Chapter 4: The Heart of the Void

The winds had long abandoned this place.

Raizen and his crew stood before the gate of the lost city of Kareth-Nohr — a silent colossus of broken obsidian towers and inverted monuments, half-swallowed by the black sands of the world's edge. No maps led here. No stars ever passed overhead. It was a place the world itself had chosen to forget.

But it was here, within the hollowed corpse of forgotten time, that the final fragment of the Hollow Throne was said to sleep.

Raizen's breath clouded despite the lack of cold. Time felt slower here, almost resistant to movement. The shadows didn't flicker — they watched. The city's stonework bore no script, only symbols etched in patterns that hurt the eyes if stared at too long. Buildings bled upward like stalagmites, and doors opened sideways. The very architecture rejected understanding.

"We shouldn't be here," Jin whispered, his usual calm cracking under pressure. "This city... it remembers things."

Zuri tightened her grip on her blades. "We came this far. We finish it."

Raizen nodded silently. The shard embedded in his palm pulsed with urgency. It tugged him forward, guiding him through the crumbling corridors until he stood before the throne chamber — or what remained of it. Unlike the others, this one had no seat, no steps, no crown. Only a vast, circular chamber with a pit at its center — and a heartbeat that didn't belong to any living thing.

A sound like wet breathing echoed from the void.

Then it rose.

From the pit emerged a creature that was not born but left behind — a titan clad in broken stone and sinew made of memory. Its skin writhed with symbols that moved on their own, and its eyes — if they could be called that — were pale voids. Not black, but absence. Its mouth split open without flesh or bone, and it spoke.

"THRONEBREAKER… RETURNED."

The crew staggered back as the creature stepped forward. It towered above them all, hunched and broken and impossibly ancient.

Raizen stood firm.

"You know me," he said. "You know what I came for."

"YOU COME FOR WHAT YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO RECLAIM."

The chamber darkened as the creature raised its arms, and the void trembled. Specters emerged — twisted echoes of Raizen himself from across forgotten timelines. Some wept. Others screamed. One, grinning with madness, raised a sword to its own throat.

"EVERY LIFE YOU HAVE LIVED… EVERY TIME YOU HAVE FAILED…"

The creature pointed a jagged claw at Raizen. > "I AM YOUR CONSEQUENCE."

With a roar, the creature surged forward.

The crew scattered, blades and guns drawn, magic and will igniting into desperate defense. Zuri sliced at tendrils that moved faster than thought. Korra summoned barriers that shattered under the creature's screams. Jin hurled bombs of sonic light, their resonance warping the air.

But nothing stopped it.

It didn't bleed. It didn't slow.

Raizen leapt onto the central dais, the shard in his palm blazing. The creature turned all of its attention toward him, and for a heartbeat, the world froze again.

A single thought entered Raizen's mind — not his own.

"To defeat the guardian, you must become what you fear."

He clenched his jaw.

He opened his palm… and let the shard sink into his chest.

The pain was indescribable. His body convulsed. His eyes burned white. His memories — every life, every failure, every version of himself — flooded back. He screamed, not in agony, but in recognition. He had been the liberator. The tyrant. The betrayer. The savior. Over and over.

Now he would be the one to end it.

Power surged through him — not clean, not holy, but true. It was the power of someone who remembered every mistake and refused to stop fighting anyway.

He lunged at the creature with a blade made of his own crystallized memory — forged from heartbreak and hope alike — and drove it straight through the void-beast's chest.

The creature staggered. Light poured from the wound — not blinding, but warm.

"THEN… PERHAPS… THIS TIME…"

"…YOU WILL SUCCEED…"

And it collapsed into ash.

The room quieted.

At the bottom of the pit, where the beast had risen, rested the final fragment — a sphere of iridescent stone, humming with possibility.

Raizen descended slowly, picked it up, and felt the Hollow Throne stir across the world — not calling to be claimed…

…but daring someone to destroy it.

He looked up to his friends, broken and breathless. The end was closer than ever.

And for the first time, so was choice.

END OF THE CHAPTER4