The Cradle
The Observatory lay silent behind him.
Orion walked alone, slipping through fractured corridors where the bones of the Academy groaned beneath their weight. The others hadn't seen him leave. He hadn't wanted them to. Something in his chest had started to pull—down, deeper. Not the Hollow. Not Selene. Not even fear.
Just… a question.
The kind that drags you downward.
He descended through forgotten stairwells and caved-in lecture halls, past murals stripped bare by time. The stone here was cold and wet, veins of moisture crawling like cracks through the Academy's skin. He moved quietly, Lunaris sheathed at his back, the faint echo of his footfalls muffled by dust and rot.
The fissure waited.
It had opened beneath the east wing days ago—just a hairline crack then. But the earth had split further overnight. Azrael had warned it wasn't natural. Iris said they should wait. Serah had wanted to blast it open.
Orion had said nothing.
Because he'd known it was waiting for him.
He passed the last of the sigil wards—a broken frame of star-glyphs scrawled in haste, likely Azrael's work. The glyphs didn't hold. They flickered now like dying embers, unable to bind what wanted out.
He stepped over the threshold.
And into the dark.
The air changed immediately.
The light from above narrowed behind him, becoming a slit of sky that felt impossibly far away. The descent was steep but not sheer—steps, maybe once part of a buried structure, jutted out like broken teeth down the shaft. Orion moved carefully, his breath tight in his chest. The deeper he went, the less the world resembled anything human.
The walls glimmered faintly, etched with unfamiliar lines.
Not stone.
Glass.
A vast layer of fractured mirror-veins ran beneath the Academy—veins that pulsed with faint light, like blood under skin. When Orion brushed his fingers along one, it trembled. A ripple of static leapt up his arm, sharp and sour.
It felt like the Astralum.
But twisted.
The path led him into a hollowed expanse—an enormous chamber where the ceiling arched into shadow, too high and too dark to see. Pillars of melted starmetal jutted from the ground, warped into spires that looked grown, not forged. And at the chamber's heart, the earth dropped again—into a second chasm, this one ringed with scorched stone and fragments of fallen sigils.
It looked like something had clawed its way out.
Orion stood at the edge, staring down into the Cradle.
The place pulsed with presence—not the Hollow exactly, but not separate from it either. This was where it had come through. Or begun. He felt it in his bones.
Not a birthplace.
A wound.
He knelt at the edge, brushing aside dust and ash. Beneath it, etched into the stone, was an ancient seal—circular, riddled with concentric glyphs long faded. Not Academy work. Not Cult. Something older. Something buried.
And broken.
Hairline fractures ran through the center. Something had splintered this place from within.
He didn't know how he knew. But he knew.
It was him.
He sat for a long time.
Silence pressed in from all sides, heavy as the deep sea. He lowered his head, fingers resting on the cracked seal. His eye ached. The mark had been quiet since last night—no silver light, no whisper.
Selene was still absent.
He closed his eyes and breathed. Tried to listen. Not with his ears, but with whatever part of him Selene used to reach. The tether. The bond. The thing that once made him whole.
There was nothing.
Then—something else stirred.
A flicker.
Not a voice, not quite. More like a hum. Low. Resonant. Gold-tinted warmth traced the inside of his chest, faint and fleeting. Like a hand not touching, but ready to catch him.
His breath hitched.
Not the Hollow.
Not Selene.
Something else.
A third presence.
Still unnamed. Still unknown. But real.
The warmth pushed back the cold, just a little. Just enough. And beneath that warmth… he felt it again.
The unraveling.
Like a thread tugging loose inside him. And inside this place.
He rose slowly.
Stepped over the broken seal and descended into the crater.
The air grew heavier with every step. Not colder. Not hotter. Just… denser. Like the world itself thickened. At the center of the basin, something shimmered—an orb of cracked crystal, hovering just above the ground.
No chains. No pedestal. Just stillness.
He moved toward it. The crystal was clear, but stormclouds boiled within—shades of silver, ink, and faint, star-bled blue. It felt like staring into a sky that had forgotten its stars.
He reached out.
Fingers just grazing the surface—
And it opened.
Not with sound. Not even light. Just—
A folding.
Of space. Of self.
He didn't fall, not exactly. But the world inverted around him.
And suddenly—
He was somewhere else.
A mirror-realm.
That was the only word for it. All around him, the Cradle existed again—but hollowed. Distorted. The starmetal spires loomed larger, twisted into thorns. The crystal orb still hovered, but cracked fully now—bleeding silver mist into the air.
And the sky—
There was no sky.
Just void.
A bleeding ceiling of mirrors and ash.
Orion stood still, breath caught in his throat.
The Hollow wasn't here.
But its echo was.
He heard it.
His own voice.
Weakened. Mocking.
"You shouldn't have come back."
He turned.
A reflection stood across from him.
Not quite him.
His shape. His face. But not his eyes.
The reflection's gaze was empty—void-pits ringed with silver cracks. Its smile was brittle and wrong.
"You left the door open," it said softly.
Orion stepped back.
The thing mirrored him.
"You touched what wasn't meant for you," it said. "And something touched you back."
Orion clenched his fists. "You're not real."
The smile widened.
"I'm already inside you."
The world warped.
Not shattered. Not yet.
But stressed.
Orion felt it—a pressure behind his eyes, like his own presence was being pushed outward. Like the shape of him couldn't hold itself.
The Hollow wasn't trying to break free.
It was trying to reshape him.
Not with force.
But with suggestion.
"You don't need her," it said. "You don't need them."
Orion shut his eyes. Focused on the warmth—distant, dim, but his. That flicker beneath the ribs. The heartbeat that wasn't his own.
He remembered its word.
Rise.
He inhaled.
And pushed back.
The mirror cracked.
A thin fissure split the reflection's face.
The pressure eased.
The Hollow's echo blinked, startled.
Then snarled.
"You'll break either way," it hissed. "The Cradle's already feeding."
The world collapsed around him.
Orion awoke with a gasp.
He was lying at the bottom of the Cradle. The orb had vanished—no, shattered. Only fine dust remained, glowing faintly and drifting like motes in moonlight.
His hands were shaking.
Sweat soaked the back of his shirt. His lip was bleeding again.
But he was here.
Still himself.
Mostly.
He stood slowly, his legs unsteady. Around him, the chamber pulsed with something new.
Not a threat.
Warning.
The fracture had grown.
He could feel it now—not just under the Academy.
But under him.
Because whatever had splintered this place… it had done so through him.
When he broke open the Astralum. When the Hollow found him. When something else answered.
He wasn't just carrying a wound.
He was one.
Orion climbed out of the crater, his limbs trembling with every step. As he reached the lip of the basin, the warmth pulsed again—brief, gentle. A hand in the dark.
Not a rescue.
A reminder.
He touched the mark over his eye.
Still silver. Still Selene's.
But dim.
"I'm still here," he whispered.
To himself.
To the one who watched.
To the one who waited.
Above. Below.
Within.
The Cradle closed behind him with silence. Not sealed. Just… waiting.
And Orion ascended alone into the thinning daylight, shadows peeling off his heels like old skin.