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Chapter 27 - Chapter 27: The Mirror and the Hollow

Chapter 27: The Mirror and the Hollow

Falling became flight.

Light became sound.

And the world turned itself inside out.

The deeper I sank, the more the light slowed, thickening like honey. My body dissolved into it—first the skin, then the breath, then thought itself—until I was little more than awareness suspended in color.

The mirror's surface shimmered all around me, endless and alive. It was not glass. It was liquid memory. Every ripple carried faces, voices, lifetimes—each one a reflection of the same story told in different centuries.

I reached out, and my hand passed through a thousand versions of myself.

Some human. Some not.

All haunted by the same pulse beneath the skin.

> You are not the first to fall,

nor will you be the last.

The voice was the Hollow's. It spoke not in words but through sensation, echoing directly against my ribs. Each vibration carried emotion—grief, longing, exhaustion.

"Who are you?" I asked.

> The other half of the Breath.

The silence between the inhale and the exhale.

Forgotten, until you opened the world again.

Images flashed—when I first touched the Breath, when the girl whispered "choose," when the earth exhaled me into light. I saw it now from the other side: a shadow watching from beneath the surface, waiting for its moment to return.

"You were always there," I murmured.

> Waiting for you to remember.

The mirror shifted, showing me Vareth—the citadel burning softly beneath the festival sky, Carrow shouting into the light, the girl standing silent as the cracks widened around her. They couldn't see me, but I could feel their fear, their hope, their tether to me.

"Why show me this?"

> Because every breath needs a pause.

Without stillness, even creation drowns.

The light dimmed, revealing a shape inside the mirror—a silhouette that looked like me, but hollowed out, eyes black with the same gold veins running through the sky above.

> You sealed me once. Now, you must join me.

The shadow stepped closer. Its voice was my voice.

Its gaze was heavier than gravity.

I tried to step back, but the light clung to me, rooting me in place. "If I join you," I said, "what happens to the world?"

> Balance returns. The Breath exhales what it no longer needs.

"Life?"

> If it must.

Anger flared. "That's not balance—that's erasure."

The shadow tilted its head, almost curious.

> And what do you call what you did?

The memory hit me—cities burning, skies breaking, the moment I unleashed the Breath to save a dying world. The destruction, the rebirth, the silence that followed.

I'd convinced myself it was mercy.

Now I wasn't sure.

"I gave it life."

> You gave it rhythm. But you forgot the rest of the song.

The Hollow extended its hand. My pulse thudded in answer, syncing to its rhythm. The marks along my arms glowed, threads of silver twisting into black. I could feel the pull—a slow surrender, a promise of peace, of silence.

For a moment, I wanted it.

To stop remembering.

To stop breathing.

Then I heard her voice—soft, defiant—echoing from the surface above.

> "He cannot be saved. Only completed."

The girl. The Breath's voice.

Her words now carried a new meaning.

Maybe completion didn't mean surrender.

Maybe it meant understanding both sides.

I raised my hand—not to take the Hollow's, but to mirror it.

The moment our palms aligned, light erupted. The mirror cracked outward in a spiral of color and sound. Shards of memory spun through the air, each one showing a fragment of the truth: the Breath creating life, the Hollow gathering what was lost. In every age, both forces worked together, unseen.

"You were never meant to rule," I whispered. "Or destroy. You were meant to rest."

The Hollow's voice softened.

> And who will carry me, if not you?

I smiled faintly. "Both of us will."

I pressed my hand against the reflection. The glass gave way, swallowing the divide between light and dark. Cold fire surged through my veins. The Breath and the Hollow collided inside me, neither winning, neither yielding—only circling, endless, in balance.

The mirror shattered completely.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing—not falling—on a smooth surface that pulsed with faint light. Above me stretched a sky of translucent gold. Below me, the same sky inverted, reflecting every heartbeat as a ripple in water.

The Hollow was gone.

But its rhythm beat inside my chest.

I was both.

From somewhere above, Carrow's voice faintly reached me, distant but clear. "Keeper! Can you hear me?"

"I'm here," I whispered, though I wasn't sure the sound left my lips.

The girl's voice followed, softer, closer:

> "Then the Breath remembers."

I looked up, and through the fading light, her face appeared—half human, half radiant, framed in the glow of two worlds meeting.

She smiled. "The circle closes when you return."

I reached toward her hand through the shimmering veil, feeling the warmth of air, of life, of everything I'd once breathed into being.

And as I touched the edge of the light, I knew what the Hollow had meant.

Stillness wasn't death.

It was the heartbeat between lives.

The Breath inhaled.

The Hollow exhaled.

And together, the world began again.

"— To Be Continued —"

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