The elder waited.
Torch lowered. Shoulders hunched. The same man who'd tied the stone to Corin's wrist now stood in the Hollow, asking for mercy.
Corin didn't speak.
The forest did.
Wind curled around his ankles. Branches bent toward his breath. The light behind his eyes flickered—not fire, not gold, but something older.
"You cast me out," Corin said. "And now you want peace."
The elder swallowed. "We were afraid."
Corin stepped forward. "You were cruel."
The altar pulsed behind him. Sap bled from its cracks, pooling at his feet.
"I choose," Corin said.
He reached into the moss and pulled free a shard of bark—blackened, veined with memory. He pressed it to the elder's chest.
The man gasped.
Not in pain.
In knowing.
The Hollow didn't burn him. It showed him.
Every word he'd spoken. Every silence he'd kept. Every child he'd turned away. The forest didn't punish. It remembered.
The elder dropped the torch.
"I didn't know," he whispered.
"You did," Corin said. "You just didn't care."
—
The forest shifted.
Roots rose.
A circle formed—trees bending inward, branches locking like ribs.
Corin stood in the center.
Maer watched from the edge, her eyes wet but steady.
"You're not just guardian," she said. "You're memory now."
Corin felt it.
The weight.
The voices.
The pact wasn't a weapon. It was a ledger.
And he was its keeper.
—
The village woke to silence.
No birds.
No wind.
Just a figure at the edge of the Hollow—antlers shadowed, eyes pale gold.
Corin didn't speak.
He didn't threaten.
He just stood.
And the village remembered.
Children whispered his name like a story.
Elders locked their doors.
One by one, they came.
Not to beg.
To confess.
The Hollow didn't demand blood.
It demanded truth.
And Corin listened.
—
That night, he returned to the altar.
Maer met him there.
"You didn't destroy," she said.
"I didn't forgive," he replied.
She nodded. "You chose."
Corin looked at the forest—awake, breathing, watching.
"I'll keep choosing," he said.
And the Hollow bent toward him.
Not in hunger.
Not in fear.
But in recognition.
—
He was no longer cast out.
He was the Hollow.
And the Hollow remembered.