By nightfall, the camp was holding its breath.
None of them spoke much.
The fire burned low, too low, its coals barely warm. Even Ash—usually the first to lighten tension with a joke or a story—had gone quiet. He sat cross-legged near the perimeter, blade in hand, sharpening it with the kind of rhythmic, meditative focus that came not from boredom, but from dread. The steel hissed softly against the whetstone, like an unspoken warning.
Across the camp, Mira had retreated to the edge of the clearing. She stood beneath the same twisted tree that always leaned westward, roots half-exposed like the gnarled hands of something trying to crawl out of the earth. Her back was to the others. She hadn't moved in some time, only stared at her hands, unmoving.
The crack through her sigil had widened.
Not physically—her skin remained whole. But her light was fractured now.
Where it had once flowed clear and gold, it now sputtered in uneven bursts. Beneath the glow were dark veins, branching like corrupted rivers, pulsing faintly. They moved beneath her skin—not with blood, but with something else. Something older. Something trying to surface.
A corruption not of body, but of self.
Rylan stood nearby, watching her from a distance he hated. He'd always known how to reach her before. A hand. A word. A look. But now, every gesture felt clumsy, every instinct uncertain. He didn't know what he feared more: that she would push him away—or that she wouldn't, because she wasn't Mira anymore.
Lina appeared beside him without a sound. She watched Mira as well, then said, "You know she's not the one opening it."
"I know," Rylan replied.
"But she's the door," Lina finished.
He didn't answer.
Lina's gaze turned on him, steady as ever. "And you're still the flame, Rylan. Don't let it go out."
Rylan wanted to believe her. But some small, traitorous part of him couldn't help thinking: what if the flame wasn't meant to burn forever?
Deep underground, Varyon walked alone through the catacombs.
He hadn't told the others what he'd found. Not yet. Not because he was hiding it, but because he didn't know how to explain it—didn't know if they could even comprehend what it meant.
He could barely comprehend it.
He had been here before.
Not in this life. Not with this body. But with these bones, these hands. Something in him remembered every twist of the tunnel, every glyph carved into the stone, every whisper echoing through the hollow chambers. It was not a memory. It was muscle knowledge—ancestral and cursed.
He reached the alcove again. The wall was cold, damp. The same sigil of shadow was carved deep into the stone, its lines sharp and deliberate, like a wound that never scabbed.
"Varyon of the Ninth," he whispered aloud this time.
The wall shivered in answer.
And then—language. Not from above, not from any book or script.
A whisper.
Older than the roots.
"She opens the gate. You hold it open."
The voice wasn't Syra's.
It was his own. But older. Hardened by time and loss. It didn't sound like a warning.
It sounded like a sentence.
Back at camp, Mira collapsed.
The light burst from her hands without warning—bright, chaotic, wrong. Not the warm firelight of before, but a piercing white tinged in violet, pulsing at a frequency that made the very air around her hum.
Rylan ran to her, skidding to his knees just as she hit the ground. Her eyes were open but unfocused, as if staring through him. Light bled from her sigil, the veins beneath her skin now fully visible, coiled and twitching like serpents.
"Mira!" he shouted. "Stay with me—look at me!"
She gasped. "I can't—stop it—she's in me—she's in me!"
Lina was at her side in seconds, hands bracing Mira's shoulders. The energy coursing through her body made it difficult to hold her steady.
From the grove's edge, Ash shouted, "Something's moving!"
"No," Rylan said, voice tight. "Not something. Somewhere."
And then the earth shifted.
Not like a quake. Not like settling ground.
It cracked.
A thin fracture tore through the firepit and stretched across the clearing, curling toward the grove like the trail of a striking snake. Glowing light flickered beneath it, pulsating with the same rhythm as Mira's ragged breathing.
The world was responding to her.
The soil split further. Trees groaned. A low, resonant hum rose from below them all.
Then—from Rylan's satchel—the book burst open. Pages turned in a frenzied blur, ink spilling across the parchment like living veins.
Then, it stopped. One page. Centered. Burned into the surface in scalded ink, a single phrase:
"Return to the Gate."
Rylan stood, stunned.
"We have to go back to the basin," he said.
"No," Mira breathed, shaking, barely able to sit up. "That's what she wants…"
"She already has what she wants," said a voice from the trees.
