The wind had no voice in the Ashen Wastes. But something else did.
Jack stood at the edge of a broken cliff, the Blade of Echoes humming faintly in his grip. The others were still behind him—Nyssa sharpening her daggers in silence, Marek keeping watch with eyes that had seen too much, Lola pacing with anxious circles carved in the ash. Kael knelt nearby, his eyes shut, as if listening to something far away.
Something had changed since the Blade was drawn.
It began with the visions: fragments of places he'd never been, names he'd never spoken, people he had never known—yet remembered intimately. A man named Daelin whispering to a tree that bled light. A girl with Nyssa's face, screaming as black water swallowed her. A city collapsing under two moons.
Jack gripped his head, blinking against the rush.
The past, or a past, clawed through the seams of his mind. Worse, it wasn't just memory. It was presence—as if these versions of himself weren't dead. Just waiting.
"Jack?" Lola's voice was distant, blurred by distortion.
He turned to face her.
And blinked.
For a moment, she wasn't Lola. Her skin shimmered like glass, eyes hollow and glowing with starlight. Then the illusion vanished.
"Did you see it?" she whispered.
Jack nodded. "You're phasing."
"I know. The closer we get to the Maw, the thinner the veil gets. My memories… my self… they're overlapping. Some of me never left the Mirror. Some of me still burns."
Nyssa joined them. "I think it's happening to all of us. I had a dream last night—except it was real. I killed you in it, Jack."
Jack nodded. "I know. I dreamed it too."
Kael stirred. "You didn't dream it. You remembered it."
They turned toward him. He stood slowly, eyes darker than before, but steady.
"I've been hearing them," Kael said. "The other us. Some want to help. Some want to stop us. But all of them agree on one thing."
He looked Jack in the eye.
"The Hollow is waking."
Marek stepped forward, arms crossed. "What the hell is the Hollow?"
Jack looked to the Blade. It pulsed once—gold and red. Then he remembered.
Not from a book, not from Lola's fragmented lore.
From experience.
"The Hollow is the breach left when the First Light was broken. The space between what was and what could be. It's not a place—it's a mind. A will."
"Like the Devourer?" Marek asked.
"No," Lola said grimly. "The Devourer was the result. The Hollow is the source. The space that gave birth to both the light and the dark. It wants the Sundering. It always has."
Jack sheathed the Blade and turned to the horizon. "And now it knows we're trying to end it."
A low rumble rolled through the ground. Not an earthquake. A heartbeat.
"Time's thinning," Lola said. "We need to move. The next lock—do you know where it is?"
Jack nodded slowly.
"I saw it in the vision. Beneath the ruins of Elarion. The Sunken Spire."
Nyssa whistled. "That place's been buried for a thousand years."
Kael murmured, "That's because it fell from the sky."
The group stared.
He shrugged. "The version of me who told me that didn't say much more."
Lola turned to Jack. "If we go there, we'll be touching the edge of collapse. That's where the mirror fractures first. And where the Hollow's voice is strongest."
Jack met her gaze. "Then that's where we go."
Marek adjusted his armor. "And what happens if the Hollow tries to… I don't know… eat us?"
"We make it choke," Nyssa said with a grin, though her eyes were grim.
Lola turned toward the direction of Elarion. "We'll need a guide. One that doesn't exist anymore."
Jack tilted his head. "What does that mean?"
She hesitated. "I know a name. Someone I met between the folds—someone who helped me escape the Mirror. But she's not… real. Not in this timeline."
Nyssa frowned. "Then how do we find her?"
Lola's eyes shimmered. "We'll go to where she died."
Later that night, as the others slept in a makeshift camp by the edge of a dead river, Jack sat alone with the Blade.
It pulsed faintly in his lap, like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
"Do you remember me?" he whispered.
The blade answered with a low hum.
Jack closed his eyes. And then he was somewhere else.
A hall of broken mirrors stretched before him, each one reflecting a different self.
A version of him that burned entire cities.
Another that knelt in chains.
One that smiled, loved, lived a quiet life.
One with the Hollow Crown on his head, eyes black as the void.
He stepped forward—and the mirror cracked.
From behind it, a voice spoke.
"You're not ready."
Jack gritted his teeth. "I don't care."
The voice laughed. "Then you'll break."
Jack opened his eyes with a gasp. The Blade was still. The fire in his chest dulled.
But the voice lingered in his mind.
The Hollow was stirring.
And it was watching.