HOLLOW ASCENSION
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CHAPTER FOUR: HOLLOW ASCENSION
Day 6
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They heard the scream before they saw the light.
It wasn't human. It wasn't Echo. It wasn't even alive.
It sounded like a star dying. A collapsing scream that tore through the air, flattening the ash and silencing even the insects made of wire and bone that crawled through Hollowforge's deadlands.
Grin stopped first, his grin absent for once.
"That… didn't sound like winning."
Senya raised a hand. They dropped low behind a spire of twisted rebar. A blast of Riftlight flickered across the horizon—ugly, unstable. Not the usual pale shimmer, but jagged, violent pulses like a heartbeat bleeding out.
Silas squinted through his scopesight. In the far distance: a cluster of bodies, huddled together around a spike of black crystal jutting out of a collapsed dome. Six of them. Each had already activated their Boons. One was screaming—loud and wild. Another was on her knees, blood pouring from her eyes.
"They're merging something," Silas murmured. "No coordination. They're… forcing it."
"They're fusing Remnants," Nira whispered. "Two at once."
"That's forbidden," Senya said flatly. "Stupid. Suicidal."
Torren stared silently at the ritual.
They watched as one of the rival Contractors shoved her hand into the heart of the crystal.
There was a blinding flash.
And then the sky cracked.
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It was a thing that should not exist.
The creature crawled out of the fusion crater on all fours, howling in pulses of broken light. It was made of two different powers that hated each other—slashed together, not blended. Its face split in four directions, revealing a jagged jaw that unhinged like rotten stone. Its body twitched, made of shadow and crystal and something like fire trying to forget it was ever warm.
One of the team tried to control it. Reached for it with a tether of energy.
The abomination turned.
Swallowed him whole.
"Move," Senya said.
They were already moving.
---
They reached the ridge within minutes, ducking under low bone arches and shattered pillars. The storm wind howled louder the closer they got. Echoes were fleeing—scuttling, flapping, or sinking into the ash, refusing to go near the rising power.
"They tore the tether," Nira said. "Now it's free."
Silas's eyes gleamed with fragments of shadow. "It's not just free. It's starving."
Torren's fists sparked, metal creeping to his elbows. "We can't fight that."
Grin looked at him. "So we run?"
Senya said nothing.
Then stepped forward.
"No. We end it before it spreads."
"You got a plan?" Grin asked.
"Yes."
She paused.
"We improvise."
---
They moved in pairs. Nira and Torren would draw the thing's attention. Grin and Silas would flank. Senya would take position at the central anchor and overload its Rift channel if she could find it.
The ground shook. The creature grew taller by the second, shedding parts of itself like skin that bled memory. It screamed again—light rippling out in seismic waves.
As they closed in, something hit Silas like a hammer to the brain.
A voice.
> "Not yet. You are not ready."
His Fragment pulsed violently in his chest.
He staggered. Shadows burst from him involuntarily.
Grin caught his shoulder. "You good?"
"I'm hearing… something."
Grin smirked. "That's called panic."
"No. This is different. This is the Forge."
Nira's scream cut the air.
The creature lunged—fast, too fast—and nearly crushed her. Torren tackled her aside and unleashed a blast of molten iron from his Boon that scorched the creature's lower limbs.
It howled in pain, or pleasure, or both.
Grin and Silas moved fast—too fast to think. They drove into the wreckage at the creature's flank, weapons blazing. Grin's blade found a seam of weakness along its spine—only to be flung fifty feet by a tail made of chains and bones.
Silas unleashed his shadow.
Not to fight.
But to wrap its mind.
To choke it.
He reached deep, tapping into the Fragment's will, letting it stretch further than before.
And for a second—
Just a second—
He was inside.
He saw them. The fused minds. The two Contractors still screaming, fused into the thing's core, endlessly aware.
He fell to his knees. Vomited.
Senya made it to the anchor.
It pulsed with energy. Riftlines etched into the earth—feeding the creature through unstable conduits. She placed her hand on the crystal.
And burned.
Her Boon flared. The empathic web extended—not to the creature, but to the dead ground itself. She felt the Forge's hunger.
Felt the pulse of the Hollow engine beneath the surface.
And pushed.
---
The creature screamed once more—but it wasn't rage.
It was fear.
The crystal cracked.
The tether broke.
The creature split down the center, howling as shadow and flame tore apart from one another. The Riftlight pulsed once. Then collapsed.
Silence followed.
The kind of silence that tastes like blood and smoke.
---
They regrouped slowly.
Grin limped back, arm dislocated. "We're gonna pretend I helped more than I did."
Torren coughed blood. Nira looked worse.
Senya sat beside the shattered crystal, breathing slowly, eyes distant.
Silas watched her. "That fusion… it wasn't the creature's fault."
"No," she said. "It was theirs. The team."
"They were desperate."
"So are we."
He nodded.
Then looked at the cracked remains of the two fused Contractors.
"They were alive in there."
Senya didn't flinch. "They died the moment they forced the bond."
Silas touched the crystal.
His Fragment pulsed.
> "We are watching."
He didn't respond.
---
Night fell. The Forge slept.
But none of them did.