Varyon stepped into the firelight. His boots were caked in soil. His eyes were rimmed red.
"The gate isn't under the basin."
Rylan turned sharply. "Then where is it?"
Varyon looked down at the crack slicing through the ground. Then at Mira. And finally—at Rylan.
"It's beneath us."
Far below Hollowmere, where even roots dared not grow, something stirred.
The Veil pulsed—not as a boundary, but as a lung.
And for the first time in centuries—
It breathed in.
They moved fast.
Rylan and Ash carried Mira between them, careful not to touch her palm. The sigil there pulsed dangerously now, emitting waves of heat and pressure that made stone nearby crumble. Lina led them toward the clearing's center, where the crack had widened into a gaping wound in the earth.
They didn't speak. There was no need.
Beneath their feet, the stone groaned.
The wind stilled again.
Something old was waking.
They reached the chasm's edge. A spiral staircase descended into darkness—not man-made, not carved by tool or intention, but by force.
Rylan looked at Varyon. "How long has it been here?"
"A thousand years. Maybe more. It's older than the Hollowmere. Older than Syra."
Ash peered down into the dark. "We go down there, we're not coming back the same."
"Good," said Mira, her voice raw. "I don't want to come back the same."
The descent felt endless.
The stairs coiled downward like a serpent's spine, lit only by the unnatural glow from Mira's palm. The walls around them were smooth—too smooth. The texture of bone, not stone.
Every few dozen steps, they passed a mark. Some looked like runes. Others like scars.
The deeper they went, the more wrong everything felt.
Reality thinned here. Rylan could feel it in his teeth, in his breath. The air didn't carry scent. Sound didn't echo. Their steps made no noise.
At last, they emerged into a vast underground chamber.
The Gate stood at its center.
Not an arch.
Not a door.
But a sphere—twenty feet tall, floating just above the ground. Cracked and churning with molten light. It pulsed like a heart, steady, inevitable.
Chains of black crystal wrapped around it, anchoring it to pillars that were crumbling from within. The Veil was breaking. Slowly. Purposefully.
Mira stepped forward, stumbling slightly. "This is it…"
Varyon nodded. "This is where it all started."
Rylan looked at him. "Started what?"
"The cycles," Varyon said. "Of Light and Dark. Of Mira and Syra. Of the Ninth. Every time we think we're sealing the wound, we're only stitching it over rot."
Ash spat. "So what? We let it open? Let Syra out and hope she plays nice?"
"No," Mira said.
They turned to her.
She stood fully upright now. Her palm blazed. Her eyes glowed faintly violet.
"She doesn't want to escape," she said. "She wants to merge. To end the separation. To stop being two halves of one soul."
Rylan stepped closer. "And you think that's the answer?"
"I don't know," she said honestly. "But I know fighting her won't work. Not this time. Not again."
A silence fell.
Then Varyon said, "There's another way."
He stepped forward, drawing something from beneath his cloak.
A blade.
Black. Serrated. The one they had buried.
"It was forged at the first rupture," he said. "It can sever. Not just bodies. Connections."
Mira stared at it.
"I don't want to cut her out," she said. "I want to face her."
"She's already inside you," Ash warned.
"Then I'll go to her," Mira replied. "Not in a dream. Not in a vision. But in the Gate."
Rylan stepped forward. "Then I'm going too."
"No," she said. "If I don't come back…"
"You will," he said.
Mira smiled faintly. "You don't even believe that."
Rylan smiled back, the saddest smile he'd ever worn. "Doesn't matter. You will."
And then—she stepped into the light.
Inside the Gate, Mira fell through herself.
There was no floor. No ceiling. Only memories.
Her own.
And Syra's.
She saw every life. Every death. Every time the world had broken, and someone like her had been called to stop it. She saw herself in armor. In flame. In shadow.
She saw Syra as a girl. As a savior. As a villain.
And then—
She saw the truth.
They were never separate.
They had always been one soul, split to preserve balance.
But the Veil had made that division real.
And now, only one could remain.
Mira stood in the center of the storm.
Syra stood opposite her.
The light between them pulsed.
Mira reached out.
And Syra took her hand.
The Gate screamed.
The world buckled.
But neither let go.
Above, the surface split open.
Light erupted into the sky.
The fire in the camp snuffed out.
And the wind—
Finally returned.
But it did not howl.
It sang.