The chamber was not built.
It had grown.
Stone curved in impossible angles, textured like bone and bark. Runes pulsed faintly along the walls, breathing in slow cadence, as though the whole place slept—dreaming.
Kael stood at the center, his breath loud in the silence.
The bottle pulsed against his palm.
Steady.
Stronger.
Present in a way it had never been before.
He stepped forward.
The chamber didn't echo.
It absorbed.
Each footfall vanished into the ground like water into sand.
In the center stood a platform—no higher than a step, shaped like a spiral drawn inward.
At its heart: a shallow basin.
Empty.
But not clean.
The stone was stained dark, as though it had once held something living.
Kael approached.
The bottle in his grip trembled faintly, heat bleeding into his skin.
No pain.
Not yet.
But pressure.
Invitation.
He crouched beside the basin.
Uncorked the bottle.
A breath of air escaped—not sound, but memory.
The glow inside the glass deepened.
Green into emerald.
Gold into fire.
The liquid shimmered once.
Then poured.
Not fast.
Not wild.
Like it chose to flow.
Like it remembered this place.
It filled the basin with no splash.
No overflow.
As though it belonged.
The runes on the walls flared.
Not violently.
But decisively.
Kael staggered back as the chamber inhaled.
The air thickened.
The walls glowed.
The basin pulsed—
—and then the liquid lifted.
Not in a wave.
In a shape.
A silhouette.
Not a body.
A presence.
Coiled in smoke and light.
Not male.
Not female.
Old.
And familiar.
Kael froze.
His thoughts scattered.
The figure spoke.
Not in sound.
But in understanding.
A voice behind memory.
A whisper beneath breath.
"You opened the tether."
Kael's mouth moved, but no sound came.
The figure tilted.
Not unkind.
Just curious.
"You are not ready."
Kael clenched his fists.
"I didn't ask to be."
Silence.
Then:
"Yet you came."
He didn't reply.
Didn't need to.
The figure unraveled, threads of green-gold drifting like ash on windless air.
They wrapped around his hands.
His arms.
His head.
Kael didn't move.
He felt them sink into him.
Not painfully.
But completely.
And for a moment—
He saw.
Flashes.
A city burning beneath a violet sky.
Towers crumbling.
A forest screaming as metal veins burst from its roots.
A child—not him—holding the bottle, eyes wide with terror.
A voice.
A choice.
A sacrifice.
Kael gasped.
Fell to his knees.
The light faded.
The chamber dimmed.
The bottle was empty again.
But not gone.
He reached for it.
And it came.
Not just to his hand.
To his mind.
Like an echo that never left.
He didn't hear words.
But he understood:
It had chosen him.
And he had answered.
Not as master.
Not as servant.
But as bearer.
As witness.
As bonded.
Kael stood slowly.
The runes faded.
The basin was still.
The chamber breathed once more.
But now—it breathed with him.
He turned toward the stone archway forming behind him.
No door.
Just direction.
A path.
He walked forward.
The bottle hummed.
His steps were steady.
The weight of the Hollow had broken.
The boy who had entered the mountain was gone.
The one who walked out now—
Was ashbound.