The Void was no longer silent.
It hummed like an ancient hymn sung by dying stars—soft, low, and infinite.
Caelum walked the path of folded space and shattered echoes, every step resounding like a ripple across time. Though blind, his senses stitched reality together from memory, emotion, and rhythm. Around him, the Hollow Bloom pulsed alive. Once his grave, now his forge.
Faint petals of starlight drifted in the darkness, each one carrying fragments of his past—Elienne's laughter, his father's final words, his mother's lullaby hummed under moonlight. They spun around him in orbit like memories refusing to fade.
He heard the old man before he saw him.
"Boy of silence," the voice croaked gently, "you should not have come again."
Caelum turned. The old man stood beneath a towering monolith of runes, aged eyes glowing like fading suns. His form seemed thinner than before, not weaker, but more transparent—as if wisdom had made him less physical.
"I had no choice," Caelum said. "The stars have cracked. The veil is thinning. I hear voices that don't belong to gods."
The old man nodded, stepping forward.
"They aren't gods. They're older. Hungrier. Carved from the bones of dead truths. They ruled when existence had no shape, no memory."
"Then what are they?"
"They are what comes when everything else ends. Thoughtless will. The anti-memory. You faced deities built on fear. But these… these things? They were never meant to be known."
Caelum stood still.
"I must face them."
"You will. But hear me once more." The old man's tone deepened, as if time thickened in his throat. "You carry a gift cursed by the cosmos—memory. You remember what the gods erase. But remember this too:
Power cannot protect what love leaves behind. Only purpose can. Only memory sharpens your sword now."
The void cracked.
The Hollow Bloom shook.
Caelum lifted his head as the emptiness tore open—and from the wound spilled a presence so vast it made the void feel small.
A creature fell through the scar in reality, folding space around it like paper. It was not shaped like anything earthly. Its form shifted—one moment a choir of wings, the next a mouth of stars. Its "face" blinked with constellations. Each blink devoured light.
Caelum did not draw his blade.
He simply stepped forward, letting the echoes in his blood rise. His breath slowed, hands calm.
The creature spoke in a thousand reversed prayers:
"YOU REMEMBER. UNMAKE."
"I remember," Caelum whispered. "And I refuse."
The air shrieked as the creature lunged.
Caelum raised his right hand. His sword appeared—not of metal, but woven from grief and memory. It shone with echoes—his sister's laughter, the night his village burned, Elienne's whisper:
"Try… to love once more."
The creature slammed into him. For a heartbeat, the void swallowed both.
Then light.
Caelum reappeared atop a platform made of his own dreams. The creature twisted into a thousand mouths, screaming images of futures that never happened.
Caelum's sword hummed. With one swing, he severed time.
The creature howled.
He leapt, weightless, and brought his blade through its center. A ripple spread—like truth cutting through a lie.
The being shattered, scattering into embers of sound and broken memory.
Caelum fell to one knee.
"Only one," the old man said softly, appearing beside him again. "Two remain. Worse than this one."
Caelum's breath caught. He felt it—something worse awakening deeper in the void. Something… familiar.
"What's next?" he asked.
The old man looked to the void's center, where darkness spun like a cocoon.
"You will face a being who devours names. And after that, the one who erased the gods' first father. But when you face the last… you'll face yourself."
Caelum stood.
His hand trembled—not with fear, but with purpose.
"Then let it begin."
And the Hollow Bloom stirred again.