Dahlia and Damon descended the hidden stair for what felt like hours, the spiral swallowing every echo until time itself seemed to march in circles. The air thickened into a metallic fog that tasted of blood-memories; each breath felt like swallowing rusted moonlight. Torches embedded in the living stone flared to life as they passed—not with flame, but with cold blue radiance that revealed walls veined with silver ore and fossilized, half-formed runes. Somewhere behind those walls, a heartbeat pulsed, slow and seismic, like an ancient drum still marking the tempo of an empire long dead.
Dahlia's mark beneath her collarbone burned hotter with every step, the sigil shining through her fabric, syncing with that subterranean pulse. Damon noticed; his silver gaze flicked to her briefly, jaw tight, but he said nothing. Words cost more than silence in a place built from secrets.
At last, the stair cracked open into a cavern the size of an inverted cathedral. Obsidian pillars jutted from the floor at chaotic angles, holding up a ceiling encrusted with geodes that glowed from within—each crystal humming faintly in an unknown key. In the center of the cavern sat a dais fashioned entirely from the fossilized bones of dragons. Ribcages arched inwards to form a throne that looked less like a seat and more like a trap waiting to snap shut on whoever dared sit. Chains of sculpted moonsteel snaked from the throne to anchor deep into bedrock, etched with spiraling glyphs that shimmered like oil on water.
Bound upon that throne was a sentinel unlike anything Dahlia had imagined: a humanoid figure nearly nine feet tall, stitched from hardened leather and patches of shimmering scale. Its limbs were caged in iron rings engraved with forbidden scripture. A tarnished silver visor masked its face, one eye socket glowing with a baleful red light, the other cracked and dead.
As they entered, the chains rattled, alive with sentience. The red eye brightened and swept over them like a predator sniffing blood. Damon's hand hovered at his ash-steel blade. Dahlia's pulse spiked. She felt something deep in her marrow—a recognition between herself and the sentinel, a resonance between ancient relics cursed by the same war. Instinct screamed for retreat, but the mark at her throat pulsed a command of its own: approach.
She obeyed.
The creature's voice rasped like wind scraping broken bells. "Storm-blood returns. Dragon's Bride awakens. The Hollow Vault trembles."
The chain-links hissed, straining against ancient bindings. Damon stepped forward, claws twitching beneath skin. "Name yourself."
The sentinel turned its single eye. "I am Kyris, Warden of the Buried Throne. Forged by the last Dragon King to guard that which gods deemed unworthy of oblivion."
Dahlia's breath caught. "Does that include me?"
A sound like a rusted laugh escaped Kyris. You were never meant to be forgotten. You were meant to be remade.
Memories detonated behind Dahlia's eyes—an amphitheater lined with glass coffins, children floating in glowing fluid, wires pumping moonlight into tiny veins until bodies ruptured or boiled. She saw herself, iteration after iteration, each failing the Hollow Order's obedience trials. Only the twentieth mold had escaped. She saw Damon's bloodline too—alphas bred, broken, and culled to protect her. Her knees buckled. Damon caught her, his grasp strong, steady. She leaned into that warmth until the visions passed.
The Hollow God stirs beneath these very stones, Kyris said. The Order carved your soul fragment to awaken it. Your escape collapsed their timeline, but the ritual continues. They now seek new vessels.
Damon growled low, claws piercing skin. Dahlia straightened, her eyes glowing silver. "How do we stop it?" Kyris's chains sparked lunar energy. Descend through the Root Gate. Sever the Heart Conduit that feeds the god. But beware—Sareth guards the threshold, now void-forged and bound to the very flame you burned. Damon stepped forward. Will you stop us?
I guard access from the unworthy, Kyris replied. By blood-right and storm sigil, you may pass. But a toll must be paid. Kyris lifted a clawed hand. Memory for memory. One truth you cherish must be surrendered. Dahlia hesitated. Then stepped forward. She pressed her palm to a glowing chain. Images poured out—a soft lullaby, a woman's humming as baby Dahlia floated in a rune-lit cradle. That memory had anchored her through nights of torment. It was torn from her, leaving a quiet ache where comfort had once lived.
Kyris's second eye flickered dimly, then died. "The gate is open."
The throne groaned. Bone rearranged with shrieks of shifting pressure, revealing a spiral pit descending into blackness. Whispers rose with the heat. Damon's hand found her shoulder. "No turning back."
She nodded, resolve filling the hollow left behind. They descended into the tunnel, walls pulsing with glowing runes. With each step, the subterranean heartbeat grew louder—felt in their teeth, their breath, their bones. After a thousand feet, the passage flattened into a gorge carved between obsidian slabs crackling with energy. Rivers of molten silver flowed beneath their feet, throwing shifting light across the walls.
At the gorge's end stood the Root Gate cavern.
It was vast, the ceiling lost in soot-smoke. In the center loomed the gate: a tangled mass of petrified roots, bones, and crystal forming an arch fifty feet high. Runes crawled over its surface like ants. At its core spun a vortex of Hollow Fire—voidlight swirling inward, breaking reality. Sareth stood before it. Her cloak was a living void. Her eyes were starless pits. Around her, five Hollow priests knelt, chanting in tongues older than the sky. Streams of ethereal energy surged from them into Sareth, and from Sareth into the vortex. Dahlia's mark seared her skin. Sareth spoke without turning.
I knew you'd follow the fractures. Does it hurt, little storm, to feel yourself incomplete? Pieces of your soul hiding in corners even you cannot reach?
Dahlia stepped forward. I came to finish what I began the night I broke your chains. Sareth laughed—glass shattering in a crypt. You've broken nothing. You've only delayed the dawn. Damon snarled, shifting. Then let's turn dawn into dusk.
Battle erupted.
Damon launched in wolf-form, claws meeting Sareth's scythe forged of void. Sparks of silver and shadow tore through the air. Dahlia's palms burned as she met the chanting priests with waves of moonfire. One shattered under the blast, another melted. The third cursed her in a serpent tongue, but she burned the spell mid-chant. Damon bled black and silver as he clashed with Sareth, her movements flickering as though reality itself recoiled from her.
The vortex widened, drawing wind, rubble, bone. Dahlia scanned the gate. There. At its heart—a crystal core, wrapped in roots pulsing violet. The Heart Conduit. She sprinted, sliding past craters, rolling under broken bodies. She drove her blade into the bundle. The crystal cracked but did not break. A scream shook the cavern. Sareth appeared beside her, crushing Dahlia's wrist.
"Touch that core, and your mind will unravel."
Dahlia's vision blurred. Pain blazed. She whispered the lullaby she no longer remembered—just the warmth.
Power surged.
Ancestral flame exploded from her palm, flowing through Sareth's hand, into the crystal.
It shattered.
The vortex imploded. Wind screamed inward. Sareth screeched as voidfire peeled away pieces of her. Damon seized Dahlia, leaping away as the gate collapsed behind them into ash.
Silence fell.
Sareth's body flickered, half-there, unraveling. You think this ends? she hissed. "I am every chain you break. I will return." Dahlia, bleeding but defiant, raised her glowing hand. "Then I'll break you again."
She released the final pulse.
Sareth disintegrated into drifting dust—black snow that vanished before it hit the ground. The priests were gone. The conduit severed. A heavy silence spread through the ruins. Above, Kyris's chains rattled one last time… and stilled forever.
Dahlia whispered, Is it over?
Damon rested his forehead to hers. For tonight. They sat amidst the rubble of the Hollow dream—two souls stitched by fire and defiance—waiting for the first honest dawn either of them had ever known.