The Hollow Remnants

The silence stretched too long. Not an ordinary hush, but an absence—a void where sound should have been. The ruins pulsed, the stone veins running with dim silver light, as if something unseen had just exhaled.

Orion's pulse thundered against his ribs. He tightened his grip on the runes now etched into his palm, feeling the faint hum beneath his skin. The knowledge that had been forced into him still ached, like a blade lodged between thought and memory.

Lyra had her sword drawn, the blade humming with spectral energy. "Something moved," she said quietly.

Orion turned, his gaze sweeping the shifting shadows beyond the obelisks. The darkness there was too thick, swallowing the edges of reality like a living thing. They weren't alone. They never had been.

Then—a whisper.

Not from Lyra.

Not from the ruins.

From behind his own eyes.

"The veil is not yet broken. But the hollow ones still hunger."

His breath hitched. The runes on his palm flared, and for the briefest moment, the shadows peeled back.

Figures stood there.

Not wraiths. Not Forgotten.

Something in between.

Their forms flickered—half-there, their bodies distorted, as if seen through fractured glass. No eyes. No mouths. Just the faint, pulsing glow of runes carved into where their skin should have been.

And then—they stepped forward.

The air collapsed inward. A gravitational force yanked at Orion and Lyra, pulling them toward the hollow figures. Lyra slashed the air between them, and spectral fire erupted from her blade, cutting through the distortion.

For a second, the pressure relented.

But Orion saw it then—the obelisk runes were changing.

They twisted, unraveling like strands of reality rewriting themselves.

The Hollow Remnants weren't attacking.

They were inviting.

"Enter the Hollow, Child of the Erased."

The words seared into Orion's mind.

A choice.

The ruins had opened a path.

And something waited beyond it.