The tunnel didn't end—it spilled them forward.
Nima and Dmitri stumbled into a corridor of half-light, coughing through the dust and the bitter scent of old magic. Behind them, the Hollowroot caved in with a sound like weeping stone. The walls here were smoother, more deliberate—carved rather than eroded, shaped by purpose.
Nima leaned against the wall, catching her breath. Her shard pulsed faintly, steady now, like it was waiting.
"That… thing," Dmitri said, brushing moss from his coat. "It said the Bell is learning to sing again. Through you."
Nima met his gaze. "Then I have to decide what song it sings."
He looked uneasy, but nodded. "What now?"
Before she could answer, a faint metallic chime echoed through the corridor—subtle, unnatural, like a bell being struck underwater. They followed the sound, footsteps careful, each step an answer to the whisper of the Bell's unfinished tone.
The corridor opened to a chamber unlike the others. It was not made of stone or earth, but woven light—shifting walls that blinked like slow eyes. In the center stood a dais of pale threads, and above it, suspended like a dying star, hung a sphere of dark glass.
A heartbeat later, it moved.
Not with intent—but with presence.
Dmitri gripped his blade. "What is that?"
"I don't know," Nima whispered. "But it knows me."
The sphere descended slightly, revealing dozens of broken runes floating beneath its surface. As Nima stepped closer, her shard began to glow—and the sphere responded. A thread of light stretched between them.
And then—images.
Flashes in her mind: a sunless sky, bells hanging from trees, cities crumbling into salt. A woman with silver eyes weeping into a mirror. The Thread-Watcher's silhouette unraveling in reverse.
She stumbled.
Dmitri caught her. "What did it show you?"
"Possibilities," she said, voice trembling. "Futures that might happen if the Bell completes its Song."
"And if it doesn't?"
"Then something worse."
The sphere dimmed, withdrawing.
The chamber shifted again, reshaping like cloth pulled taut. New paths emerged—three of them. No signs. No symbols. Just choice.
Dmitri stared. "It's… making us choose."
"No," Nima said, the shard against her chest now pulsing faster. "It's testing us."
"Which path?"
She listened. Not with her ears—but with the thread the shard had sewn into her. One path rang hollow. One rang false.
The third trembled—quiet, uncertain. Unwritten.
She pointed. "That one."
They stepped forward. The chamber behind them unraveled into strands.
As they moved down the new passage, a wind stirred—warm, but wrong. It carried whispers not in words, but intent.
Then the voices formed—dozens layered into one:
"You carry the seed. But will you sow it, or burn it?"
Nima answered with silence.
The corridor narrowed, stone returning. The thread of light between her shard and the path faded—but not fully. The connection had been made.
At the end of the tunnel was a door.
No handle. No lock. Just an eye carved into wood—familiar. The same shape she'd seen in the Loom. The Thread-Watcher's mark.
As her hand reached for it, the door opened inward—on its own.
A cold wind swept over them. Beyond the door: a staircase winding upward through a tower of ash. Bells hung along the walls—some intact, others shattered. And high above, past spiraling stone and soot—
The surface.
A way out.
Dmitri exhaled. "We're leaving."
Nima looked back once. "No. We're returning."
And together, they climbed—out of the Hollowroot, out of the forgotten quiet—and into whatever waited above.
But the shard still pulsed.
And beneath the earth, the Bell's second tone stirred.
The ascent was suffocating.
Each step up the tower seemed longer than the last, as though the climb stretched time itself. The bells that lined the spiraling walls swayed gently without wind, singing faint, broken tones that echoed behind them like regrets.
Dmitri didn't speak. Neither did Nima. They both felt it—something above was watching.
Finally, they reached the top.
The staircase ended in a vaulted chamber. Cracked stone arches stretched above, open to the gray sky. Wind swept in, cold and sharp, laced with ash. At the center of the chamber stood a door made of blackened iron, half-buried in bone-dry ivy. It pulsed faintly, and carved into its frame were six symbols—five unlit, one glowing softly.
Nima stepped toward it. "The shard's reacting again."
She touched the glowing symbol. A hum passed through the door like a breath held too long. Then—
The door opened.
Light spilled in—not sunlight, but something paler, more tired. Beyond it stretched a dead garden, its trees petrified in motion, roots curled like claws in the dirt. Crows hung suspended in the air, unmoving. At the garden's center stood a blackened gate wrapped in chains and etched with Bell-sigils.
And before the gate stood a figure.
Not cloaked. Not robed.
Armored.
Her armor was dull bronze, tarnished by centuries, but it bore the mark of the Bell across the chest—a spiral intersected by broken threads. Her eyes were white, not blind, but empty, like she had seen too many worlds end and remembered every one.
"Don't move," she said, voice sharp, not cruel. "You carry it."
Nima stepped forward slowly. "The shard. Yes."
The woman lowered her blade—but did not sheathe it. "You've heard the Song?"
"I've felt it," Nima said. "I don't know what it's becoming."
"That's the danger," the woman said. "It becomes what you carry into it."
Dmitri stepped beside Nima. "What is this place?"
"The Ashlight Gate," the woman replied. "One of the last seals before the Threshold. Few return from it unchanged. Fewer still return whole."
"And if we go through?" Nima asked.
The woman's gaze didn't waver. "Then you must name what you seek. Not aloud—but in your heart. The Gate answers only to conviction."
Wind stirred. The garden trembled.
"You're not just travelers anymore," the woman continued. "You've been marked. The Song has begun to bind around you. If you step through that gate, it won't simply follow—it will echo. Through others. Through the land. Through the end of all things."
Nima looked to the gate. Chains rusted, the Bell-sigils blinking dimly like fading stars.
"I have to know why," she whispered. "Why I was chosen. Why it wants to be sung."
The woman studied her. "Then carry no lies through. The Song sings all truths, whether you mean to or not."
She stepped aside.
The gate moaned as the chains loosened.
Nima and Dmitri passed through it—into fog, into gray light, into a world between.
Behind them, the armored woman remained.
She turned, staring into the empty garden.
And for the first time in centuries, one of the crows moved.