The light beyond the arch was different.
It wasn't sun.
Wasn't torchlight.
Just… brightness.
Thin. Pale. Cold.
Kael stepped through the stone mouth, every nerve alert.
The bottle at his side stayed silent—but warm.
Present.
The tunnel behind him sealed with a soft hum.
No collapse.
No violence.
Just finality.
The air outside tasted sharp, like iron scraped from old bone.
He emerged onto a broken plateau, jagged stone ridges stretching out into a barren expanse.
The sky above was ash-colored, clouds churned by silent wind.
No birds.
No trees.
Only ruin.
In the distance: structures.
Not towers.
Not homes.
Shapes carved into the stone itself—half-collapsed, half-buried.
Kael didn't recognize the architecture.
It wasn't Hollow.
Wasn't human.
He moved carefully, boots crunching across dust-laced gravel.
For the first time, there were no walls around him.
No containment fields.
No Elric watching.
No chants. No bells.
Only the bottle.
Only silence.
It took an hour to descend into the shallow valley below.
Every step felt heavier.
Not from fatigue.
From expectation.
As if the land itself knew who walked it now.
He reached the base of a collapsed archway—ancient, scorched, covered in moss that shimmered slightly in the low light.
And there, picking through the rubble, knelt a figure.
Tattered cloak.
Bent shoulders.
One hand wrapped in leather bandages, the other holding a rusted tool.
They didn't hear Kael approach—
—or maybe they didn't care.
Kael stopped.
Spoke, voice dry from disuse.
"Do you live here?"
The figure froze.
Then turned.
Eyes.
Dark.
Clear.
Not Hollow.
Not afraid.
Just… old.
"No one lives here," the man said.
Only then did Kael realize it was a man—though his voice felt brittle, like he hadn't used it in weeks.
The man's gaze drifted to Kael's pouch.
"You're from below."
Kael nodded.
No point lying.
The man didn't run.
Didn't threaten.
Instead, he sat back and pulled something from his coat.
A metal fragment.
Twisted. Burned. Covered in old circuitry.
And on its edge—
A faint line of symbols.
Kael's breath caught.
The outer ring matched the ones that had glowed in the chamber below.
The bottle pulsed.
Hard.
The man noticed.
He didn't smile.
But his voice shifted.
Soft. Sharp.
"Then it's true."
Kael stepped closer.
"What is?"
The man looked east, toward the jagged horizon.
"Something's waking."
They sat in silence for a while.
Eventually, the man spoke again.
"My name's Zeyn. I was a scavenger. Before the storms came."
Kael didn't know what that meant.
But he said, "I'm Kael."
Zeyn nodded.
"Your bottle… it hums like the old cores. But cleaner. Alive."
Kael didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
Zeyn stood slowly, groaning.
"If you've come from the Hollow, you'll need more than ash and stubbornness to survive out here."
He looked Kael up and down.
"You'll need a map. And someone who knows where not to walk."
Kael raised an eyebrow.
"You volunteering?"
Zeyn turned.
Began walking toward the ruins.
"Don't flatter yourself. I just don't want your body drawing scavengers to my door."
Kael followed.
The bottle throbbed once—content, almost amused.
Whatever this place was—
It wasn't safe.
But it was free.
And for the first time in years, Kael felt the air in his lungs and knew—
He wasn't going back.