---
The wind in the Wastes was dead.
Not silent—never silent—but dead. Hollow. It carried no scent, no warmth, no memory. Only the dry scrape of sand on stone, the endless sigh of something long lost and still mourning.
They crossed into the Serathian Wastes at dawn.
The landscape stretched for miles in every direction, a desert of bone-colored dunes, obsidian shards, and half-buried ruins. No map could guide them. Only Mira's instinct and the fading pull of Serin's residual Seal energy gave them direction.
Kael tugged his cloak tighter. "Feels like walking through someone's nightmare."
"It is," Liora murmured. "This land was cursed centuries ago. During the first Seal war."
Lyssa walked with flames pulsing in her palm, casting flickering shadows across the ground. "Why build the Hollow Forge here?"
Riven didn't speak. He didn't need to.
Because the pull in his blood was stronger now.
The Seal in his chest throbbed like a pulse not his own.
Something was close.
And it was awake.
---
They traveled for two days without rest.
Serin had recovered enough to walk, but she spoke little. At night, she muttered in her sleep—names, fragments of rituals, memories she never lived. Liora stayed close to her, keeping the Seal's corruption from returning.
On the third morning, the earth changed.
The sand turned gray. The air buzzed faintly.
And beneath their feet—they began to see chains.
Dozens of them.
Half-buried in the sand. Twisting out from the earth like roots. Made not of iron, but light. Magical links, cracked and faded, each humming with faded memory.
"This was a prison," Mira whispered.
Riven knelt beside a chain, touching it lightly.
It vibrated—once.
A flash of pain.
A voice.
> He's not ready. We should have never bound it to his blood.
He recoiled.
Lyssa caught his shoulder. "What did you see?"
"Not see. Hear. My mother… and someone else. They were sealing something here. Not a Vault. Not a person."
Kael looked around. "A Seal."
"No," Riven said. "The Seal."
---
By midday, the sand gave way to stone.
They reached the edge of a vast chasm—so wide the far end was hidden in heat shimmer. A staircase of black obsidian spiraled downward, into a canyon carved by time and magic.
At the center of the chasm, hidden by enchantments and smoke—
—lay the Hollow Forge.
It rose like a sunken cathedral, jagged spires climbing into the sky, half-consumed by ancient obsidian roots. Runes pulsed along its surface—glowing with soul-fire. Chains hung from its towers, each one humming like a whisper too faint to follow.
Liora's breath caught. "That's not architecture. That's binding magic. It's alive."
Mira nodded. "It feeds. On children. On fear. On failure."
Riven clenched his fists. "Then we break it."
---
They entered under cover of illusion, guided by Mira and Liora's combined magic. Lyssa cloaked their scent with flame-smoke, and Kael used a shroud rune that flickered with shadow.
Inside, the Forge was worse.
Winding tunnels lined with holding chambers. Wards etched into the walls. Each door a cage. Each cage once held a soul.
Not all were empty.
In one, a boy with blank eyes stared through the bars. Not hostile. Not aware. Just… broken.
In another, a girl clung to her knees, whispering the same name again and again.
"Lira. Lira. Lira."
Liora wept silently.
Kael didn't speak.
Lyssa burned a sigil off a wall and shattered a ward.
But Riven—
Riven walked through that hallway like a ghost.
Until he reached the inner sanctum.
---
There, in the heart of the Hollow Forge, stood the machine.
It was not made of gears.
Not wires.
Not anything natural.
It floated—built of chains and runes, blood and crystal, anchored by six rings of Sealing magic.
Each ring hummed with a different elemental resonance.
Each one was incomplete.
Except one.
At its core, a seventh circle was already forming.
Dark.
Silent.
Shaped by intent.
A shadow moved across the far wall.
Vaskel stepped from the dark.
Alive.
Wounded.
Different.
A chain was embedded into his chest, linking him to the seventh circle.
"You're too late," he rasped. "They don't need your Seal anymore. They've built their own."
Riven raised his blade.
"I'll destroy it."
"You'll join it," Vaskel snarled, eyes wild. "You always were part of it. Your blood was the catalyst. The first Seal was drawn from your ancestor's death."
Kael stepped beside him. "You talk too much."
Then the chains lashed out.
---
The battle inside the Hollow Forge was chaos.
Vaskel moved faster now—fueled by the chain embedded in him. Each strike he made echoed with the sound of breaking glass. The Forge responded to his rage, lashing out with whips of energy and rune bursts.
Kael fought like a blade in motion—keeping the chains distracted, slicing through exposed conduits.
Lyssa unleashed flame after flame, scorching the outer rings and burning back the shadows.
Liora held the Forge's wards in place, blocking surges of soul-fire from consuming them.
