The Black Reaches: Hollow Heart
The descent was worse than the climb.
The Black Reaches swallowed sound, every step heavy, muffled by thick, dead air. The ground beneath them was slick with frost that wasn't frost—thin layers of black ice pulsing faintly, as if veins ran beneath its surface.
Neither spoke.
The tower dominated the horizon now, its slow heartbeat in rhythm with the artifact at Solace's side. His breaths were shallow, uneven, each inhalation tasting of copper and burnt stone.
At times, the path vanished entirely, forcing them to slide down sheer faces of rock, the stone so cold it burned their palms.
And always, the feeling of being watched.
Not by beasts.
Something older.
Something beneath.
The wind here did not howl. It whispered, a constant thread of half-formed words brushing against their ears.
By nightfall, the tower loomed above them, close enough for its details to come into focus. The stone was wrong—smooth and oily, shifting subtly when viewed from the corner of the eye.
No door. No windows. Just an unbroken wall, pulsing with a slow, steady rhythm.
Lyra reached out a hand, but stopped short. Her fingers trembled.
"Not yet," she whispered.
They camped at the tower's base, though neither of them rested. Sleep was impossible. The ground thrummed with dark energy, and the whispers grew louder—no longer words, but music. A deep, endless chord that set their teeth on edge.
Solace sat with the artifact cradled in his lap. It was warm. Alive.
His vision blurred. Shapes moved at the edge of his sight—long-limbed things crawling across the rocks on too many hands.
Lyra's voice cut through the haze.
"Don't listen."
He blinked hard, and the shapes melted away.
"I wasn't," he rasped.
"Doesn't matter."
The night stretched impossibly long.
At the first glimmer of false dawn—a sickly grey light that felt thin and unnatural—the tower shifted.
A seam opened.
Not a door. A wound.
Lyra stood, staring at it.
"It knows we're here."
The air vibrated with pressure, like the breath of some enormous lung drawn deep and slow.
They stepped inside.
The interior was worse than the outside.
Stone twisted in impossible angles. Corridors led nowhere, folding back on themselves. Gravity bent and broke. The heartbeat echoed through the stone, through their bones.
No floor. No ceiling. Only shifting planes of black stone and flickering red light.
Solace reached for Lyra's hand. She took it without hesitation.
Together, they moved forward.
Each step felt like falling.
The whispers became voices.
I see you.
I see you.
I see you.
Something laughed, far away and endless.
And then—silence.
They found themselves in a chamber vast and hollow. The walls curved upward into darkness. In the center, a pool of liquid shadow pulsed with each heartbeat.
Lyra shivered.
"This is where it began," she said, her voice hoarse.
Solace stepped toward the pool. The artifact vibrated violently now, screaming soundlessly against his side.
He knelt, dipping his fingers into the shadow.
Cold. Endless.
Visions bloomed:
A storm of wings blotting out the sky.
The Saint standing at the edge of a vast chasm, smiling.
Chains coiling around the world's heart, pulled tight by unseen hands.
Lyra cried out.
He turned.
She was on her knees, clutching her head, blood seeping between her fingers.
The tower shook.
The pool of shadow convulsed, rising, taking form.
Eyes opened—hundreds, thousands—blinking wetly in the darkness.
A voice filled the chamber, soft as silk, vast as the void:
"Little ones. Why have you come?"
Neither answered.
They couldn't.
The presence pressed down on them, suffocating.
The shadow coalesced into a figure—a tall, robed being, face hidden beneath a veil of writhing tendrils.
The voice again, gentle and terrible:
"You carry what was stolen."
Solace felt the artifact pulse once, then still.
Lyra whispered, barely audible:
"The god-beast..."
The figure tilted its head.
"I was bound long before your kind learned to fear the dark. You hold my heart in your hands."
Solace's breath caught.
The artifact—the thing that had led him, protected him, bled into his bones—was a fragment of this ancient being.
The presence stepped forward.
"Return it."
Solace's hands trembled.
Lyra's voice was hoarse, broken:
"Don't."
He looked at her.
Tears streaked her face.
"Return it," the voice said again—almost tender.
Solace closed his eyes.
And then, he spoke. Soft. Shaking.
"I found it, after the one who held it died."
The god-beast stilled.
Solace forced a dry smile, despite the weight pressing down on him.
"So... it's mine. Finders keepers."
The chamber fell silent.
And then—laughter.
Low and rolling.
The god-beast's head tilted. Solace felt it smile, though he could not see its face. He shivered.
"You amuse me," the god-beast said, and the stone around them groaned under the weight of its voice.
Solace swallowed.
"I amuse a lot of people. Usually before they try to kill me."
The tendrils shifted.
"I could," it mused, voice like silk drawn over rusted chains. "But I won't."
Solace's voice dropped, low and steady.
"Why were you imprisoned here?"
The god-beast went still for a long, cold moment.
"When your kind was young," it said at last, "I walked among you. I gave freely. Shelter. Power. Dreams."
A pause.
"And when they no longer needed me, they bound me here. Deep beneath stone and time, so they could shape the world without me."
Its voice darkened.
"They feared what they could not control. What would not kneel."
The chamber trembled.
"But you are not ready for the whole truth," it murmured. "Too small. Too fragile still."
The tendrils writhed again, and the god-beast extended something like a hand toward the artifact.
Solace clutched it tighter.
"Fear not, little one. I do not reclaim it."
The artifact pulsed—warm, then burning, like molten iron beneath his skin.
A flicker of something vast poured into him. Weightless. Crushing. Endless.
"I will watch your journey," the god-beast whispered. "Through this."
The artifact vibrated once more. In the back of his mind, faint laughter—tucked just behind thought.
Lyra stirred, pale and bloodstained.
"Keep her close," the god-beast murmured. "She will stand at the edge with you."
Then the presence folded back into shadow, leaving only silence and stillness behind.
One last whisper brushed his thoughts:
We will speak again.
The pool lost its pulse.
Lyra wiped blood from her mouth, trembling.
"You're insane," she rasped.
Solace exhaled slowly and laughed nervously.
"Haha. Sorry."
They turned together and left the hollow heart of the tower behind.
Outside, the black storm had broken.
The path forward stretched down into cracked earth, toward the valley of broken dreams and ancient chains.
And in the back of Solace's mind, a soft chuckle lingered.
I like you.