✧ Chapter Twenty-Four ✧
The Hollow That Remembers
from Have You Someone to Protect?
by ©Amer
Evening had just begun to press indigo across the sky when Lhady rode out, the violet shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders and her thoughts wrapped tighter still around Elias's words.
Her mare, a pale silver creature named Tamsin, moved gracefully beneath her, hooves whispering against the forest path. Tamsin was steady, calm — had always been. But as the trees grew older, denser, and the path thinner beneath the roots, Lhady slowed to a halt.
A sharp drop ahead. The trail narrowed into a bend of shale and moss.
She dismounted slowly.
"I'm sorry, girl," she murmured, pressing her forehead briefly to the horse's warm flank. "But you can't follow me where I'm going."
Tamsin whinnied softly as Lhady tied her reins gently to a low-hanging branch. Then, with a last glance back, she turned into the deep woods alone.
The wind stilled.
Lhady stepped carefully over the narrowing terrain, where stones bore old runes and vines curled like forgotten words. The shawl slipped slightly from her shoulder as she pressed forward, catching on a low branch she didn't notice.
She didn't feel it tear.
She only heard the silence — and the echo in her thoughts.
Where silence weighs the heaviest… where time stutters and the wind remembers…
There were no signs. No trail.
Only the pressure of memory. And the hum beneath her skin.
She had been walking for over an hour now, deeper than she'd ever gone. The forest had shifted — darker, older, more aware.
Back at the shop
Caelum burst into the stable, hoping against hope.
Empty.
Tamsin was gone.
His heart kicked.
She had taken the forest road. Alone.
He didn't hesitate.
Didn't curse.
Didn't waste time saddling a second horse.
He just ran.
The path blurred under his boots, but he didn't stumble. His stride was long, trained — like a knight, yes — but one who had known the land by foot more often than not. Trees closed around him. The world narrowed to direction, instinct, her.
Tucked safely in the folds of his coat was the smaller sigil fragment, the one he'd found hidden in the bookshop days ago. Lhady hadn't seen it. He hadn't told her. Not yet.
Something in him said it wasn't time.
But maybe now... it would be.
Lhady slowed as she reached a patch of earth that felt different. Hollow. Listening.
She saw it then — faint as breath — a sigil shaped not in ink or stone, but moss. Curved like a question. Spun inwards.
She knelt, brushing her fingers over it. The shawl slipped from her other shoulder, trailing on the ground.
"It's here," she breathed. "It's always been here."
The air trembled softly. And from the sigil came a glow. Not light — something gentler. A memory that had waited a very long time to be remembered.
A voice — Elias's? Or older? — filled her mind.
The real one is woven with memory and blood.
Her fingertips tingled.
The larger fragment pulsed beneath her, ancient and waiting.
And somehow she knew: this spiral was not just a mark. It was a memory of her own bloodline, a shape carried through time — echoed in the veins of her ancestors.
Farther back, in the woods—
Caelum paused, chest rising evenly. No fatigue touched him — only urgency.
He saw something snagged on a thorn just ahead. Violet fabric. Frayed.
He strode forward and plucked it carefully.
Lhady.
His fingers curled around it. No blood. Thank the stars.
He looked up at the sky. The moon was rising — a sliver of silver behind clouds.
His voice caught in his throat.
"I'm coming," he whispered.
And then he ran.
The sigil beneath Lhady glowed brighter now, reacting to her presence — or something within her. She heard it again: a whisper without words. A glimpse of hands — not hers — burying something in the earth. The same spiral shape, marked in blood.
She leaned in closer.
"I'm ready," she whispered. "Please. Show me the rest—"
"Lhady!"
She turned at the sound.
Caelum stood at the edge of the hollow, breathless but strong, eyes wide as they found her.
"You—by the stars, I—what were you—"
But she had already crossed the space between them. The forest felt brighter just with him there. Their eyes met. They didn't need to speak the ache.
He took her hand, pulling her closer.
"You terrified me."
She smiled, faint and fierce. "You found me."
And then—
A tremble beneath their feet.
The sigil dimmed.
"No," she breathed. "Not now—"
The earth cracked. Moss gave way.
Caelum shouted, lunging.
"Lhady!"
Her hand slipped from his grasp as the sinkhole swallowed her in a rush of stone and dark.
Gone.
Far away, somewhere between here and nowhere — in a room without walls, or perhaps an attic with too many windows — Elias Nocturne sat with his legs crossed, eyes closed, hands resting on a page that did not belong to any book.
The ink beneath his fingers shifted of its own accord.
He exhaled slowly, as though listening.
Then smiled, faint and rueful.
"So… the earth remembers."
A ripple of energy passed through the space, subtle and sure. He felt the tremor before the ground even cracked. Felt the sigil awaken, and the pull it would send through blood.
He did not open his eyes.
Nor did he interfere.
They were walking the road he'd only pointed toward. What came next… had to be theirs alone.
A wind touched the room — though no doors were open.
Elias whispered to the silence:
"Hold fast, Caelum. She hasn't fallen far."
Caelum at the dark dropped to his knees at the edge, reaching, reaching—
Nothing. Just air.
The ground was whole again. As if she had never stood there.
Silence.
And then—
A whisper rose from below, faint and unmistakable.
"Caelum…"
His eyes widened.
She was alive.
But far beneath.
And somewhere the sigil still pulsed — unseen, unheard — like a second heartbeat waiting to be answered.
To be continued.