The world was on fire.
Not around him within him.
Sora stood in an endless red plain.
Skies burned above and beneath his feet was not ground but ash formed from memory.
He was a boy again.
Naked, Cold, and Alone.
His throat tried to scream, but no sound came.
Just like always.
Ahead, there is a shadow of his childhood home or what passed for it. Rotten planks, Torn cloth, And beside it a figure.
The old woman who raised him.
Maera
She turned, but her face it flickered. Shifting between the gentle smile he remembered… and something hollow-eyed, burned from the inside.
"You weren't supposed to survive."
He stumbled back.
Then another figure emerged.
Eyla.
Eyes wide.
Terrified.
Bleeding.
She reached for him. But her hand turned to smoke before it touched him.
And from behind her, something towered a figure made of ruin, cloaked in bones, face stitched shut, hands pulling chains behind it made of echoes of every scream he never gave voice to.
The creature whispered in his mind:
“You are born of abandonment.
You are shaped by silence.
You are chosen… to remain forgotten.”
Chains lash out.
Wrapped around his limbs.
He struggled but no cry escaped.
Only the rising heat. The rune on his chest burned again not as a wound, but as a sigil of resistance.
The runes flared.
Chains shattered.
And the creature hissed.
But in the red storm, he stood taller.
Then—
A hand on his shoulder.
He turned.
Kaelith.
Her bow in one hand rebuilt in dream and in her other, a burning torch.
“You don't get to stay here,” her voice echoed.
She handed him the torch.
"Not while the world still breathes your name."
The flame surged from the torch into Sora's chest. not burning, but anchoring.
A tether.
And just before the nightmare tore open to darkness.
A whisper.
Not hers.
His.
A voice, hoarse, cracked by silence
“I'm not done.”
Back in the Cathedral
Sora's body jerked.
Kaelith dropped her knife and rushed to his side.
His eyes shot open.
Glowing faintly for just a second with the rune's mark before fading.
His lips parted.
No sound came.
But Kaelith saw it, he had tried to speak.
He tried.
"Hey... easy now. You're not dead yet."
She poured a few drops of clean water between her lips, and she blinked up at her still dazed, but aware.
“You scared the hells out of me,” she muttered.
Sora reached up.
Slowly.
Weakly.
And his hands brushed hers.
Kaelith caught it.
And for a brief moment… neither warrior, nor outcast, nor marked souls.
Just two fractured people, sitting among the dust and ruin of forgotten gods, beneath stained glass shattered long ago.
Kaelith broke the silence with a thin smile.
"Next time, let me nearly die."
Morning light or what passed for it through Borreal's cloud-choked sky, spilled through the fractured cathedral windows.
Sora stood silent, inspecting the long, narrow sword left by the traveler merchant beside his pack now repaired by Kaelith during the night. It had no name engraved on the hilt, no craftsmanship to speak of but it fits his hand, like it belongs there.
Kaelith finished strapping a new set of bindings around her wrist.
The bow she received in the chamber ran, whispering faintly in the language of wind was slung across her back.
"Well," she said softly,
"You're not dead. So we might as well go see what else this lovely hellhole has in store."
They stood before the tall obsidian gate at the heart of the cathedral.
A twisting set of metallic roots coiled around its edges — long inert, until Kaelith runs her hand across a nearby contraption, shaped like a dying tree fused with machine veins.
Click.
Clank.
A low hum rumbled beneath the cathedral floor like something awakening after centuries.
The roots slithered back with mechanical grace. The gate cracked open.
And then—
groaned wide.
Inside that, a long hall drenched in shadows, lined with shattered statues, and where the walls whisper with the wind of unspoken names.
They stepped through.
At first… nothing but echoes of their footsteps.
Then—
A figure slumped against a broken pillar ahead.
Sora instinctively stepped forward, hand near his sword.
The figure stirred.
Safe.
Cloaked.
Face partially covered in a steel half-mask etched with script that shimmers faintly in blue.
He looked up at them.
Not hostile.
Not quite welcoming.
“Another silence-bearer,” he said, voice low, tired.
“And a shadow-archer with eyes that have seen too much.”
Kaelith readied her bow. “And you are?”
"I am called Vael. Once a knight of Borreal. Now a relic. Like everything else here."
Sora stepped between them, slowly raising a hand.
He tilted his head, questioning. Watching. Reading the man.
"I saw you both fight the Hollow's Warden. I heard the song the rune sang when your blood fell on stone."
Vael stood.
Slowly.
No weapons drawn.
"If you came here for salvation, you'll find none. If you came for answers... maybe."
Kaelith narrowed her eyes. "And if we came to the end what poisoned this kingdom?"
Vael laughed softly and it echoed too long, as if the walls themselves mocked the idea.
“Then you are either damned or chosen.”
The silence that followed was heavy not with danger, but history.
Sora approached him.
Vael met his eyes. "You cannot speak. Yet your silence screams."
He reached beneath his cloak and revealed a shard of obsidian, pulsing faintly.
"This... is what remains of the royal sigil. The same blood that cursed Borreal flows through it. Touch it, and you will see what they are buried."
Kaelith's hand moved to Sora's arm. "Be careful."
Sora didn't hesitate.
He reached out.
The shard burned cold.
Vision Sequence
The world bled white.
Sora stood in Borreal, centuries before alive and golden.
Festivals. Bells. A tower reaching the clouds, where kings once spoke to gods.
Then—
Fire.
Screams.
A cloaked figure chanting before a throne.
Chains.
A ritual gone wrong.
The sky fractured.
And from the hole above the Hollow Rain began.
