Aelindra felt the hollow turn its attention fully toward her.
Not like a gaze.
Like a weight shifting.
The air thickened, not with pressure, but with consideration, as if the cavern itself were adjusting how it held her. The gold beneath her skin responded instinctively, brightening just enough to outline her fingers against the dark. She did not pull her hands back. She did not clench them.
She remembered Arveth's warning.
Don't fight it.
So she didn't.
She breathed.
The hollow breathed with her.
That was when fear brushed her again.
Not sharp. Not consuming. A distant echo, like stepping into a place where she remembered once being afraid, without recalling why. The sensation rolled through her chest and faded, leaving behind a tight, focused awareness instead.
This place was amplifying what already existed.
And what existed in her was not panic.
It was recognition without context.
The depression at the chamber's center deepened, not physically, but perceptually. The space above it warped faintly, as though something beneath was pressing upward, testing the boundary between presence and emergence.
Aelindra swallowed.
"I won't step forward unless I understand what's being asked," she said quietly.
Her voice did not echo.
It was absorbed.
The sigils beneath her boots pulsed once in response.
Not agreement.
Acknowledgment.
Severin shifted beside her. She felt it more than saw it, the subtle change in his posture, the way his shoulder aligned with hers, steady and deliberate. The Crownfire stirred again, but it did not flare. It watched. It waited.
Good, she thought. Stay quiet.
The hollow did not want power shouted at it.
It wanted restraint.
Arveth exhaled slowly behind them. "This chamber was not built to bind," he said, voice careful, reverent. "It was built to remember."
Aelindra's chest tightened.
"Remember what?" Mira asked softly.
Arveth hesitated.
"Those who could walk between thresholds without being consumed by them."
The words settled into Aelindra's bones with a strange, resonant weight.
She had never thought of herself as someone who walked between things. She healed. She mended. She endured. She survived where others didn't.
That had always felt…incidental.
Now the hollow pulsed again, slower this time, and something brushed against the edge of her awareness.
Not a voice.
A shape of knowing.
Images flickered behind her eyes, too fast to grasp fully. Stone halls lit by gold-veined light. Figures standing in circles like this one, hands open, palms glowing faintly. A sensation of standing at the edge of something vast and choosing not to cross it.
Her knees weakened.
Severin's hand closed around her wrist immediately, firm but not restraining.
"I've got you," he murmured.
The gold beneath her skin steadied.
She nodded once, grateful, then focused forward again.
"I'm not here to replace anything," she said to the hollow. "And I won't be used as a conduit."
The chamber hummed.
Not displeased.
Curious.
The depression darkened further, and for the first time, she felt depth respond, layers of presence stacked beneath the stone like sedimented memory. Not one entity.
Many.
All asleep.
All listening.
Arveth went pale.
"This is not a single remnant," he whispered. "It's a convergence. A memory vault."
Caelan let out a breath. "You're saying the mountain keeps…records?"
"In a manner of speaking," Arveth said. "Living ones."
Aelindra felt something shift then, not below, but within her. A tightening beneath her sternum. Not fear.
Recognition sharpening into awareness.
The hollow was not asking her to descend.
It was asking her to stand.
She took one measured step forward.
The sigils flared brighter.
Severin's breath hitched, the Crownfire reacting sharply, but still, it did not pull. It did not reach.
It yielded.
"That's it," Aelindra said softly, understanding settling slowly, carefully, like snow. "You don't want me inside you."
The hollow pulsed.
Agreement.
"You want me anchored."
The gold in her palms surged, then settled into a steady glow that spread faintly along the stone at her feet. The chamber responded, its light aligning, not amplifying, not draining.
Balancing.
Arveth sank slowly to one knee.
"This…this is why the hollow was sealed," he said hoarsely. "Not to imprison what was here. But to wait."
"To wait for what?" Mira asked.
Aelindra exhaled.
"For someone who wouldn't take from it," she said. "And wouldn't be taken by it either."
The depression stilled.
For the first time since they fell, the hollow's awareness relaxed.
Severin stared at her, something unreadable in his expression, relief braided tightly with fear. "Ael," he said quietly, "tell me you're not bound to this place."
She met his gaze.
"I'm not bound," she said honestly. "But I am…recognized."
The difference mattered.
She turned back toward the hollow, palms still open.
"I won't stay," she said. "But I will remember you. And I won't let what sleeps here be misused."
The presence below shifted again, slow and vast.
Acceptance.
The gold beneath her skin dimmed, retreating, not vanishing, but folding inward, like embers banked for later. The sigils faded with it, their light withdrawing into the stone.
The chamber exhaled.
Aelindra's knees finally trembled as the weight lifted. Severin caught her immediately, steadying her without pulling her away.
"You did it," he murmured.
She shook her head faintly. "No. I listened."
Arveth rose unsteadily to his feet. "We need to move," he said. "Now that it knows us, other things may too."
As if summoned by his words, the far edges of the chamber stirred, subtle shifts in shadow where the hollow's protection thinned.
Aelindra straightened, fatigue settling deep in her bones.
"Then we go," she said. "Carefully."
She glanced once more into the darkened depression, not with fear, but with something a bit more like respect.
The hollow did not follow.
But it remembered.
And somewhere deep beneath the Umbral Range, ancient memory settled into a new configuration, one that accounted not just for a prince with burning blood…
…but for a woman who could stand at the edge of power and refuse to be consumed by it.
And that, the hollow decided, changed everything.