The forest had never been this still. Jason stood at the edge of the cliff above the hollow, where the village of Myren Hollow lay blanketed in silver mist. The echo of the Bloodline Gate still pulsed in his veins, a low hum, like the memory of thunder long after the storm had passed. Nyra stood beside him, her eyes focused on the fading path they had taken to reach the Hollow Sea. Elias, ever the silent guardian, leaned against the old birch tree behind them, whittling wood with hands that had seen centuries.
"It's changing," Nyra whispered. "The roots are restless."
Jason nodded. The trees had grown taller, darker. Whispers now threaded through the leaves, voices not their own. The village below wasn't sleeping. It was watching.
They descended together.
Myren Hollow welcomed them in its ancient, eerie silence. Smoke curled gently from crooked chimneys, yet no one appeared to stoke the fires. The villagers—those cursed with forgotten memories—glanced at Jason with eyes both hollow and pleading.
At the inn where they'd stayed once before, they found a message scratched into the wood above the hearth: _"The Archivist returns with eyes of many."
Elias's face darkened. "We must speak to the Heartkeeper. Now."
They navigated winding paths of blackstone to the tree-temple at the center of the Hollow. The Heartkeeper—Veilma—waited by the roots, draped in vines that shimmered like starlight.
"You bear the scent of the gate," Veilma said, not as accusation, but as fate. "It stirs below. The Hollowborn have not yet breached the surface, but the rot quickens."
Jason stepped forward. "I saw something in the Hollow Sea. Something... old. Older than even the Gate."
Veilma looked to Elias. "He is ready."
The old man hesitated before nodding. "Take him beneath."
A path hidden by the twisting roots of the Great Tree opened. Jason and Nyra followed Veilma through the passage. The walls glowed faintly, covered in murals—images of Jason's father battling shadows, anchoring reality with runes carved into his own bones.
They reached the Chamber of Echoes.
A pool lay at the center, still as glass. As Jason peered into it, images flickered: his father, young and fierce, sealing away the Hollowborn inside a collapsing realm; Elias, falling through time to deliver a warning; and a child with eyes like Jason's—crying beneath the roots of the very tree they stood under.
"What is this?" he asked.
"Memories not yours," Veilma replied. "But you carry the blood. You are their anchor now."
Jason touched the water.
The world shifted.
He was no longer in the chamber. He stood in a war-torn field, surrounded by giants of flame and smoke. Watchers clashed with Hollowborn, screams woven into the winds. At the center stood his father—radiant, fierce—and beside him, a younger Elias, bleeding from his side.
Then Jason saw it: the Bloodline Gate, unsealed, roaring like a wounded beast. From its maw came not monsters—but timelines. Broken, snarled futures, screaming for restoration.
Jason woke, gasping.
Nyra steadied him. "What did you see?"
"The end," he whispered. "And the beginning. All twisted together. My father... he didn't just seal the Gate. He fractured time itself."
Veilma placed a single hand on Jason's head. "You now carry what he could not. The final Anchor. The weight of all echoes."
Above them, the tree groaned.
And in the village square, the shadows deepened—forming a shape that was not man, not beast.
The Archivist had returned.
But this time, he was not alone.