The world blurred into sensation as Nima and Dmitri tumbled through the rupture beneath Hollowroot. Light twisted, sound bled into color, and for a moment, they weren't falling but unraveling.
Then, with a cruel suddenness, gravity found them.
Nima landed hard on stone, pain sparking up her arm. Dmitri hit nearby with a grunt, rolling instinctively into a crouch. The chamber they had fallen into pulsed with dim, coppery light—alive, yet directionless, like the pulse of something buried deep beneath flesh.
The air reeked of ozone and iron. Veins of glass threaded through the walls like neural pathways, shimmering with that same sickly orange hue. Symbols floated in the air, half-formed glyphs burning for a heartbeat before vanishing into smoke.
Nima sat up slowly, the shard of the Bell still humming against her chest. It wasn't just reacting—it was resonating, vibrating with almost frantic intensity. The deeper they went, the louder the Song became.
Dmitri placed a hand on the wall. "This isn't stone," he muttered. "It's… something else."
"It feels like a cocoon," Nima said quietly. "Or a body."
They looked at each other, neither wanting to voice what they both feared.
Beneath Hollowroot wasn't just ruins or forgotten ritual chambers—it was something living. Something dreaming.
A slow, rhythmic pulse beat through the walls.
They stood, warily scanning the chamber. The shard in Nima's possession flared as they moved, casting ghostly silhouettes across the glistening walls. The chamber opened into a corridor without clear end or beginning, spiraling in impossible geometry. Staircases led sideways. Archways folded into themselves. Time felt porous.
As they ventured deeper, fragments of memories surfaced—memories not their own.
An empty cradle, rocking in a room lit only by moonlight.
A hand pressed against a mirror, reaching not toward its reflection but toward something trapped behind it.
A child crying, unseen, unheard.
The corridor breathed around them.
"I think this place… records," Nima whispered. "It remembers. Everyone who's ever come here."
"Or everyone who's ever tried to leave," Dmitri said grimly.
They passed what looked like a shrine—if one could call it that. Dozens of faces carved into the wall, each expression twisted in anguish or awe. But one face had not been carved. It protruded from the surface, real flesh fused into the wall, eyes wide open and wet with tears.
Nima gasped and stepped back.
It blinked.
The face opened its mouth, but no sound came—only the faintest whisper in Nima's mind.
"Don't wake the dream."
Dmitri pulled her away, and they ran.
The corridor widened into a cavern that defied architecture. Hanging bridges spun across an endless chasm, their ropes tangled with bells of all sizes. The wind—if it was wind—carried faint tones, the fragments of countless unfinished songs.
At the center of it all, suspended in air, floated an orb of crystal, cracked and leaking golden light.
Nima staggered forward, drawn. "That's… another shard."
But it was different. This shard wasn't dormant. It pulsed with awareness.
Dmitri grabbed her wrist. "Something's wrong. It's watching us."
The shard shimmered—and the wind howled.
From the bridges came shapes. Figures, stitched together from cloaks, bells, and silence. They moved without sound, their heads bowed, their forms shifting as if unfinished.
"They're not alive," Nima whispered. "They're echoes."
The first one raised its head. Where its face should have been was only a bell—cracked and sealed with wax.
And then, they rang.
The sound wasn't loud. It was delicate, almost tender. But it cleaved through Nima's mind like a blade, splitting her thoughts, forcing her to her knees. The Bell's Song erupted in her skull—not a melody, but a dirge.
The echoes moved forward.
Dmitri stepped in front of her, drawing his blade, his stance wide. "Get up, Nima."
"I… I can't—" Her voice trembled. "They're pulling at me—like they know me."
The shard in her chest seared with light—and her scream shattered the silence.
The figures recoiled. The tolling ceased.
Nima rose, her eyes glowing faintly. Her voice was not just hers when she spoke:
"I am not your heir. I am not your echo."
The orb of crystal above them pulsed. The figures bowed and receded, folding back into the bridges.
Dmitri stared at her. "What just happened?"
"I don't know," Nima said, breathless. "But something in me… denied them."
The orb cracked further, releasing a single chime that hovered in the air like frost. It drifted down, landing gently in Nima's hand. A shard—but unlike the one she'd found before, this one was clear, weightless, and cold.
Together, the two shards sang a quiet harmony.
The world shifted again.
In a blink, the chamber was gone. They stood on a glassy plain beneath a sky of black flame. Towers of bone and bells spiraled in the distance. And at the center of the world… the true Bell. Gigantic. Silent. Buried beneath layers of dreaming thought.
This was not the world.
This was the Bell's dream.
And they were inside it.
Nima whispered, "We're not in Hollowroot anymore."
Dmitri touched the ground. "We're not anywhere."
A voice echoed from the emptiness—not cruel, but infinitely tired.
"You entered the Hollowroot to find truth. But all roots reach deeper than the soil that birthed them."
A figure emerged—tall, translucent, draped in veils of static and silk. No face. No features. Just presence.
"This is your descent, bearer of the First Echo."
Nima stepped forward. "What are you?"
The figure did not answer. It turned, and with every step it took, the dreamscape responded—shifting, morphing, revealing glimpses of other worlds, other endings.
Dmitri followed beside her, tense. "Where is this taking us?"
The figure paused. "To the place where the Song was first silenced. To the wound at the center of all things."
They crossed plains of memory, through storms made of thoughts not yet born. They saw themselves—older, younger, twisted, triumphant, dead. The Bell had no single timeline. It rang across all futures.
And at last, they reached a gate of silence.
Behind it, Nima sensed the presence of something vast and broken. A voice that had once been whole but now only screamed through shards.
"Will you open it?" the figure asked.
She didn't hesitate. "Yes."
The gate opened.
And the Bell awakened.