Chapter 33: Invitation from the Hollow
The night felt heavier than usual.
Though the storm had long passed, a new kind of pressure draped itself across the land—silent, invisible, yet suffocating. Jean sat by a dying fire, sharpening Solstice with steady, deliberate strokes. Whitney prowled the perimeter, growling at shadows that didn't move.
Karen slept lightly under a rough tent of woven thunder-thread, her breath synced with the faint rumble of Raigen's wings above.
Then it happened.
The fire extinguished—without wind.
Whitney snapped upright, snarling.
From the darkness, a figure stepped into view.
He wore no armor. No insignia. Just a black cloak that seemed to consume light itself. His face was hidden beneath a white bone mask carved in the shape of a sorrowful smile.
Jean rose, blade drawn before a word was spoken.
The man raised a hand—not in defense, but in greeting.
"Jean Luther," he said softly, "Bearer of the Light. You're invited."
Karen stirred at the voice. Her eyes narrowed. "Shadow Guild," she muttered.
Jean's grip tightened. "To what?"
The masked man tilted his head. "To see what lies beneath your brilliance."
He tossed something at her feet: a black envelope sealed with red wax in the shape of an open eye.
"A shadow does not oppose the light," he continued. "It defines it."
---
The envelope contained only a location, written in elegant calligraphy:
> The Hollow Path. Two nights west. Come alone.
Whitney growled again, but Jean's expression was unreadable. She didn't speak until the emissary had disappeared into the woods—so swiftly, even Karen didn't see him leave.
"I'm going."
Karen stood beside her. "You know what the Hollow is?"
"I know enough."
"It's not a place. It's a trial." Karen crossed her arms. "They don't want to test your strength. They want to see what you hide."
Jean stared at the dying fire, its embers reflecting in her eyes.
"Then I'll show them."
---
Two nights later, Jean stood at the entrance of a ravine known only to the oldest maps: The Hollow Path.
It wasn't marked by stone or blood—but by silence. Birds didn't sing here. Even the wind didn't howl.
Whitney waited at the edge, unwilling to go farther. Jean stroked his fur.
"I have to face this alone."
Whitney whined, his tail low.
Jean stepped into the dark.
---
The Hollow wasn't a place.
It was a mirror.
Each step deeper warped reality. The trees grew twisted. Shadows bled upward. Whispers slid along the edges of her mind, voices not hers—yet intimately familiar.
"You could have saved them."
"Why do you get to live?"
"You fear becoming like him."
A path of memory unfolded.
Jean saw flashes—her father's sword cleaving through dragon hide… then his body shattered by flame. Her mother's scream. Charles arriving too late. Her siblings watching her survive.
And her own face, untouched by the fire.
Untouched, but never the same.
She fell to her knees.
Her aura flickered.
---
Then she stood.
Slowly.
Painfully.
"Is that all?" she whispered. "Is that the worst you have?"
The shadows hissed.
From the black stepped a figure identical to her. Same white hair, same eyes—but clad in black, holding a blade of ash.
"I'm you without the goddess. Without Whitney. Without hope."
Jean raised Solstice.
"Then let's see who deserves to carry the name Luther."
---