The forest after the Garden was different.
Not dead.
Not alive.
But remembering.
Each tree was carved with faces — not sculptures, not decorations.
Imprints.
Moments where someone had screamed hard enough to stain reality.
Elías touched one bark.
The face screamed again.
Tirian flinched.
"Don't touch the marked ones."
"Why?"
"They scream your pain. Not theirs."
---
The sky blinked.
That was the only word for it.
It blinked — lidless, but conscious.
For a breathless second, the stars disappeared.
When they returned, the forest had changed.
No path.
No direction.
But a scent.
Blood and parchment.
---
They walked in silence.
Then the howls began.
Not wolves.
Worse.
Remnants.
Not creatures, not spirits.
Just the emotional leftovers of things that should've died clean, but didn't.
They moved in packs.
Snarling memories.
Eyes like smudged ink.
Flesh sewn from regrets.
Elías raised the feather.
It pulsed.
But it didn't burn.
Not here.
This was not a place for writing.
This was a place for forgetting.
---
The first Remnant leapt.
Tirian met it mid-air with the edge of his blade, but the thing didn't bleed.
It bled sound — a cry Elías remembered making as a child.
He staggered.
More came.
They didn't bite.
They clung.
They whispered names he never gave.
They wrapped around him like vines made of guilt.
He dropped to one knee.
The ground spoke.
"Write, or be remembered by them."
---
Elías stabbed the feather into the soil.
A shockwave.
A circle of silence.
The Remnants recoiled — not from pain, but from recognition.
He stood.
"I am Elías," he said.
Each word was a blade.
"Son of no mercy.
Bearer of broken names.
I remember myself."
The Remnants howled.
And fled.
But not before one whispered something:
"We'll see you in the Hollow."
---
Tirian exhaled, half-collapsed.
"What… was that?"
Elías didn't answer immediately.
He looked at the forest.
The trees were now listening.
"Echoes of us," he said finally. "Things we leave behind when we lie to ourselves."
Tirian sat.
"You've changed."
Elías didn't deny it.
"I'm becoming someone I didn't know I could be."
---
The next day, they found the Hollow.
Not a cave.
Not a ruin.
A space beneath belief.
A wound in the world where forgotten gods once kneeled.
And it was not empty.
Statues filled it — thousands of them.
Each one cracked.
Each one bleeding.
Tears. Ink. Dust. Silence.
And at the center:
A throne made of dried lungs and scripture.
On it sat something almost human.
Its mouth was sewn shut.
Its eyes were made of mirrors.
But Elías saw his reflection move before he did.
---
"Welcome," it said, without speaking.
A voice inside them.
"You've come to rewrite."
Elías stepped forward.
"No," he said. "I've come to remember."
The figure tilted its head.
"Then you must survive memory."
---
The floor cracked.
The air screamed.
And a creature rose — not summoned, but born — from everything Elías had forgotten.
His old teacher.
His dog.
His shame.
The first person he ever wanted to protect… and failed.
All twisted into a monster.
It lunged.
---
He didn't run.
He didn't strike.
He spoke.
"Your pain is real," he said. "But it's mine. You don't own it anymore."
The creature stopped.
Trembled.
And shattered into letters.
Each one dissolved into light.
---
The throne figure stood.
"You passed," it said.
Elías frowned.
"No."
"I refused."
---
It smiled.
A hundred teeth.
None human.
Then it bowed.
Just slightly.
And stepped aside.
Revealing a gate made of questions.
Each one carved into bone.
---
Tirian read one aloud.
"If you could change one truth… would it still be you?"
Elías looked at the gate.
And walked through.
Without answering.
---
But the gate remembered.
And so will the reader.
---
If every version of you had to die for one to rise… would you still want to ascend?