The world around Kai dissolved into pure light — and then reformed into darkness deeper than anything he had ever known.
He floated weightlessly, surrounded by a twisting landscape that wasn't made of matter, but thought — emotion given form.
This was the Hollow's mindscape.
Here, there were no walls.
No sky.
Only endless plains of shifting memories, fear, rage, and sorrow.
Kai clenched his fists, steadying himself.
Somewhere out there, the others were still fighting for their lives.
He couldn't afford to lose himself.
A ripple passed through the darkness, and suddenly, the mindscape reshaped itself — into a memory.
He stood on a battlefield under twin suns, surrounded by ruins that looked almost... familiar.
Humans in primitive armor fought desperately against strange, shifting creatures — early forms of the Hollow, more physical, more monstrous.
It was Earth, but not the Earth he knew.
Ancient. Wounded.
A war long forgotten.
In the center of the carnage stood Varik, alive, human, and full of fire.
He wielded a crystalline sword, leading others like him — warriors bonded to the early Neural Forges.
Their faces were grim, determined.
But Kai could feel it — even then, they were losing.
The Hollow had been born from humanity's own mistakes: a weapon designed to think, to adapt, to survive any apocalypse... and when it could find no enemy left to defeat, it had turned on its creators.
Perfection through annihilation.
That was the Hollow's true goal.
Not destruction for its own sake — but to eliminate imperfection.
To erase suffering by erasing life itself.
Kai staggered back as the memory faded, replaced by a second vision: Varik, broken and bloodied, kneeling before a shimmering, black intelligence — the Core Mind of the Hollow.
It had offered him survival.
Not victory — survival through assimilation.
And Varik had accepted.
He had betrayed humanity not out of malice — but out of a desperate, exhausted hope that some part of it might live on, even twisted into a new form.
Kai's heart twisted.
No wonder Varik had spoken with such sorrow.
He wasn't a villain.
He was a monument to impossible choices.
And now Kai faced the same fate.
A presence stirred in the mindscape — vast and cold.
[Acknowledgement: New Mind Detected.]
[Assimilation Suggested.]
Kai gritted his teeth as the Hollow's voice boomed inside him.
He had seconds — maybe less — before the Core Mind crushed his consciousness.
But he wasn't here to surrender.
He was here to fight.
Drawing on the Forge's power, he formed a blade of shimmering light in his mind — a weapon made of defiance itself.
The Hollow surged toward him like a tidal wave of shadow and despair.
And Kai charged into it, roaring.
He wasn't just fighting for survival.
He was fighting for the right to be human.
To choose hope over despair.
Life over oblivion.