Chapter 14: The Hollow Wake

The sky was wrong.

It bled.

Crimson clouds pulsed like torn muscle, churning overhead with no wind to guide them. Elara stood on the edge of the forest, staring at the tear in the horizon a rip between worlds, stitched poorly by shadow and rot.

She stepped through the rupture.

And the world she'd once known greeted her with silence.

Except it wasn't her world anymore.

....

The city of Cendralith was dead.

Buildings still stood, but unnaturally still as if caught mid-breath. The windows were not broken, but melted, as though reality had heated and folded in on itself.

Blood painted the marble street of the central square.

But there were no bodies.

Only… remnants.

Suits of skin hung from lampposts, turned inside out like discarded coats. Eyes were placed carefully on tabletops, arranged in perfect circles. And hands severed but pristine gripped the edges of fountains and doorknobs as if the people had been peeled away from their lives mid-motion.

Lyra retched beside her.

Elara's stomach flipped, but she didn't look away.

This wasn't a massacre. It was a message.

We see you. We know what you are. And we are coming.

"Elara," Lyra gasped, pointing.

At the edge of the square stood a statue.

No, not a statue.

A mirror — ten feet tall, framed in bone, its surface dark and rippling like oil.

Her reflection didn't mimic her.

It smiled.

"Welcome back, Elara," it whispered. "We made you a home."

Suddenly, the air shifted.

She spun.

A child stood across the square. Alone.

Barefoot. Shivering.

Eyes black as tar.

"Elara…" Lyra whispered, stepping forward.

"Wait!"

Too late.

The child blinked once, and split open.

Like a flower.

Her face peeled apart with a wet crack, revealing rows of needle-teeth inside a gaping, vertical mouth that stretched from brow to chest. Limbs cracked backwards, bones bending like wire. From within the husk of the child, something ancient began to pull itself out hunched, tall, wet.

It smiled with its whole body.

Elara threw Lyra behind her.

The creature stepped forward, dragging its spine on the ground behind it like a tail. Where its feet touched the blood-stained marble, runes bloomed glowing sickly green, pulsing in time with the creature's breath.

"You're not supposed to be here," it hissed. "You were supposed to stay buried."

"Who sent you?" Elara growled, summoning her pulse of energy, but it stuttered. Her hands trembled. The forest's magic didn't flow the same here.

"You think the gods sleep peacefully?" it said, stepping closer. "You think the Whispering One died without a backup plan? Oh no, little broken thing. You're the last piece. The last page in a book that should've stayed burned."

And then it lunged.

.....

Elara screamed as claws raked her arm, tearing through flesh with ease. Blood sprayed the cobblestones, hissing where it landed, as if even her blood remembered what she was becoming.

She retaliated on instinct, not memory, twisting her fingers in the air, ripping at space itself. A shard of reality tore loose, and she threw it into the creature's chest.

It staggered.

But laughed.

It split again into three. Each version more grotesque. One had no eyes, only mouths. Another wept from every pore. The third whispered her name with every step.

Lyra pulled her dagger.

"Go!" Elara shouted.

"I'm not leaving you!"

"You have to! Find the Gate! The mirror"

The mouth-eyed beast tackled Elara, and she hit the ground hard, wind knocked out of her.

It hovered above her.

"He's watching you now. The true God. The one behind the veil. You cracked the shell, Elara. And now the yolk is spilling."

Before it could strike, a sudden flare of light erupted.

Lyra's dagger, burning white plunged into its neck.

It howled.

Elara rolled free as the creature flailed, choking on its own rot. The other two screamed, not in rage but in recognition. As if the dagger wasn't Lyra's but something older.

"She bears the old iron," they hissed, retreating into the mirror's shadow. "She carries the flame that betrayed us!"

The city groaned.

Everything tilted, buildings bending, sky twisting, the mirror glowing bright red.

"We have to go!" Elara shouted, grabbing Lyra's hand.

But as they sprinted toward the mirror, a final voice spoke:

"You can't run from what you are.

Not when the world starts to remember.

Not when the gods start to wake up."

They dived through the glass.

...

The world blurred.

Flashed.

Elara felt herself torn apart, not physically, but conceptually. Her identity stretched, shredded, re-stitched. For a moment, she was a child again. Then a monster. Then… nothing at all.

And then,

They hit the ground.

Hard.

....

She sat up, gasping.

Around them were walls of silver wood. The scent of ash. The Mirror Cloak lay nearby, twitching on its own, like it sensed danger.

Lyra's face was pale.

"Elara… we were never supposed to leave that forest, were we?"

"No," Elara said, blood trailing down her arm. "We were meant to rot there quietly. To keep the gods asleep."

"Then what happens now?"

Elara stood.

Wiped blood from her face.

And smiled not with comfort, but defiance.

"Now we burn the script.

And write something new."