Chapter 11: The Hollow North

The wind that swept across the Northern Expanse was not born of air.

It was memory, stretched thin.

Kaelen felt it long before he reached the edge. The weight of thoughts not his own, the brush of ancient wills long dissolved, lingering like ash in the air. It made his every step feel like sacrilege, as though he trespassed across the bones of forgotten gods.

The girl, now walking behind him more often than beside, said nothing. She had become quieter since the Oracle Coil—as if something in that spiraled sanctum had broken her too, or perhaps confirmed a truth she had not wanted to see.

Kaelen did not ask.

He had learned that silence often answered more than words.

The Northern Expanse was a dead flatland rimmed by fractured ridges. Snow did not fall here. It clung, unmoving, like glass. Every step Kaelen took left no print. The ground did not yield.

The stars above burned colder than before.

And in the far distance, piercing the horizon like a fang, stood the Tower.

Kaelen didn't remember it.

But his bones did.

They crossed into the Hollow North on the third day.

On the first, their breath became visible—not as mist, but as words. Each exhale left behind symbols that vanished a moment later. Kaelen didn't speak. He didn't need to. The air was speaking through him.

On the second, the girl began walking further away.

By the end of the day, she vanished entirely.

Kaelen did not call out. Whatever bond had tethered her to this journey had frayed. Perhaps she had been a guide, not a companion. A shadow sent to walk with him until he could walk alone.

He accepted it.

Solitude was not his enemy.

Not anymore.

By the third day, the Tower loomed above.

It was impossibly tall. Not reaching into the sky, but anchored to it—as though the heavens had grown tired and dropped a spine into the earth to prop themselves up.

Its surface was black stone layered with veins of pale silver that shimmered like trapped stars. The base was half-buried in ice, and no door marked its entrance.

But Kaelen didn't need one.

The thread around his wrist pulsed.

He placed his hand against the stone.

It parted like silk.

Inside the Tower, there was no floor.

Only descent.

He stepped forward and fell—not with fear, but with certainty.

The air thickened. Time slowed. The descent turned inward. Space bent around him.

Kaelen closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he stood at the base.

In a chamber lit by stars.

This was not a ruin.

It was a wound.

The walls pulsed with light that moved like blood. Floating above a shattered dais, a massive mechanism spun slowly—wheels within wheels, etched with shifting runes and glowing veins of matter.

The heart of the Tower.

A memory engine.

Kaelen approached.

As he did, the mechanism slowed.

Images flickered through the chamber: his face, a battlefield under a blood-colored moon, a crown of fractured gold, a city falling into a rift.

Then:

The child again.

Wide eyes.

Reaching.

"Don't forget us."

Kaelen clenched his fists.

"What is this?"

The answer came—not in voice, but presence.

The Tower remembered him.

Not as he was.

But as he would become.

The mechanism surged, and Kaelen staggered.

Knowledge crashed into him:

A war that had not yet come.

A betrayal not yet committed.

A decision to end all things, made in silence, while stars wept.

He screamed.

But only inside.

Outside, he stood motionless as the Tower bled futures into his mind.

When it ended, he was on his knees.

And a question rang in the hollow air:

"Do you accept what you must become?"

Kaelen didn't answer right away.

He stared at the stars, flickering on the chamber walls like distant regrets.

Then, quietly:

"Yes."

The thread around his wrist unravelled.

Its strands lifted into the air, merging with the Tower's core.

A new thread wove itself into his arm—silver this time. Cold. Heavy.

He felt its weight settle into him like a second spine.

And with it came understanding:

The Tower was not his destination.

It was his inheritance.

A memory vault built to outlast death, sealed from the world until its guardian returned.

Kaelen rose.

He was no longer seeking.

He was reclaiming.

He left the Tower that night.

The stars no longer looked down on him.

They watched.

The Hollow North behind him whispered in silence.

And Kaelen walked toward the next scar in the world—

To find who had torn it.

To learn why he hadn't stopped them.

And to decide if he still would.