The Hollow March
They weren't supposed to still be standing.
That was the part that felt..off.
Not the trench. Not the road. Not even the way Slate breathed like he'd never done it right before.
Just... the standing.
Nahr didn't say it. But he knew.
They should've collapsed back at the rails. Should've broken—one of them. All of them. Maybe him. Especially him.
Hero hadn't said a word in half an hour. That meant he was thinking.
Which meant something worse was coming.
The ash got deeper. Not a lot. Not dramatic. Just enough to notice.
Like... it was waiting.
Nahr checked his HUD.
[Burden: 69.0]
Still holding. No spikes. No fallbacks. But that didn't mean anything anymore.
The trench had started lying.
—
The March opened up again.
This time the wind came from below.
That was wrong. It shouldn't—
He stopped mid-thought.
Hero did the same.
Down the slope, something was moving.
Big? Maybe.
Silent? Definitely.
It didn't walk. It dragged.
You could hear it without hearing it. Like pressure through the lungs.
Kelar tensed. Slate gripped his stabilizer rod so hard his hand twitched twice.
Then stillness.
No attack.
No signal.
No excuse to leave.
So they kept moving.
Nahr took the lead again. Hero followed close, but slightly off-center, watching their flank.
It wasn't a formation. Not anymore. Just... memory.
They'd walked this way before.
In another trench. Or maybe one that didn't exist anymore.
Slate whispered something.
But no one answered.
--
The basin thinned into a ridge—steep sides, narrow spine, wind sharp against the back of their knees.
No cover. No shape. Just a walk too long for comfort, too short for retreat.
Nahr stepped wrong once.
Didn't fall.
But felt like he had.
The trench didn't catch him. It just watched.
He looked back.
Hero met his eyes.
Then looked away.
That was worse than words.
—
On the other side: a pit.
Not bottomless. Not bottomed, either.
Just full.
Of them.
Not bodies.
Not mimics.
Cores.
Hundreds.
Standing.
All facing inward.
All still.
Like a monument nobody carved.
Nahr stood at the edge.
Felt his spine lock.
Hero froze beside him .
Slate dropped to one knee.
Kelar whispered a name—one Nahr didn't recognize.
Then they stepped closer.
The nearest Core twitched.
No weapon.
No voice.
Just... moved.
And the others moved with it.
The whole pit began to turn.
Not toward them.
Inward.
Like gravity turned sideways.
The center pulled.
But nothing fell.
Nahr stepped back.
Hero didn't.
He stared down.
Not afraid. Not ready.
Just... empty.
Then the HUD buzzed:
[HOLLOW MARCH RECOGNITION: CORE-VALIDATED]
[DO NOT INTERFERE]
[THIS IS REMEMBRANCE]
Kelar said, "They're not trapped."
Nahr looked at him.
"They're remembering," Kelar added, quiet. "That's all."
Of what?
No one answered.
Maybe no one knew.
—
They kept walking.
Didn't speak.
Didn't breathe unless they had to.
Sometimes Nahr looked behind them.
Just to be sure the trench wasn't laughing again.
It wasn't.
This time it just... listened.
Which meant it was learning.
Which meant it would try harder soon.
Ahead, the trench dipped again.
A clean slope.
Like it wanted them to go faster.
Nahr didn't trust it.
But they went anyway.
He didn't know why.
Because forward still felt better than stillness.
Even if it wasn't safer.
Even if it was hollow.
Even if it meant forgetting one more thing.
Like how they'd gotten this far without breaking.
Because the answer to that—
Wasn't going to last much longer.
"it isn't weight when it forgets how to press. that's when it becomes something else."
The tunnel wasn't tight at first. It just… narrowed too slowly.
Like it was waiting to be noticed before it shrank.
Slate had to rotate sideways. Kelar muttered something that wasn't quite a name.
Hero didn't speak. Nahr didn't want to ask.
The walls breathed. Not with air. With intention.
A kind of knowing.
Nahr reached out to touch the surface once, just to prove he could.
It pulled back.
