The realm cracked like glass under Kael's feet. Reality stuttered, then fell apart into a tapestry of shifting colors and voices. Nyra clutched his arm, anchoring them both to the last strand of stability between dream and death. The Hollow Tongue screamed again—a sound made of thoughts, of memories sharpened into knives.
Shapes emerged from the void: not creatures, but half-formed meanings—avatars of sorrow, war, betrayal. Twisted mockeries of Kael's past lives took form: a burning king, a weeping thief, a skeletal child with hollow eyes. They advanced in silence, a legion of echoes.
Nyra's voice cut through the rising dread. "This is its trick—it uses what we were against us. But they're just reflections."
Kael raised a hand, curse-marks gleaming, and swept them forward like wings. The burning king lunged first, swinging a blade made of promises broken. Kael blocked with his forearm. The impact shattered light across the void.
He reeled. The blow wasn't physical. It tore into his soul, into the version of himself that had once ruled and failed.
"You let them die," the echo whispered. "You chose power over peace."
Kael snarled. "I chose to survive."
Nyra flanked him, her own hands wrapped in a lattice of crimson glyphs. She struck the skeletal child, banishing the echo with a wave of red fire. "They're trying to make you remember your sins—so they can feed."
"Then I'll make them choke."
Kael stepped forward. The air rippled. Suddenly, he was somewhere else.
---
[Flashback Fragment: The First Life]
A desert under black skies.
He was no longer Kael, but a boy named Kareth, born in the dying age of the First World. He stood before an obsidian altar, surrounded by gods wearing bones for masks. They whispered in one tongue—the Hollow Tongue—and offered him a deal.
"Hold the curse, or we burn the last world."
He accepted.
The curse entered his heart like a second heartbeat.
The gods faded, but not before speaking a prophecy:
"Thirteen lives. One to bind. One to shatter. One to feed the void."
He woke, screaming, in the battle again.
---
Kael gritted his teeth. "This is my burden. My curse. But not my end."
He unleashed a pulse of dark light. The reflections exploded into shards of memory. The Hollow Tongue recoiled—but only momentarily.
Its true form emerged: a mass of void tendrils, each lined with glyph-mouths. It towered over Kael and Nyra, blotting out all light.
Kael turned to her. "It needs a vessel. Every life, it tried to make me one. But it was never about the curse—it was about feeding."
Nyra's eyes widened. "And if it takes you now—"
"It becomes real."
She gripped his hand. "Then we fight until the last breath."
Together, they charged.
Kael called on the curse—all of it. Every loop. Every death. Every version of himself.
He became the Thirteenth Vessel fully.
A god of memory. A blade of defiance.
The Hollow Tongue roared.
The sky shattered.
And the battle began.
---
The battle was not fought with steel or spells, but with will. Each of Kael's thoughts became blades. Each of Nyra's memories became shields. The Hollow Tongue lashed out, mouths screaming, repeating truths Kael had tried to forget:
"You abandoned her." "You chose this." "You are not the victim—you are the origin."
Kael faltered. One of the mouths sank into his shoulder, draining a fragment of who he was—a memory of Nyra's laughter.
He screamed.
Nyra pulled him back. Her hand glowed. She pushed her palm into his chest, restoring what had been taken. "Focus! You're more than your pain. You are your resistance."
Kael stood taller.
"No more chains. No more loops. No more lies."
He reached within, into the deepest well of the curse. Into the moment before his first life.
And he saw it:
A throne in a sea of stars. A shattered crown. A boy who chose to bear the curse—not to save a world, but to give his sister one last chance at life.
Kael whispered, "I was never cursed. I volunteered."
The Hollow Tongue paused.
Nyra stared at him, horrified. "Kael... you made the curse?"
He nodded. "I forged it from my soul. I am the Thirteenth Vessel. It was never punishment. It was penance."
The Hollow Tongue roared, and Kael walked forward.
Light spilled from his chest, burning away the void.
Every life he had lived flared around him, overlapping. Twelve shadows stepped beside him—past selves, hands extended. Together, they moved as one.
Kael and Nyra pierced the Hollow Tongue's core.
The beast shrieked.
The curse shattered.
And reality collapsed into white.
---
Kael drifted in the whiteness for what felt like centuries. His body no longer held form; he was a breath, a ripple, a fading echo. But even now, his mind clung to the thought of Nyra.
And then—
A hand.
Warm. Real.
Pulling him.
Nyra's voice, clear and steady. "You're not done yet."
He opened his eyes.
The real world.
They were in the ruins of the Heartroot—no longer twisted and gnarled, but scorched clean. The sky above them bled twilight. The air shimmered with what remained of the curse's shattered power. Around them, glyphs faded like smoke. The ground trembled.
Kael sat up slowly. His body felt heavier, older. But also freer.
"Is it over?" he asked.
Nyra looked toward the horizon. "The Hollow Tongue is dead. But something's... wrong."
In the distance, stars flickered out—one by one. As if the sky itself were mourning. Or preparing.
Kael's heart sank. "The curse was feeding something. And now... it's hungry."
She looked at him. "We broke the cage. But we may have opened the gate."
A shadow moved beyond the mountains.
Bigger than any god Kael had ever known.
He stood.
"Then we find it. We stop it. And if we can't—"
"—we curse it."
Together, they walked into the dying light.