "I am more than this!"

And then, he let go.

Not of himself. Not of his memories. But of the illusion.

The moment he did, the void collapsed inward. The world screamed as the lie shattered. The Herald shrieked, its form breaking apart, dissolving into the nothingness it had come from. The echoes of the unburied—every lost soul, every forgotten whisper—rose together, their voices turning into a singular, deafening cry.

The abyss became a blinding storm of light.

Aedric saw flashes of what came before—the cycles, the endless war, the forgotten truth. He saw Elias in every lifetime, fighting, failing, and fighting again. He saw the gods who had abandoned them, who had built this cage of reality and left it to rot.

And then—

Silence.

The void was no more. The cycle was broken.

Aedric woke.

He was lying on solid ground, cold stone beneath his fingers. The sky above was no longer broken. The whispers had faded to silence.

Elias knelt beside him, breathing hard, his face streaked with exhaustion. "You did it."

Aedric swallowed. He looked around, expecting ruins, expecting horror.

But there was only peace.

The cycle was gone. The illusion was broken. The war was over.

He was free.