The Hollow Bloom had grown quiet again.
Not the kind of silence that soothed, but the kind that trembled in the bones—pregnant with presence. A breath held by eternity. Caelum stood alone, the void's fractured light casting long shadows beneath his feet. His blade still hummed faintly in his hand, a tune only the dead would recognize.
The old man was gone.
Caelum stepped forward, deeper into the realm's bleeding edge. With each step, gravity shifted. His sense of direction unraveled—up became sideways, memory became wind. In the Hollow Bloom, time obeyed memory. And now, something was warping both.
He arrived at a chasm that pulsed like a heartbeat. Beneath it: darkness without shape. And within that dark… voices. Endless. Layered. Familiar.
He heard his mother. His father. Elienne. Reya.
And himself.
But none of them were real.
A whisper crawled up from the pit, like parchment being torn by unseen claws:
"You are not real."
Caelum stood still.
"You are not remembered."
His hands tightened.
"Your name is ash."
He drew his blade.
From the abyss rose the second entity—The Nameless Devourer. A creature that resembled no beast, no god. It looked like a collection of forgotten thoughts—arms made of broken promises, eyes shaped like erased faces. Where it stepped, the void's ground vanished.
It did not scream. It breathed regret.
"Why are you here?" Caelum asked.
The creature replied with his own voice:
"Because you were."
The battle began with no warning. The creature surged forward, warping the Hollow Bloom. Memories twisted—Elienne's face turned to dust, his father's voice became mockery, and his home collapsed into looping agony.
Caelum stumbled.
His blade screamed with each swing—echoing a thousand "what ifs."
He tried to strike.
But every blow hit an image from his past—a memory of someone he loved. The creature wore them like armor. It whispered Elienne's last words through mouths not hers:
"Try… to love once more."
Caelum dropped to his knees.
"I know what you are," he whispered. "You are what we forget to grieve. What we bury in silence."
The creature halted.
"I will not forget," he said.
He closed his eyes.
And remembered her.
Not just her death. But her smile. Her dreams. Her warmth.
The creature cracked.
Caelum rose.
And with a single motion, sliced through the web of false memory. His blade now burned with true memory—anchored by love, not pain.
The entity shrieked as it unraveled. A thousand false names poured from its core before vanishing into ash.
Caelum stood, panting.
But then… a sound.
A bell.
From deeper in the Hollow Bloom.
The old man's voice echoed faintly:
"Two remain. One devoured names. The next… devours meaning."
And the void cracked open once more.