The wind was steady that morning.
High above the untouched forests of the northern wilds, Torian rode the sky — arms loose against his sides, knees locked into the glider's frame, eyes fixed ahead. Below, the trees were vast and endless, a living sea of dark green that rose and fell like breath. Sunlight flickered through passing clouds, casting pale rivers of gold across the world.
Behind and slightly beneath him, Skarn soared — wings beating slow, steady, relaxed. His form cast a long shadow over the treetops, occasionally catching a crosswind to dip and rise again. There was peace in their rhythm. No signs of enemies. No ash in the air. Just wind. Just light.
Torian smiled.
It had taken weeks of crashing, bruises, and wild spinning, but now—finally—he could fly.
Not fall. Not glide for seconds.
Fly.
He dipped the right wing slightly. The glider adjusted to the tilt. A current lifted beneath the ribs.
He was still small in the air, still clumsy next to Skarn's natural power, but he didn't care. Not today.
Today, he was riding beside a legend.
And he was doing it on his own terms.
⸻
As they crossed over a steep, vine-choked ridge, the forest below changed.
Torian felt it before he saw it — the air went still.
Not windless… but holding its breath.
He slowed the glider, descending slightly until he hovered just above the treetops. Skarn flared his wings and pulled up beside him, head cocked.
That's when they saw it.
A hole.
Not just a gap in the forest — a perfect circle of collapsed earth nearly seventy feet across, rimmed with thick, ancient roots that spiraled inward like the mouth of something once alive. They were gnarled, glowing faintly beneath the bark, woven so tightly that no light touched the pit's center.
From above, it looked like the eye of the world.
Torian angled his flight down toward it.
"Skarn…" he said softly, landing near the rim, "what is that?"
Skarn circled once, then dropped with a single, thunderous beat of his wings, landing beside him.
Torian stepped cautiously toward the edge.
The roots shifted.
Moved.
Not violently. Not as a trap.
But like recognition.
The tangled vines began to uncoil — not breaking or tearing, but curling aside like a curtain pulled back. A soft green light pulsed beneath them as they opened a spiral path downward.
Torian froze.
"…They moved for you."
Skarn didn't respond.
He only stared down into the path now revealed — a slow, winding descent into pulsing darkness.
The boy took a breath.
Then tightened the glider's fold on his back.
And stepped inside.
Skarn followed in silence.
⸻
The light shifted as they descended.
The upper forest gave way to a subterranean root-tunnel that pulsed faintly with bioluminescent veins — vines glowing blue, red, even soft pink along the ceiling and floor. Moss covered the walls in strips of gold, and tiny spores floated in the air like falling snow. It wasn't dead down here. It was alive.
Alive in a way Torian had never felt before.
Each step deeper, the silence thickened.
Not empty — sacred.
Even Skarn's steps were slower now. He walked beside Torian, not in front. As if even he didn't know what waited below.
The tunnel curved inward in a wide, spiraling slope.
The walls widened.
And the air began to hum.
Torian looked up once.
One of the vines above his head had opened slightly — a flower blooming in slow motion. Inside was a creature the size of his thumb, glowing gently like a lantern.
It blinked at him.
Then closed again.
He didn't say a word.
Not because he was afraid.
But because this didn't feel like a place for words.
⸻
After an unknowable distance — maybe a hundred steps, maybe a thousand — the tunnel opened.
Not gradually.
Suddenly.
Torian stopped in his tracks.
Even Skarn halted beside him.
The path had ended.
And what stood before them was impossible.
A cavern the size of a city stretched before them, lit not by sun or torch, but by the glow of living life — vines that hummed like stars, trees whose trunks were clear as crystal, moss that radiated with the colors of dreams.
And creatures.
Thousands.
Floating, crawling, flying, resting — creatures Torian had never imagined. Massive beetles with shells like shattered moons. Deer with mist for antlers. Tiny phoenixes flitting between crystal branches. Serpents of air and fish made of stone.
Some were the size of mountains, coiled in sleep beneath the roots of glowing trees.
Others perched silently on leaves.
All of them turned — subtly, quietly — toward Skarn.
And bowed their heads.
Torian whispered, stunned:
"…Skarn… what are you?"
Skarn said nothing.
But his wings shifted.
And he stepped forward.
Into a world he had never shown anyone.
The silence was immense.
Not empty — never empty — but full in a way that felt impossible. It was the silence of a breathing world, of a place that didn't need sound to speak.
Torian stepped forward with Skarn at his side, feet sinking slightly into moss that glowed beneath his weight. The ground here was soft but solid, laced with vines that pulsed with gentle color. The very earth seemed to respond to their presence — like a living organism sensing its own heartbeat.
