Certainly here's the continuation, diving deeper into Evelyn's descenEvelyn landed hard except there was no ground beneath her. Only layers of thought, fragments of forgotten laughter and ancient sorrow, suspended in glistening darkness. Sound echoed strangely here. Every breath felt like it belonged to someone else.
She pushed herself up.
The mirror shard in her hand no longer reflected her face.
Instead, it showed Arlen or rather, Aeryn. A child again, standing before the ruins of his village, clutching a burnt book. His lips moved in silent prayer as the wind howled through skeleton trees.
"This isn't real," Evelyn muttered.
But the world around her disagreed.
The trees cracked.
And from their hollow trunks, names spilled like insects whispered, screamed, chanted. All of them Arlen's. All of them hers. All of them once lost.
She stumbled forward. The scene shifted with every step. Her childhood bedroom. Her brother's grave. The orphanage's scorched library. Each memory layered atop another, none of them hers and yet every one of them dug a little deeper into her bones.
At the center stood a mirror, tall and rimmed in rusted thorns.
She approached.
And this time, when she looked into the glass, it did not show Arlen.
It showed Elia.
Alive.
Crying.
"I didn't mean for it to go this far," the reflection whispered.
"We were just supposed to survive."
Evelyn stared, trembling. "This… this isn't you."
But the mirror cracked.
And from the shards fell more voices, each one a piece of the fractured soul that had become Elia the girl, the lost god, the fury.
Then a voice spoke behind her:
"She was the first to choose pain over truth. And the last to forget who she truly was."
Evelyn spun
only to find Arlen, bleeding from the eyes, hand outstretched.
"You're not him," she said.
But the vision didn't move. It only whispered:
"If you want to save him… you'll have to destroy what's left of me."
The shard in Evelyn's hand gleamed.
The choice was clear.
The cost was not.
Meanwhile – In the Cradle of the Hollow
The Artifact screamed.
It didn't make a sound but Torren heard it in every bone, every vein, every name he had ever been called. The runes around the chamber burst into ash. Mira's protective wards collapsed like wet parchment.
And through the center of the temple floor…
A tear appeared.
Not in stone, not in flesh in reality itself.
Elia's shadow stepped through first. Then her voice.
"You touched my name. You lit the fire that burns even gods."
Torren tried to raise the Artifact, but it seared his hand. It had chosen.
Not him.
Mira.
She caught it midair, and the moment she did the temple reversed direction.
Time folded.
Walls bent.
Elia snarled.
"You can't undo me."
But Mira's eyes were blank and endless. For one heartbeat, she saw all possible endings.
And she whispered:
"Then I'll bury you in the one you never saw coming."
The Blank Page
Inside Arlen – or Aeryn Vale – the war was not of flesh and blood, but of ink and memory
He stood upon an endless plain of parchment, blank and yawning. Above, no stars. Below, no ground. Just white pale, brittle, and waiting. The entity the Hollow King moved through it like spilled ink, bleeding across the pages, rewriting truth, rewriting him.
"You were always meant to be a vessel," it hissed, a thousand voices tangled into one.
"A boy with a name carved out for emptiness. That was the price of your survival."
Arlen's hands trembled. His veins had turned black. His eyes bled light. Every memory he touched began to fray and unravel.
Mother. Evelyn. The fire. The Gate.
Each memory threatened to become a lie.
Each step forward meant tearing away a truth to shield another.
But Arlen clenched his fist.
And wrote.
"My name is Aeryn Vale.
I survived. I endured.
And I will not be written by you."
The page beneath his feet caught fire.
The Hollow King screamed.
The flames raced outward not of destruction, but authorship. And for the first time, Arlen wasn't merely reacting to the dark.
He was rewriting it.
Elsewhere - In the Temple's Fractured Core
Mira stood beneath the collapsing ceiling, Artifact in hand.
Torren coughed blood beside her, barely conscious. The Gate pulsed overhead, cracked wide like an eye forced open. Elia's form wavered within it no longer fully human, no longer merely a shadow.
A god, broken and furious.
"You can't destroy me," Elia howled.
"I was born in the first name spoken by flame and blood."
Mira whispered something Torren couldn't hear.
Then raised the Artifact.
The temple groaned.
The Gate pulled inward, devouring air, sound, light.
Mira stepped forward calm. Certain. And she spoke Arlen's forgotten name aloud, weaving it with Elia's true name, binding them in syllables older than time.
"By the names lost and the names reclaimed,
I offer not death but silence."
The Artifact flared.
Everything froze.
Memory Realm - The Final Choice
Evelyn reached the mirror again. This time, her own reflection was gone.
In its place, two doors.
One marked Release.
One marked Return.
Behind her, echoes of Elia's laughter filled the sky.
Before her, Arlen's voice whispered not pleading, but waiting.
She could leave, escape, let him finish this alone.
Or she could return to the white page and help write a new ending.
She chose.
And stepped forward.
Rewritten in Blood and Flame
Evelyn's feet touched the white expanse of parchment.
The silence was deafening. Not just the absence of sound but the absence of truth. Every memory she'd ever held felt distant. Her hands were whole, unmarred by scars. Her heart, strangely light too light.
But then she saw him.
Arlen no, Aeryn stood like a burned-out candle, barely holding shape. Shadows pooled at his feet, coiling and rising, the Hollow King towering behind him like a cathedral of ink and rage.
"You shouldn't be here," he said weakly.
"I made a choice," Evelyn replied, stepping beside him.
The Hollow King sneered.
"Ah, the sinner returns. You think love can overwrite a bargain made in blood?"
Evelyn met its gaze. "Not love. Will."
She reached out, gripping Arlen's hand.
Their combined memories surged old, broken, sacred. The fire that took his family. The child she couldn't save. Her screams. His silence. All of it spilled out onto the parchment.
And the page shuddered.
For the first time, the Hollow King hesitated.
"What are you doing?" it hissed. "This is my dominion!"
"No," Arlen said. "This page belongs to us."
They knelt together and began to write.
Names. Truths. Scars. Secrets. Words that hurt. Words that healed. Every agony turned into a sentence. Every guilt into ink. Every love, even the ones they failed to protect, into anchor points of the world they were reclaiming.
At the Edge of the Gate
Mira fell to one knee, blood trailing from her mouth.
The Artifact trembled in her grip, not shattering transforming. It no longer pulsed with ancient magic, but something new. Something Mira had written herself, carved from her own soul in the moment she chose not to kill, but to bind.
Torren looked up. "It's... it's holding."
"Yes," Mira whispered, eyes locked on the rift. "But only because they're still in there."
Inside the Gate, time buckled. Space bent inward. Arlen and Evelyn weren't just writing a memory.
They were rewriting the Gate's origin.
Changing its story.
Changing everything.
Inside the Void
The Hollow King screamed as the parchment beneath it twisted.
The ink that composed its form evaporated, turned brittle by truth. For centuries, it had survived by devouring guilt, feeding on lies people told themselves. But now those lies were exposed. Named. Owned.
The white page cracked like porcelain.
Arlen pressed his palm to the final line.
"I am Aeryn Vale.
She is Evelyn Myre.
This story is ours."
And the Hollow King
Shattered.
Collapse and Rebirth
The Gate exploded inward, light flooding every inch of the temple.
The screams stopped.
The shadows vanished.
And then, silence.
Not empty.
Not broken.
But full.
Full of breath.
Full of the first note of a new song.
Torren crawled toward Mira. "Did they make it?"
Mira looked at the smoldering altar.
And then
Two figures stepped from the light.
Bloodied.
Scarred.
Alive.