Chapter 6 The Reckoning of Lost Memories

The path narrowed.

Where once the forest had stretched like a cathedral of memory, now the earth pressed inward, as if the world itself was curling in pain. The silver-glow of the voice-shards dimmed behind them, and a colder silence crept forward-thicker than absence, sharper than fear. Aria felt it crawl along her skin like ice on bone. This wasn't the forgetting of names or places.

This was the forgetting of self.

Kael faltered.

"I... don't feel right," he murmured.

The black stone in his hand had gone still. No pulse. No hum. Just weight.

The Guide slowed her steps. "We are entering the Veil of Hollowing now," she said, her voice soft and strained. "Here, even time forgets its shape. You must not doubt who you are-not even for a breath."

Aria nodded, clutching the feather close to her chest. She didn't need its light to guide her; she felt the path, a thread woven between what was and what should have been. The shard of memory she had taken still hummed in her palm-a lullaby with no melody, yet full of warmth.

They descended into a ravine of broken stone and brittle roots. The walls of the canyon curved unnaturally, as if trying to wrap around the intruders and smother them with stillness. The air changed. It was no longer just cold. It was hungry.

"Do you hear it?" Kael whispered.

At first, Aria didn't.

Then she did.

It wasn't a sound. Not really. It was the absence of sound made sentient. A pressure behind the ears. A hollow ache in the gut. A yearning silence that reached toward them with invisible claws.

And then it spoke.

Return.

A voice, not made from air, but carved from the spaces between thoughts.

You were forgotten for a reason.

Kael gasped, clutching his head. "No-no, not again-"

The world around them stuttered. The canyon flickered like bad memory. For a breathless moment, Aria stood in another place-under a red sky, in a village where no one had mouths. Eyes watched from windows, but no one moved. No one breathed.

Then she was back.

Kael had dropped to one knee, the stone rolling from his hand.

"Pick it up!" the Guide barked.

He reached for it with trembling fingers. The moment his skin touched it, light surged from within the stone-faint, but there.

The Hollow had tried to break him. But he had held on.

Barely.

Aria stepped forward, her voice rising in her thoughts. "You cannot have him. You cannot have me."

The silence recoiled for a breath.

Then it screamed.

Not sound-but a rupture of stillness, a collapse of what-was-quiet into something sharp and unbearable. Aria fell to her knees, ears bleeding, teeth clenched against the void.

And then-movement.

Shadows detached from the canyon walls, peeling forward like old paint come alive. Figures made of fractures and dust, eyes like splinters of a forgotten moon. They did not walk-they drifted, their limbs jerking in odd rhythms, as if obeying a music no one could hear.

"Hollowbound," the Guide spat. "They've taken the shape of memory, but none of its weight."

Kael stumbled upright. "What do they want?"

"To silence you," she said grimly. "They are the enforcers of forgetting. But they do not know how to create, only to erase."

The Hollowbound circled.

And then the wind moved.

Just a gust, at first-then a surge.

It spiraled down from the cliff edge, whipping around Aria and Kael like a vortex. The feather flared in her hand. Her shard glowed again.

"Sing," the Guide urged. "Anything. Even if you don't remember the words-give them form!"

Kael looked at Aria.

She nodded once.

And opened her mouth.

No melody, not at first-just breath, shaped by memory. She sang not with her voice, but with the wind's. A thread of thought, of longing, a fragment of the lullaby from the vault of voices. Kael joined her-off-key, broken, but bold.

The effect was immediate.

The Hollowbound halted.

Their forms stuttered-like fire losing oxygen.

One screamed.

It wasn't rage-it was recognition.

Their song wove around the creatures like a net of dawnlight, unraveling the binding threads of oblivion. One by one, the Hollowbound collapsed, their shadows pulled back into the canyon walls. But not gone. Only waiting.

Silence fell.

But it was different now-cleaner. Not empty, but restful.

Kael breathed heavily, leaning on the stone. "That... that worked?"

"For now," the Guide said. "But the deeper we go, the less the Hollow will rely on shadows. Soon, it will show itself."

Aria wiped blood from her lip and nodded. "Then we go deeper."

They followed the echo of their song down a spiraling path carved into the canyon's belly. Strange symbols flickered along the walls-glyphs of vanished languages, forgotten alphabets. Kael traced one with his finger and gasped.

"I know this," he said. "I don't know how. But I do."

"You did," Aria corrected softly.

And maybe still do.

Further on, the path opened into a chamber unlike anything they'd seen-a cathedral of silence, carved not by hand, but by absence. The air here held weight. The stone had no color. Light flickered in and out of existence without source.

In the center, a dais.

And upon it: a mirror.

It was tall, obsidian-smooth, framed with threads of bone and root. But the glass reflected nothing.

Not even them.

Kael stepped forward. The mirror shuddered.

Aria reached for him.

Too late.

Kael looked into the dark and staggered.

The wind stopped.

His breath hitched. "I... I see..."

"What?" Aria asked.

"Myself."

She frowned. "That's not a mirror."

He turned, pale. "It's a memory. My worst one."

She stepped to the glass.

The moment her eyes met its surface, she saw-

Her mother.

Not as she was now, alive and quiet, but as she had once been-screaming in the rain, trying to keep Aria's name from falling away, shouting into a night that did not listen. Then silence. Then wind.

Aria blinked.

The Guide stepped between them and the mirror. "Do not linger. The Hollow feeds on doubt. This mirror is a gate-it shows you what you fear you've lost, and then tries to make you let go."

Kael breathed hard, pressing the stone to his chest. "Then how do we pass it?"

"By remembering who you are," the Guide said. "And letting the mirror know you won't forget."

Kael nodded.

Aria reached for his hand.

Together, they stepped forward.

The mirror flared.

Voices swirled. Doubt screamed. Names unraveled.

But their grip didn't break.

They held on.

To the wind.

To each other.

To themselves.

And the mirror shattered.

The gate opened.

Beyond it was light.

But not warmth.

A pale, pulsing void stretched ahead, vast and trembling. It was not sky or land or sea-it was unbeing. And in its heart, a single structure floated: a spire made of unraveling words, turning slowly like a sundial in a storm.

Kael stared, stunned. "That's it."

"The Hollow," the Guide whispered.

The silence was total.

Even thought felt muffled.

Then a voice-not around them, but within.

You have come far. Why?

Aria didn't answer. She couldn't.

What do you seek? A name? A memory? A lie made real?

Kael stepped forward. "I want to remember."

Then you must forget. Everything. Even her.

Kael flinched.

The Hollow was not a being. It was a choice.

And now it was offering one.

Aria looked at him.

He shook his head, tears falling. "No. I won't let go. Not again."

She smiled.

He remembered.

And the Hollow recoiled.

The spire cracked.

The wind rushed in.

It was beginning.