Above them, the cavern stretched up into glowing root arches the size of mountains. Trees hundreds of feet high reached toward the impossible ceiling, their branches winding like spires through the mist-filled air. Some of their trunks were transparent, and within them flowed liquid light, coursing like rivers through bark and fiber.
And the creatures…
Torian had no words.
He stopped walking just to stare.
Floating whales with wings of glass passed overhead, leaving trails of flickering dust like falling stars. A flock of translucent birds flitted through a spiral of air currents, their feathers glimmering with shifting shapes — one moment bone, the next light. Small fox-like creatures with ember eyes crawled through the glowing grass, trailing sparks that faded mid-air.
There was no fear.
No panic.
Every being that noticed them simply made space.
Torian turned in a slow circle.
His voice came out in a breath. "This place… it's not part of the world."
Skarn didn't reply. He moved with purpose now, slow and steady, leading Torian deeper through the biome's gentle terrain. As they walked, more creatures noticed them. Some paused. Others approached, then veered away. A giant, beetle-shaped colossus raised its antennae and dipped its massive head as they passed.
It was Skarn they were acknowledging.
Torian realized it.
All of them knew him.
Or what he was.
⸻
They came to a rise in the terrain where the moss grew lighter and flowers opened wide without sun. The rise circled a massive shape half-sunken into the root-covered earth: a stone beast, larger than Skarn, curled in deathless rest. Vines had wrapped around its limbs. Crystals had grown up through its chest cavity.
But it was unmistakably the same species.
Massive, furred, winged, tail like a whip — only its wings were longer, shaped differently, with horns curling forward from the brow.
It was like looking at Skarn's ancestor… or ancestor's ancestor.
Torian stepped closer, wide-eyed.
"Is this… one of you?"
Skarn approached the ancient form with reverence. He didn't snarl. Didn't puff up or assert. He simply sat beside the carcass, wings folding, tail curling slowly into the moss.
And he bowed his head.
Torian didn't interrupt.
He didn't speak.
He only knelt beside his companion, small against the weight of what surrounded them, and placed a hand gently on Skarn's shoulder.
The crystal growing through the old beast's chest pulsed softly — once.
And then again.
A slow rhythm.
Like breath.
⸻
Behind them, at the edge of the rise, something stirred.
Torian turned and saw it: a ring of stones nestled into the roots, half-covered in glowing lichen. In the center sat a single circular stone tablet, flat and carved with old glyphs.
The Spiral was there.
His Spiral — the exact same shape that burned on his chest during the outburst.
He stepped toward it.
The air thickened.
Not dangerously — but like the moment before a storm.
When he reached out, the Spiral on his chest pulsed again.
Just once.
Just enough for Skarn to rise beside him again, eyes narrowing.
But there was no fire.
No collapse.
Only the faint hum of acknowledgment.
The symbol recognized him.
It didn't ignite.
Didn't consume.
It simply knew.
Torian stood over it, breathing hard, and whispered:
"I'm not the first…"
Skarn stared down at the stone.
He didn't understand the glyphs.
But his body was tense. Coiled.
Not with fear.
But with memory.
Of something older.
Something deep in his blood.
⸻
They stayed there for a long while, the light of the cavern slowly cycling from soft green to blue to silver, as though the Hollow had its own sky, its own passage of time.
Torian sat beneath a massive glowing tree, legs crossed, glider set beside him.
Skarn lay curled nearby, head low but eyes watching the light above.
Neither spoke.
They didn't need to.
This was a place where silence said everything.
The silence deepened.
Not in sound — there were soft echoes of movement everywhere. The flit of glowing wings. The low hum of crystal roots. Water trickling through channels in the walls of stone. But beneath it all… a kind of stillness had settled in.
Torian sat at the base of the great glowing tree, knees pulled up, eyes half-closed.
He hadn't spoken since he touched the Spiral-etched stone.
Skarn lay a few paces away, his breath steady, wings furled, eyes half-lidded as though dozing. But he wasn't sleeping. His gaze never drifted far from the boy.
The Spiral on Torian's chest hadn't flared again — but it hadn't gone out either.
It glowed now like a buried coal.
A whisper of fire.
⸻
A sound stirred the air.
Soft. Gentle. Like breath through leaves.
Torian opened his eyes.
A creature stood at the edge of the roots.
Not massive.
Not fearsome.
It looked almost delicate — a deer-like being with legs like coiled vines and a body of shifting petals and bark. Its antlers were made of hovering leaves that didn't seem to touch its skull. Its eyes glowed with slow, living light.
It stepped forward without sound, each footfall parting the moss without bending it.
