The echoes of battle still lingered like mist over the wounded field, smoke curling up from scorched earth, and the cries of the fallen Hollowborn drifting into silence. Jason stood amidst the aftermath, sword shaking in his grip, his breath heavy with ash and memory.
Vaelra knelt beside the fractured glyph that had erupted from the Gate's surface—her form flickering between light and shadow, as if her presence defied permanence. Her eyes, once calm pools of timeless knowledge, now shimmered with restrained grief.
Jason turned to her, voice hoarse. "You knew this would happen."
Vaelra didn't answer immediately. Instead, she extended a trembling hand to the scorched soil. The ground beneath them responded—not with resistance, but with understanding. The terrain shifted, revealing a hidden ring of stones etched with sigils from another age. A memory seal.
"This," Vaelra whispered, "is where it began for me."
Jason lowered his blade. "Your origin?"
"No," she murmured. "The truth of the Hollowborn… and why I betrayed the other Anchors."
The ring pulsed. Wind stirred. Reality wavered.
Then—darkness.
---
They were no longer on the battlefield. Instead, Jason stood within a memory—a world suspended in time, built from the fragments of Vaelra's soul. Towering obsidian walls curved into a dome overhead, and floating above a crystalline forge was a younger Vaelra, dressed in armor forged from radiant strands of time itself.
"Welcome to the Memory Forge," said the memory-echo of Vaelra. "My prison. My confession."
Jason stood beside her specter. The current Vaelra stood silently on the sidelines, watching her past unfold with painful stillness.
The memory spoke. "Centuries ago, before the Hollowborn had a name, there were only the Anchors and the Watchers. We were protectors. Bound to the Bloodline Gate not by blood—but by sacrifice."
Vaelra raised a shard of violet flame from the forge. It pulsed with sentient energy.
"We created beings from time-thread and soulcloth—sentient guardians to protect the Gate. But when we tried to anchor them permanently, they unraveled. They became twisted by the unfinished echoes of what we feared most."
The forge flickered, showing monstrous silhouettes crawling from broken seals—limbs bent at impossible angles, eyes like cracks in reality.
"The Hollowborn," Jason breathed.
"Yes," she said. "Born from abandoned safeguards. When the Anchors panicked, they voted to seal them away—destroy what they had helped create."
Jason turned to her. "But you didn't agree."
Vaelra's eyes glistened. "I had grown close to them. I tried to stabilize them, to understand. I gave them part of my own essence to slow their decay."
The next memory struck like lightning: Vaelra, bleeding into a swirling cocoon, the Hollowborn around her weeping not in rage—but pain.
"They weren't just monsters," Jason whispered. "They remembered."
"And so did I," Vaelra said. "But the Anchors called it betrayal. I was sealed within the Forge, my sentence eternal remembrance."
The memory collapsed. Time rushed forward. Jason and Vaelra stood once more on the battlefield, but Jason's heart was different now.
"You... carried this guilt for eons."
Vaelra nodded. "And now, the Gate reawakens, stirred by blood and regret. And it calls you."
Jason clenched his fists. "Why me?"
"Because you are the first since the fracture to carry all lines within you. Blood of the Watchers, soul of an Anchor, and the will to decide."
Jason staggered back. His eyes flared with golden light as his blood resonated with the words. Glyphs ignited along his arms, not like the ones before—these were deeper, older, bearing both Vaelra's sigil and something new: an ancient marking of the Gate itself.
The Gate was choosing.
---
Suddenly, a shriek tore through the clouds. The sky split.
From the rift emerged a Hollowborn unlike any before—twice the size of any Jason had fought, its body woven with memories from countless fallen warriors. It roared not in hatred—but confusion.
Vaelra looked skyward. "They are converging… the Lost One returns."
Jason stepped forward. The glyphs on his arms snaked across his chest, wrapping like protective vines of fire and shadow.
"I have to stop it," he said.
"Not stop it," Vaelra replied. "Understand it."
Jason reached into his soul and released the fragment given to him by Elias—the Seed of Resonance. As it pulsed outward, time bent. The Hollowborn halted midair, twitching.
Jason rose into the sky, lifted by an unseen force. His body flared with energy, echoing not only Vaelra's essence but that of his father. Ghostlike images surrounded him—past Anchors, fragments of old lives.
Then—transformation.
Jason's form shifted. His skin glowed with embedded runes. Wings, forged from golden light and temporal mist, extended from his back. His eyes, now iridescent, held the colors of all Anchors before him.
"Jason," Vaelra whispered. "You've become... the Living Anchor."
He hovered above the battlefield, the Hollowborn pausing, tilting its head, whispering in a forgotten tongue.
"I hear you now," Jason said.
And for the first time, the Hollowborn bowed.
---
Back on the ground, Vaelra stared in awe.
Jason landed beside her, his power still humming, but restrained.
"What now?" he asked.
Vaelra looked toward the Gate, now humming louder, pulsing like a heartbeat.
"Now," she said, "we rewrite the history they erased. And choose the path forward—not from fear… but truth."
Jason looked toward the Gate.
Then toward the sky.
Then deep into the hollow forest, where the remaining Seals stirred.
He nodded once. "Let's end this. Together."