Chapter 16: Whispers of the Hollow Sky

The sky changed again on the fourth day.

Kaelen noticed it first through sound. Not thunder, not wind—something else. A low, endless hum that vibrated beneath his feet, through the bones of the earth. It was a pressure more than a noise, as though the heavens were being held back by something too massive to name.

When he looked up, the stars were gone.

No moon. No constellations.

Only a pale dome of grey, cracked like drying clay.

And through those cracks… eyes.

Dozens. Hundreds.

Watching.

But they were not alive.

They were carvings—drawn from the inside, like something imprisoned within the sky had been clawing at the world's surface.

Kaelen didn't flinch.

He simply adjusted his grip on the cracked orb he had claimed from the Crownless King's cube and kept walking.

The next land was known only as The Hollow.

There were no maps. No ruins. No markers.

Just an open stretch of ground that shifted constantly, like a mirage of stone and mist. Buildings appeared and vanished at the edge of vision. Paths folded in on themselves. Time refused to pass in a straight line.

Kaelen tested it the way he had tested everything else.

He walked forward.

Then backward.

Then to the side.

No difference.

But when he cut a mark into a black tree—the bark screamed, but it stayed carved.

A fixed point.

He smiled grimly. He would carve his path through this chaos, one mark at a time.

By night—if such a thing existed here—he came upon a monument.

It stood in the middle of a clearing, half-buried in the ground: a monolith of bones fused together with molten gold, each rib or femur branded with names Kaelen couldn't read.

At its base: a figure.

Not dead.

Kneeling.

The man wore robes of deep green, though they were torn and bloodied. His hair was silver, braided with thorns. Around his neck hung a sigil that flickered between symbols—sun, spiral, eye, flame.

Kaelen approached with quiet steps.

The man did not move.

Only when Kaelen stood directly before him did he speak:

"The Hollow does not welcome you, Riftborn."

Kaelen tilted his head. "Then it can try to stop me."

The figure finally looked up.

His eyes were empty. Hollow, in the truest sense—black voids ringed with silver thread.

"I am its Warden. I do not stop. I bind."

Kaelen's gaze narrowed. "Are you going to bind me?"

"No. That is not my task. You've already passed the Gate of Silence. The Hollow has acknowledged your passage."

"What's the cost?"

The Warden stood.

He was taller than Kaelen expected, and there was no weight to his movement—like someone walking through a dream.

"The cost is memory."

Kaelen followed the Warden through a shifting field of broken statues.

Each step forward took them to a different place. Sometimes the ground was red sand. Sometimes black marble. Once, for three impossible seconds, they walked on water that reflected no stars.

The Warden explained nothing.

Kaelen didn't ask.

Eventually, they arrived at a cracked amphitheater built into the side of a cliff that hadn't existed a moment before.

Hundreds of seats.

All occupied.

By Kaelen.

Not reflections.

Not illusions.

They were all real.

Each version of him twisted in different ways. Some with eyes burning like suns. Some crawling like beasts. Some wrapped in chains. One sat on a throne of skulls, smiling like a god.

Kaelen looked around slowly, jaw tight.

"What is this?"

The Warden gestured. "The versions of you that could be. Might be. Should be."

"I don't care about them."

"Good."

The Warden pointed at the center of the amphitheater.

"Then kill them."

The first one stepped down from the stands.

He looked exactly like Kaelen—but wore a crown of glass. His hands shimmered with gold, and behind his back hung a cape made of flame.

"Why chase power when you could have ruled already?" Crown-Kaelen asked, his voice soft but venomous.

Kaelen answered with steel.

The battle was short. Brutal.

Kaelen didn't just kill him—he unmade him.

The moment the crown shattered, the body vanished into mist.

The next Kaelen stepped down.

And the next.

Each was a lesson. A trial. A memory twisted into form.

One begged for forgiveness as he drowned the world in blood.

One offered a hand—"Let's share this burden."

One looked exactly like Kaelen... except his eyes were filled with sorrow. "You could've saved them."

Kaelen's strikes became faster. More vicious.

He began to understand.

The Hollow wasn't meant to kill him.

It was meant to strip him bare.

By the end, the amphitheater was empty.

Except for one final figure.

He didn't rise from the seats.

He stood at Kaelen's side.

Identical in every way.

But this one had no shadow.

"You're the part of you that doesn't care," the shadowless Kaelen said calmly. "The part that lets others die so you can keep going. The piece of you that knows you're not a hero. And never will be."

Kaelen didn't hesitate.

He drove the Moment Blade through the copy's heart.

But the figure did not fall.

He smiled.

And whispered:

"Exactly."

Then he faded.

The Warden met Kaelen outside the amphitheater, standing beside a gate that had not been there before. It shimmered like a mirror submerged in oil.

"You have passed," the Warden said simply.

Kaelen exhaled.

He was bleeding from five places. Exhausted. But standing.

"What now?"

The Warden placed a hand on Kaelen's shoulder.

"You are one step closer to the center."

"The center of what?"

"Of everything."

The Warden began to fade, piece by piece. Hair. Eyes. Voice.

"Take this path carefully. Behind the Hollow… lies the Tower. And in the Tower—truths that will not let you leave untouched."

Kaelen watched him vanish.

Then stepped through the gate.

On the other side was silence.

Real silence.

Not the absence of noise—but the complete void of meaning. His thoughts dulled. Emotions thinned. Even his heartbeat felt distant.

He walked.

For how long, he couldn't tell.

But eventually, the world returned.

A sky of static.

A plain of obsidian.

And, in the distance—a shape rising from the horizon like a broken spire.

The Tower.

The next arc.

The next trial.

And Kaelen was ready.

Not because he had healed.

But because he had shed the pieces that couldn't survive what came next.