And Riven—
Riven faced Vaskel alone.
Blade to blade.
Seal to chain.
"You are not your father," Vaskel hissed, bringing a massive chain down. "He died for nothing."
"I am every part of him," Riven roared, and met the blow head-on.
Wind exploded outward, shattering two rings.
The seventh circle began to pulse wildly.
Riven's Seal responded—fighting against it.
Flaring brighter.
And then—he reached forward.
Grabbed the chain buried in Vaskel's chest.
And pulled.
---
The Forge screamed.
Vaskel screamed.
And the chain snapped.
Vaskel collapsed.
The Forge began to collapse.
Not from explosion.
But from rejection.
The seventh circle flickered—then unwound. The binding spells failed. The magic destabilized.
Riven turned, bleeding, eyes wild.
"GET OUT!"
They fled the collapsing Forge as the chasm roared behind them.
Obsidian cracked. The canyon trembled. The sky turned violet with unleashed magic.
And behind them, the Hollow Forge died.
---
Hours later, under the broken stars, they sat in silence.
No cheers. No victory.
Just quiet.
Exhaustion.
And one more chain broken.
Liora looked up at Riven.
"What now?"
He looked toward the horizon.
"They'll come harder next time. With more than chains."
Kael smirked faintly. "Let them."
Lyssa met Riven's gaze.
"Then we start unbreaking the next link."
------
Lyssa met Riven's gaze.
"Then we start unbreaking the next link."
---
The fire crackled between them, casting wavering shadows on their dirt-caked faces. The smell of ash and ozone still clung to their clothes. No one spoke for a while.
Kael sat sharpening his blade with quiet deliberation. Not because he needed to. Because it gave his hands something to do—something normal.
Mira lay curled near Liora's pack, fast asleep, her breathing shallow but peaceful. The girl had held up longer than any of them expected.
Liora stared into the fire, fingers twined together tightly. "That Forge wasn't just creating Seals. It was… feeding on them."
Riven looked over. "Feeding?"
She nodded slowly. "Each incomplete Seal—each child—was used to strengthen the next. They weren't just experiments. They were ingredients."
Lyssa's lip curled in disgust. "So we weren't fighting a machine. We were dismantling a ritual."
Kael exhaled through his nose. "And I thought I'd seen enough horror for one lifetime."
Riven said nothing. His gaze had drifted upward, to the sky.
It was the same stars as always.
But tonight, they seemed… farther away.
---
Later, when the fire had burned low and the others slept, Riven stood on a ridge above the camp.
The wind moved his cloak like a whisper.
"Still awake, heir?" a voice purred in his mind.
Veyron.
Riven closed his eyes.
"I figured you'd show up."
"You've grown dramatic," the spirit mused. "That fight down there was glorious. All fire and blood and heroic declarations. You've really leaned into the part."
Riven didn't smile. "What do you want?"
"I just came to ask a question." Veyron's tone darkened. "Are you ready to stop pretending you're normal?"
Riven turned his face to the stars. "What do you mean?"
"You destroyed a Forge built by one of the Order's founding architects. You're unraveling rituals that have held for centuries. And now the other side knows exactly what you are."
"They've always known."
"No," Veyron said softly. "They guessed. Now they know."
Silence stretched between them.
Then Veyron added, "And they won't send Hollowbound next time. They'll send something worse."
---
Morning came heavy and gray.
Mira was the first to rise, nudging Riven's shoulder gently.
"There's something in the distance," she whispered.
He followed her to the edge of the ridge.
And saw it.
A pillar of light.
Faint, pale blue.
Rising in the east.
"It wasn't there yesterday," Mira said. "But I feel it. Like the Seals do."
Riven narrowed his eyes.
"It's a Beacon."
Liora joined them, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "I thought the Beacons were all destroyed after the fall of Velrath."
"They were," Riven said. "Which means someone just lit that one."
Kael grunted. "Or something."
Lyssa packed her gear without a word.
"Where there's a Beacon," she said, "there's a Vault."
Riven turned to the group, voice steady.
"Then that's where we go next."
---
Far away, in a marble hall beneath a blackened sky, a council of masked figures knelt around a shattered sealstone.
Blood pooled around the edges.
"She survived," one murmured.
"She broke the Forge," another hissed.
"She unbound the chain."
The tallest among them stepped forward, robes trailing behind like living shadows.
His mask bore no mouth. Only a crown of horns and a single eye etched at the center.
"The Heir moves faster than the stars foretold," he said. "Then we move faster still."
He lifted a crystal—one shaped like a small dagger.
"Send the Ashbound."
And the hall dimmed as the crystal turned black.
---