Skarn stirred immediately.
He rose to his feet and growled once, low in his chest — not a threat. A warning.
The creature paused.
Then tilted its head toward Skarn.
A moment passed between them. Long. Ancient.
Recognition.
Then it turned to Torian.
Torian stood slowly.
"…Hello?" he whispered.
The creature didn't speak.
But it stepped forward.
Torian didn't move.
Its antlers shimmered brighter now. The light spread from its head, weaving through the ground — and then reached him.
A thread of light coiled upward and touched the Spiral on his chest.
Torian gasped.
He didn't move.
Couldn't.
The world around him seemed to fall away.
⸻
In its place, there was memory.
But not his own.
He saw darkness.
A cavern. A crack of molten light.
And from it — Skarn.
But smaller. Clawing his way from a crystal egg surrounded by black vines. Alone. Weak. Covered in golden fur that still steamed from birth.
He roared — tiny, broken — into a world with no answer.
Then the vision changed.
A thousand roots turning.
A Spiral carved in ice.
Flames with no source.
And a voice — not spoken, but felt:
"One spark, one beast, one bond. Fire will never return the same way twice."
Then—
The vision snapped shut.
⸻
Torian staggered backward, hand over his chest.
The deer-creature stood still, light fading from its antlers.
The Spiral on his skin pulsed once more, then dimmed to a resting glow.
Skarn growled again, stepping forward.
But the creature simply bowed its head.
And vanished into light — scattering like petals into the moss.
Torian stood there, breathing hard.
"I saw…"
He looked at Skarn.
"You."
Skarn blinked.
Torian stepped closer.
"You were born in fire… alone. Just like me."
For the first time, Skarn didn't look away.
And Torian smiled, tired, small, but certain.
"…Maybe we're both the last of something."
He didn't ask questions.
He didn't need to.
Whatever this place was, whatever the Spiral truly meant, the Hollow hadn't given him answers.
Just the truth that he wasn't alone in it.
He sat back down at the tree's base.
Skarn did the same.
And together, they rested.
As the root-pulse of the world hummed around them.
The Hollow did not say goodbye.
It didn't close behind them. It didn't burn or rise or change. It simply remained — as though it had always been there, waiting beneath the world, unseen by time or war.
Torian and Skarn stood at the edge of its last great tree, where the moss thinned and the air thickened with the shift of rising light. The Spiral on Torian's chest no longer glowed — but the memory of it pulsed faintly beneath his skin, like something left behind inside him.
Skarn shifted his wings once.
Torian glanced back into the vast underground sanctuary — at the glowing rivers in the trees, the mountain-sized beasts curled in slumber, the tiny flickers of light darting between leaf and stone. A whole world, ancient and hidden.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't want to.
This place wasn't meant for words.
He just nodded once, to nothing and no one, and turned toward the light.
Together, they ascended.
⸻
The tunnel they'd come down no longer felt like a tunnel.
It felt like a birth canal of the planet, coiled in root and breath. The vines pulsed with light as they passed, not guiding them — watching them. Approving.
At the top, the forest sky opened.
Blue. Wide. Pure.
Torian took a long breath and unfurled his glider.
The straps clicked into place like muscle memory now.
Skarn turned his head toward him — not with command, but invitation.
Torian grinned, wind in his teeth.
And ran.
⸻
The drop was perfect.
He leapt from the root-lined mouth of the Hollow and let the glider catch full wind. The updraft slammed into the wings, lifting him instantly into the current. He tilted left, angled the frame, and rose higher — the trees shrinking beneath him, the sky bending to the curve of his arc.
It was flawless.
For the first time since the Spiral ignited, he felt completely in control.
Below, Skarn charged forward through the trees.
Then launched.
A single beat of his wings sent him hurtling into the air.
He rose faster than Torian, curved around him like a guardian, then slowed beside him in the sky.
The two moved together now.
One beast, one boy.
Flying.
Not away.
Not toward.
Just flying.
⸻
Torian leaned into the wind and laughed — really laughed, not like a boy dodging danger, but like a soul being freed.
Below them, the forest stretched forever. No black-armored soldiers. No flame. No screams.
Only the song of the sky.
Only the beat of wings.
And the fire, small and silent, resting in his chest.
Waiting.
He looked over at Skarn as they soared side by side, and shouted into the wind:
"Let's keep going!"
Skarn let out a roar — not loud, but fierce.
A roar not of rage.
But of life.
They flew until the sun kissed the rim of the world, painting the sky gold and the wind silver.
And when they finally dipped low to rest…
They did so knowing one truth now burned beneath them both:
The Hollow had seen them.
And it had let them leave.