Echoes of the Shattered Veil

The silence after the vision felt unnatural. Not peace, not calm—just absence. As if the ruins themselves were holding their breath.

Orion rose slowly, his knees trembling, the imprint of the golden vision still burning behind his eyes. The city of the Weavers. The radiant circle. The thing that watched from beyond. He couldn't unsee it.

Lyra was still holding onto his arm, searching his face. "What did you see?"

He hesitated. The words wouldn't come. How could they? How did you explain a vision that didn't belong in the mind of anything mortal?

"I saw the beginning," he murmured. "And the end. Both at once."

She frowned. "That doesn't make sense."

"Exactly."

He pulled away, not unkindly, and turned to face the stretch of ruins ahead. The pathway had changed. The stones rearranged themselves subtly while they were distracted, as if the Hollow—no, something deeper—was shaping their journey.

And the Weavers, or what remained of them, were gone.

But not their mark.

It lingered in Orion's blood, just beneath the surface. He could feel it now—intertwined with the symbiont, humming in strange resonance. One force born of darkness. The other of light. And he was the battleground between them.

They pressed on.

The path narrowed, leading them into a chasm of broken spires and toppled monoliths. The architecture here was different—angular, fragmented, like something had shattered time itself and left behind only jagged echoes.

"This doesn't feel like the Hollow's influence," Lyra whispered.

Orion nodded. "It isn't."

Something moved between the ruins. A flicker. A shadow made of ash and memory. It didn't lunge or attack—it just... lingered.

They passed it in silence, neither daring to look back.

The deeper they went, the more the air warped. Gravity twisted. Whispers bled through the stone, speaking languages no living thing had uttered in eons. Lyra stumbled once, caught herself, then gritted her teeth and kept moving.

Orion admired her for that.

Not just for her strength—but for her refusal to turn away from a truth that would've broken others. He wondered if she knew just how close she'd come to being lost to the Hollow.

Maybe she did.

Maybe that's why she stayed close.

The ruins opened into a vast chamber, unlike anything they'd yet seen. It was circular, with a platform suspended in the middle of a yawning abyss. Runes circled its edges, glowing with a faint blue pulse—like a dying heartbeat.

Orion stepped toward it. "A gate."

Lyra's brow furrowed. "To where?"

He didn't know. But the resonance in his blood quickened. The mark of the Weavers reacted to the platform like it was calling to something ancient inside him.

Orion reached out—

—and the runes flared.

Light engulfed the chamber, and suddenly they weren't alone.

Shapes emerged from the void. Not Hollow. Not Weavers. Something else. Fragmented silhouettes with obsidian armor and silver flame for eyes. They floated without motion, timeless and terrible.

One of them drifted forward.

"Bearer of the Shard," it intoned, voice like fractured glass. "You stand at the edge of what once was and what must never be again."

Lyra's hand was on her weapon, but she didn't draw it. Not yet.

Orion's voice was steady. "I don't know what I am."

"You are becoming."

A pause. Then:

"The Veil fractures. The Bound One stirs. The Nameless eyes awaken."

Orion's breath caught.

"You've seen it," he whispered.

"We remember it."

"What do you want from me?"

The figure tilted its head. "To choose. To rise or fall. To awaken or perish. You are a vessel now, Sovereign-to-be. Not for power. For memory."

The light dimmed.

And in that instant, Orion understood: this wasn't just a ruined world. It was a graveyard of choices made long ago—and he was walking through the remains of gods who chose wrong.

The platform pulsed once more. The gate began to open.

Lyra took his hand, her voice a whisper in the rising wind.

"No matter where it leads… I'll follow."

He looked at her—and for the first time, he didn't see a fellow survivor. He saw something more.

A promise in human form.

Then the light took them both.

And the gate shattered.