The villagers gathered before the shrine ruins that evening, summoned by a pulse none could ignore. It throbbed through the soil, a rhythm in their bones, tugging at long-buried memory.
The Hollow was quiet, but watching. Waiting.
Chizzy stood at the heart of the crowd, a torch in her hand, the scroll from the Bone Path tucked at her waist. Talia stood to her left, Kiran to her right. Behind them, Elder Noma looked on with a strange blend of awe and fear.
"Tonight," Chizzy began, her voice echoing in the hush, "we do not pray. We do not chant. Tonight… we listen."
She stepped forward and drove the torch into a mound of dried herbs, bark, and bone shards at the base of the altar. Fire roared to life, crackling violet and gold.
The villagers gasped—not in terror, but in recognition.
From the flames rose a shimmer, like heatwaves dancing upward, and within them flickered faces—familiar and forgotten. Grandmothers, warriors, children, midwives. Ancestors who had lived and died with their truths locked beneath silence.
"This fire speaks," Talia said beside her, "and so must we."
Chizzy raised her chin. "For generations, we were told to bury pain. That it made us weak. That survival meant forgetting. But the Hollow showed us otherwise. It is not our silence that protects us—it is our story."
The fire swelled. Embers swirled, forming shapes—visions of the past. A woman shielding her child from raiders. A healer punished for speaking forbidden words. A boy who disappeared under a blood-red moon.
Each image pierced the crowd like a blade of ice.
Tears fell. Hands trembled.
"We carry their echoes," Chizzy said. "And for too long, we let them fade. But now, we open the vault. We let the world remember."
A hush, then a voice from the back.
"I remember the night the woods screamed," said a weathered man, stepping forward. "My sister vanished that night. We never spoke of it again."
A woman followed. "My grandmother knew the songs we burned. She sang them to me in secret."
Others added their memories, weaving a tapestry of pain and strength. The fire danced, brighter with each truth spoken. And in its light, the Hollow shimmered—no longer menacing, but illuminated.
Kiran knelt and placed the bone-etched scroll into the flame. It didn't burn. Instead, it lifted into the air and unraveled, glowing like a banner above them.
From its surface came the voice from the Bone Path again:
"Truth is the flame that binds the broken. Let it burn through you."
The villagers didn't cower.
They stood straighter.
A boy stepped forward, maybe ten years old. "My mother said I had dreams I wasn't supposed to tell. But last night, I dreamed of the Eye. And it told me I mattered."
Chizzy knelt before him and placed a hand over his heart. "You do. Every truth you carry is a thread in the fabric we mend tonight."
Talia added softly, "And no one will tear it again."
The fire reached its zenith, flames licking the air, forming the shape of an open eye—calm, unwavering, radiant.
They had passed the test.
The Hollow had not come to punish—but to witness.
The silence of centuries had shattered. Not with violence. But with voices. With memory.
With fire.
And as the embers glowed deep into the night, Chizzy knew the work wasn't finished—but now, they wouldn't do it alone.
They had awakened a people.
And the fire had only just begun to speak.