The light of Nyssa's blade still lingered, faint as moon-glow, illuminating the path forward. Jack led them now—his steps slow but sure—while the weight of what had just happened still clung to his shoulders like fog. The confrontation with the false Thalon had shaken him, but something deeper stirred beneath that fear. A clarity. A resolve.
They followed the stone corridor, now cracked and pulsing faintly with a dark energy. It hummed with dormant hunger. Veins of shadow threaded through the floor, branching like roots beneath their feet, whispering of something ancient and waking.
"This place feels like it's alive," Marek muttered, his runestone trembling in his hand.
"It is," Lola said softly, her voice distant. "This was the Hollow's heart once. Before the Sundering twisted it."
Nyssa glanced back at her. "You've seen this before?"
Lola nodded, her eyes glowing faintly gold. "In glimpses. In dreams. Since the realm changed me, the past speaks. Sometimes the future too, though never clearly. But here… everything is louder."
They entered a vast hall—a dome-like space with no visible ceiling, only swirling darkness above. The walls were carved with figures: warriors, kings, beasts with too many eyes, a child holding a flame. But at the center of it all, carved larger than the rest, was a figure crowned in flame and shadow. Its face was shattered.
Jack stopped, staring up at it. "That's the Devourer."
Lola tilted her head. "It's more than that. It's what the Devourer once was—before it broke apart. Before it needed vessels."
Kael stepped forward slowly, his boots echoing. "You mean it wasn't always… this?"
"No. It was a being of balance, once," Lola whispered. "Creation and destruction, held in one body. But something divided it—something ancient even this realm doesn't remember. And now it seeks reunification. Through you, Jack."
Jack clenched his fists. "Then it won't get what it wants."
But the shadows above stirred—as if mocking him.
Suddenly, the chamber shifted. The floor rippled like water, and the walls cracked with the sound of thunder. A new corridor opened—twisting, organic, like a vein cut open. It pulsed with red light.
"We're being guided," Nyssa muttered.
"Or herded," Marek growled.
Jack stepped forward anyway. "Either way, we move."
They entered the vein-like corridor. The air was thick with static, and every step seemed to slow time. Visions flared in the corners of their eyes—glimpses of other lives, other times.
Jack saw himself as a child, alone in the forest. Then older, his hands soaked in blood. Then older still, eyes blackened, standing atop a mountain of ash.
"No," he whispered, forcing the images away.
Lola gasped beside him. "The Hollow's showing us what might be. Probabilities. Threads of time."
"They're not real," Kael said, though his voice shook. "They're not real."
They reached the end of the corridor—a vast circular chamber filled with water so still it looked like glass. At the far end, a stone plinth rose, and upon it hovered a single black feather, suspended in midair, surrounded by six flickering flames.
"What is this?" Nyssa asked.
Jack stared at the feather, drawn to it. "I don't know. But I think it's for me."
He stepped forward, and the flames pulsed brighter. One by one, they bent toward him, and the water beneath his feet shifted—not sinking, not cracking—but accepting.
Jack reached the plinth and touched the feather.
In an instant, a rush of visions overwhelmed him—hundreds of them, flashing all at once. Lives unlived. Paths not taken. Victories. Failures. Friends turned enemies. Worlds dying. A throne of bones. A sky made of screaming souls.
He gasped and fell to his knees.
Nyssa ran to his side, grabbing his shoulders. "Jack! What did you see?"
Jack blinked hard, his voice raw. "Everything."
Marek looked around uneasily. "Define everything."
Jack slowly stood. "The feather… it was from the original being. Before it shattered. Before the Devourer. This is part of its memory. Its will. It's testing me."
Lola stepped closer, studying him. "And did you pass?"
Jack turned to her, eyes gleaming faintly with a silver light. "I don't know. But I saw the next step."
"What is it?" Kael asked.
"We go to the Ashen Wastes," Jack said. "That's where the heart is. Not of the Hollow. Of the Sundering."
The chamber trembled again. The water split down the middle, revealing a descending stairway of stone and bone.
"Then let's walk it," Nyssa said, drawing her blade.
Jack looked down into the abyss below. For the first time, it didn't frighten him.
He turned to his friends, each one marked in their own way by this journey.
"This is where the story begins to break," he said. "And where we decide how it ends."
Together, they descended—into the Wastes, and into the next storm.