The sky remained fractured—split like glass struck by a hammer. Light leaked through its seams in strange hues, neither day nor night. Nima stumbled across the uneven stones of the broken square, breath ragged, skin coated in ash and dried blood. Dmitri followed, limping slightly, sword still gripped in one hand like a crutch.
Ahead, the Bellborne waited.
Clad in half-armors etched with tonal script, their faces obscured by masks of bone and tarnished gold, they stood as motionless as statues. Each bore a fragment of the Bell—some in their weapons, others embedded into their bodies like foreign hearts. There were six of them, arranged in a crescent around the remains of the shattered chasm, the void sealed once more by the creature's retreat.
The tallest among them stepped forward. His mask was carved like a weeping face, and from his pauldrons draped a tattered banner of musical notation.
"You bear the Song's wound," he said to Nima.
She tensed. "We stopped the wraiths. And whatever that thing was."
"No," the masked figure replied. "You silenced a chorus. The conductor remains."
Dmitri spat blood and coughed. "Who the hell are you?"
"We are what remains of the first guardians," another Bellborne answered—this one with a woman's voice, quiet but ironclad. "The Bellkeeper's legacy. Not all who heard the Song were devoured. Some were changed. Bound."
"You serve the Bell?" Nima asked, heart pounding. "Or oppose it?"
"We serve balance," said the first. "The Bell is not evil. It is memory. Structure. Fate etched in vibration. But when struck improperly—when broken—it distorts all it touches."
Nima's fingers grazed the shard still humming in her pocket. "Then why do I carry this? Why did Velreth say I was bound to it?"
The Bellborne exchanged glances—silent, eerie.
"Because you are not just bound to the Song," the woman said. "You are its unwritten note."
The wind howled around them. From the city's depths came a distant groan—metal and stone shifting as though stirred by something unseen.
"You awakened it," said the tallest. "Now you must decide how to end it."
"Then help us," Nima said. "Or get out of the way."
The six stood in silence.
Then the masked woman nodded. "One trial. One path. Beneath the Earth's heart. If you survive, we will follow."
"And if not?" Dmitri asked.
"Then you die," the tall Bellborne said simply. "And the Song finds someone else."
They turned and began walking—toward the deepest ruins beneath Hollowroot, where the ground still steamed from the earlier battle. Nima hesitated for only a moment before following.
She didn't know what waited down there. But if she was truly a part of the Bell, then maybe it was time to see just how deep its Song ran.
Nima fell.
Or perhaps she drifted. The descent had no wind, no friction, no end. Her limbs didn't move—didn't need to. There was only the sensation of falling through silence. Of being unmade.
Then: impact. But not with the ground.
With herself.
She awoke—not to the world, but to a memory.
A crooked hallway. Wallpaper curling like dead skin. The dull scent of mold and something metallic beneath it. Flickering lights above her buzzed like insects.
Her feet moved without her permission.
She was ten again. Shoes soaked from the rain. Her father's voice ahead of her, echoing in strange, distorted fragments.
"…Nima. It's your fault…"
"No," she whispered, but the hallway stretched longer. At the end, the door she remembered from that night—splintered, with a broken frame. Her mother had locked it, barricaded it.
Bang. Bang.
Her child-self stood at the door. Knocked once. Twice. Blood smearing the wood. Her older self screamed for her to stop, but no sound came. Only the dull echo of knuckles and desperation.
When the door opened, there was no mother.
Only shadow. Shaped like a woman, holding a bell the size of an infant's skull.
The shadow spoke with her voice.
"You never saved her."
Nima staggered back. "This isn't real."
The hallway collapsed sideways. She fell again—no, was pulled, dragged into the bell's mouth, the echo within infinite. The world inverted.
Then: stillness.
She stood now in an impossible place—on a mirror, beneath a black sun. Her reflection stared up at her, except it wasn't her. Not exactly. Its eyes bled ink. The Bell's shard floated in its chest like a second heart.
The doppelgänger tilted its head.
"You're a liar," it said. "You don't fight because you're brave. You fight because you're afraid to stop."
Nima said nothing.
"You wear pain like armor. But you've never healed. You've just built walls." The reflection reached out, fingertips rising from the mirrored ground. "I'm not your enemy. I am the part of you that remembers. The part that listens to the Bell."
Nima unsheathed her blade.
"You're not me."
The figure smiled. "Then strike. See what you cut."
She lunged.
The mirror shattered.
The blade passed through empty air—and pain ripped through her chest.
Not physical. Something deeper. A weight. Guilt without form.
She knelt, gasping. The fragment of the Bell pulsed against her ribs.
"Each echo you resist makes you weaker," the voice whispered from nowhere. "You carry too much. You must choose what to keep—and what to let break."
Visions flooded in: Hollowroot burning. Dmitri torn apart by a faceless god. The Loom strangled by its own threads. Velreth crucified on a pillar of glass.
And Nima, alone, staring into a sky without stars.
"Is this the Song's end?" she asked.
No. The Bell replied from within her. This is the dissonance. The place between what is and what must be.
Then she saw her hand—real, adult, bleeding. Her other hand held the Bell shard.
A voice—Dmitri's—called from far away.
"Wake up."
The mirror ground reformed under her. Her legs trembled, but held.
She breathed in, slow. Measured. A whisper passed her lips:
"I'm not finished."
Light burst from the shard. The trial ended.