Only a little. But enough to register as fear. Or reverence. Or mistake.
Thirty meters in, the corridor shifted from stone to something that remembered being metal. Smooth in the wrong places. Pocked where it shouldn't be. They passed a rib of old trenchwork—exposed, melted, reabsorbed.
Slate asked, "Where are we?"
No one answered.
Not because they didn't know. Because they didn't want the wrong answer to stick.
Something blinked on the ceiling.
Not light.
Just presence. A single square, glowing blue for half a second, then off again.
Hero stopped. Tilted his head. Said—
Nothing. Of course.
Kelar stepped on something.
Crunch.
Not stone. Not bone.
Just the sound of… decision.
The trench didn't scold them.
But it didn't have to.
The floor changed again.
Tilted. Slightly.
Which was worse than obvious drop.
Like descending into a room that hadn't agreed to let you out the other side.
Hero tapped the wall once. Nahr barely saw it.
A code? A memory trigger?
No reaction.
Just the hum of a new layer loading under their feet.
Then they came to the fork.
Not marked. Not clean. Just… forked. A split in trench logic.
Two paths.
Left bent sharply upward—dustier, warmer.
Right descended—but glowed. Faint lines etched like veins beneath old glass.
No one said anything, but they all looked at Nahr.
He didn't know why. He didn't lead by design.
But someone always looked to him.
He pointed right. Not because it was smarter. Just because his foot already leaned that way.
They followed.
The glow didn't increase.
It just moved.
As if it were walking backward, leading them. Too slow to chase. Too close to lose.
Slate asked again, "Where are we?"
This time, Nahr answered.
"Inside something that used to be alive."
Kelar whispered, "Or still is."
Nobody disagreed.
A chamber opened—small. Octagonal. Slanted walls. Ceiling low.
Not built for four.
So they squeezed.
Inside: a machine. Kind of. It had shape. And metal. And hum.
But no interface. No screen. Just a single red line running across the middle.
They stared.
It did nothing.
Kelar reached out.
"Don't," Hero said.
But it was too late.
The red line pulsed once.
A voice—female—older than code—spoke:
"Memory match: four. Burden weight: undefined. Initiating pull."
Nahr backed up. Hit the wall. Slate staggered. Hero drew half his Galieya.
Too slow.
The floor lit beneath their boots.
They all dropped.
Not far.
Just… far enough to not catch themselves.
They landed in a circle.
Not hard. Not soft.
Like falling into a thought that hadn't finished forming yet.
No walls. No roof.
But sky.
Familiar sky.
Nahr stared.
It was the sky from his early training field.
Cloudless. Tinted bluegreen. Two faint moons.
Hero muttered, "They're using overlays."
Kelar spun. "Why? We're not under full sync."
Slate pointed across the field.
A figure stood there.
Waiting.
It wasn't them.
But it might've been.
Same armor, slightly misaligned.
No weapons.
Just watching.
Then—
A second figure.
Thne a third.
Each turned toward them.
Each—something close to familiar.
An old squad.
One Nahr hadn't seen since Tier 3.
Except…
Two of them were supposed to be dead.
The third—
Nahr didn't remember ever meeting.
But he knew her name.
It clicked in his HUD like a suggestion:
[KIREM – INITIALIZED]
He turned to Hero.
"Do you see them?"
Hero nodded.
"They're not real," Nahr said.
Hero nodded again.
But didn't move.
Neither did the figures.
The overlay held.
So the trench was watching.
Still choosing.
Still measuring.
Still waiting to decide who they were allowed to be.
" we don't remember things clearly because we're meant to. we do it because forgetting would be worse."
The sky held too long.
Like it wanted to see if they'd say something first.
Nobody did.
Kirem didn't move. She just stood there like she'd always been meant to be waiting for them. But Nahr couldn't decide if that was true, or if it was just what the trench wanted him to think.
The others—his old squad—two of them were gone. One he buried himself. The other fell during the rail collapse in Tier 5.
They shouldn't be standing here.
But here they were.
Kelar took a step forward. "Is this… a test?"