Browse turned.
Twisted.
Became what now roams beneath.
The king burned from the inside, laughing as he died.
The last thing Sora saw...
A child, silent, and standing in the rubble.
A face eerily familiar.
Then darkness.
Sora fell back.
Vael caught him.
"You saw it, didn't you? The shattering."
Kaelith helped him up.
“What the hell was that?”
“A memory,” Vael whispered.
“Stored in stone, hidden from time.”
He looked at them both. "You want to reach the Hollow Throne? Then you'll need me. The path splits in three. One is death. One is madness. One is truth."
Kaelith explored at Sora.
He nodded once.
“Then follow me,” Vael said, turning toward a stairwell drowned in violet fog.
“But don't ask which path we take... until you're ready to lose what you think you are.”
The stairwell groaned as they descended, deeper than the cathedral should have been allowed down into Borreal's buried heart.
Roots of iron curled through broken stone.
Each step creaks like ribs cracking under weight.
Vael led, torch in hand.
Kaelith followed, casting glances at her back, fingers loosely wrapped around her new bow the runes softly pulsing in sync with her breath.
Sora, as ever, was silent but his eyes never left the shifting shadows around them.
“This city once lived in pride,” Vael began, voice low and almost reverent.
"Its knights held banners blessed by breath itself. We were born under a sky that never forgot our names."
He paused as they reached a stone landing, where statues of weeping women lined the walls, blindfolded and broken.
“And now,” he whispered,
"Borreal forgets. It feeds. It repents."
Kaelith stopped. “You speak like you still serve it.”
Vael turned, torchlight casting hard lines on the steel half-mask.
“I serve only what remains… of who I was.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You still haven't said why you're helping us.”
A heavy silence.
Then, with a weight like iron:
"Because I failed."
He stepped aside and gestured toward an enormous sealed archway ahead stone petals carved in strange geometries, sealed shut by rusted chains and six embedded runes.
“That door,” Vael said.
"Leads to the crypt of names erased. The court of the First Hollowed King."
Sora looked to the seal, and something in his blood stirred.
“My oath,” Vael continued,
"was to protect Borreal's heir. But I watched him fall into madness. And worse... I helped him build the ritual that cursed us all."
Kaelith's hand froze on her bow. “You what?”
Vael turned to face them fully now, pulling off the half-mask.
Beneath it, one side of his face was warped flesh like molten wax, bones showing hints of runic scars long burned in. His eye on that side flickered dimly, as if half-alive.
"He promised rebirth. That the rain from the Veil would purify us. I believed him... until it began to sing. Until people began to change. To forget. To kill."
His voice cracked not with weakness, but shame carved deep.
"I tried to stop it. I killed him with my own hands. But by then the wound in the sky was open. And the Hollow rained without end."
The torch dimmed as if listening.
Sora stepped forward. His hand moved simple gestures.
Controlled.
Patients.
Kaelith watched in silence as Sora's fingers told a silent story of forgiveness… and something deeper.
A recognition.
A familiarity of blame carried, alone, for too long.
Vael blinked. “You... you understand, don't you?”
No voice came. But in the silence there was the answer.
Kaelith looked between them, her posture relaxing just slightly. "So what now, fallen knight?"
Vael approached the gate.
"Now," he said,
"we wake the runes. One for each oath betrayed."
He pulled a dagger from his belt, the blade lined with jagged script.
Without hesitation, he drove it into his own palm.
His blood thick and black as oil spilled onto the first rune.
It's hissed.
Glowed.
Shifted.
“One oath,” he whispered,
“undone.”
Kaelith stepped forward. “Wait, if it takes blood, what about—?”
But Sora had already stepped beside him. Without flinching, he pressed his hand against the second rune.
Blade no.
Just skin.
Flesh.
Memory.
The rune reacted instantly glowing not red, but white and the stone behind it trembled.
“He's... connected to the throne,” Vael whispered.
“No... to something beneath it.”
Kaelith, elements, gritted her teeth and took the dagger herself. She stared at her reflection in its dark edge for a moment then bit down and made her cut.
A third rune ignited.
The chains across the gate rattled.
“Three oaths undone,” Vael muttered.
“Three voices, bound by ruin.”
But before they could continue the stone beneath them cracked.
A burst of shrieking wind erupted as one of the blindfolded statues behind them moved.
Not a statue.
A Wraith of Binding, an ancient guardian bound in silence.
It struck with spectral claws lashing at Kaelith.
Vael threw himself between them, knocked backwards against the wall.
Sora stepped forward, the runes on his blade lighting up with his breath.
A silent clash followed with swift and brutal.
Sora's movements were precise, cutting through illusions, ducking ghost-swipes, his blade slicing through the wraith's core until finally, with one upward strike, and he shattered the creature's mask.
The wraith howled as it dissolved into shards of ash.
The silence returned.
They stood panting, bruised.
Blood marked the floor.
Kaelith wiped her mouth. “Nice welcome.”
Vael, injured but standing, nodded toward the gate. "Four runes remain. But we must rest. The seal will wait. The dead won't."
They retreated to a nearby alcove. Dusty benches and remnants of armor littered the space. Kaelith sets her bow aside. Sora sat, his breathing was shallow but even.
She looked at him, then at Vael.
Then, after a long pause, she asked quietly:
“Why did you really come down here, Vael?”
The knight stared into the broken flame of his torch.
"Because in my dreams, I still hear the child scream. The one I couldn't save."
His eyes flicked to Sora.
And for the first time, Sora looked back with something other than guarded silence.
A question?
Or maybe...
A memory?