Hero didn't answer. His hand hovered near his Galieya, not drawn. Just… close.
Slate shifted behind them. "They're not speaking."
"Because they don't have to," Nahr said. "They're… for us."
"For you," Hero corrected. Quietly. Almost gently.
A breeze passed through the overlay.
It shouldn't have.
The trench didn't run weather protocols unless it wanted to trigger something. Memory. Guilt. Pressure.
Nahr blinked. The moons flickered. One of them turned red. Wrong red. Not code-error red. Blood-hue. A symbol of something he hadn't earned the right to name.
He stepped toward Kirem.
She didn't flinch. Didn't shift.
But her mouth opened.
No sound.
Just motion.
And he—
he understood it.
"Why did you leave?"
His HUD glitched once.
Text scrambled.
Then cleared.
A line appeared.
[SURFACE JUDGEMENT INITIATED]
[STAND TO BE MEASURED]
Slate moved beside him. "We don't have to do this."
"We do," Nahr said, too quickly.
And he did.
Because something in the trench had been waiting for this. Maybe since before his first descent. Maybe since before Kirem vanished.
The field cracked.
Not loudly. It peeled, like skin unzipping from memory.
The ground dipped inward.
The four of them—Nahr, Hero, Slate, Kelar—stood on four corners of what used to be a sparring deck. The edge glowed faint. Ringed in red-blue flicker.
Kirem stood in the center.
Then she shifted.
Frame elongated. Arms split once. Not grotesque, not violent—just wrong.
An echo construct. Based on a real Core, but bent by trench filters.
"Don't engage," Hero warned. "It's not physical."
"But it'll still try," Nahr muttered.
The echo moved.
Fast.
Too fast.
Not for damage. For memory.
Every blow it threw wasn't aimed at their bodies. It hit thought. Pattern.
He caught a swipe on his left arm—didn't bleed. But something vanish.
The name of his instructor from Tier 2.
Gone.
Just… blank.
Nahr staggered back. Raised his Galieya.
Hero deflected the next attack, but winced. "I lost something too."
"What?"
"I forget."
Slate yelled. "What is this?!"
But he didn't wait. Charged.
Too hard.
Too clean.
The echo caught him by the wrist, twisted once—and Slate stopped moving.
Not dead.
Paused.
Frozen in memory-stall.
Kelar screamed.
No words.
Just pain, buried deep.
His HUD blinked.
[BURDEN FRAGMENTATION RISING]
Nahr dove in.
He didn't plan the angle.
Didn't check for sync.
He just moved.
Because the longer they stood there, the more would be taken.
His Galieya connected connected.
Sparked.
The echo split sideways. Like mist under pressure.
Not gone.
Just dispersed.
He landed.
Breathing too fast.
Hero helped Slate up. His eyes blinked back into rhythm.
Kelar didn't speak again.
Not for a long time.
The sky faded.
Overlay peeled off in strips.
And the real trench bled back in.
Stone.
Crack.
Ash.
Silence.
A message scrolled:
[JUDGEMENT ACKNOWLEDGED]
[PENALTY APPLIED]
[WEIGHT CARRIED FORWARD: 70.1]
"Was that it?" Slate rasped.
Nahr shook his head.
"No. That was just memory cost."
Kelar finally stood.
"Then what's next?"
The trench didn't wait for them to agree.
The ground cracked open beneath them. A staircase. Vertical. Narrow.
It didn't go down.
It went… inward.
Like stepping through bone marrow.
They didn't talk.
Didn't have the words anymore.
Not because they were taken—but because there was nothing left worth wasting on speech.
Nahr descended first.
One step at a time.
Each stair humed under him.
Each stair whispered something he'd forgotten.
By the time Hero followed, the trench had already decided the chapter was closed.
But not done.
Because some things don't end.
They just get quieter.
Until the weight needs them again.
[NEXT SECTOR: SHARD DEPTH]
[COHORT BURDEN: 70.1]
[FRAGMENT STABILITY: UNVERIFIED]
[DO NOT LOOK BACK]