Three days.
That was how long Kael spent in the gray room, healing from wounds that should have killed him. Three days of drifting in and out of consciousness, of fever-dreams filled with his mother's empty eyes and the Hierophant's voice echoing through corridors of infinite darkness.
On the fourth day, Whisper threw him off a building.
"WHAT THE—"
Wind screamed past Kael's ears as he plummeted. The crystallized towers of the impossible city blurred around him—violet and black and colors that had no names, geometries that twisted as he fell past them. Far below, streets of obsidian waited to receive his body.
Use the power.
The thought rose from somewhere cold and calm inside him. The void in his chest stirred, reaching toward his panicking mind with tendrils of absolute stillness.
Bend space. Move yourself. It's the only way.
But the memory of Captain Vess's body falling in two pieces—
She's already dead. You'll be dead too if you don't—
Kael reached for the void.
It answered.
Reality flexed. One moment he was falling; the next, he stood on a balcony three stories above where he'd been dropped, his body having slipped sideways through dimensions that existed between moments. His legs buckled. He grabbed the railing to keep from collapsing.
And something fell away inside him.
Not a memory this time. Something else. Something he didn't notice losing until he tried to feel it and found only absence.
What did I lose? What did I—
"Adequate."
Whisper appeared beside him, stepping out of empty air with the casual ease of a man entering through a door. His silver mask was back in place, hiding whatever expressions his ruined face might show.
"You hesitated. Cost yourself almost a full second of falling time. If this had been combat, you'd be paste."
"You threw me off a building."
"Yes. And you survived. Congratulations." Whisper walked past him, heading for a doorway that opened onto a spiraling staircase. "Come. We have work to do."
Kael didn't move. "What did I lose?"
Whisper paused. "Excuse me?"
"Every time I use the power, something... disappears. First the smell of Mama's garden. Now something else. I can feel the hole, but I can't tell what used to fill it." Kael's hands shook. "What did I lose?"
For a long moment, Whisper was silent.
Then: "The feeling of sunlight on your skin."
"What?"
"You asked what you lost. That's the answer." Whisper's empty eyes met Kael's through the mask's openings. "You can still see sunlight. Still understand intellectually that it's warm. But the sensation—the physical experience of light touching your body—is gone. You'll never feel it again."
Kael stared at him. "How do you know?"
"Because I've walked this path longer than you've been alive." Whisper resumed walking. "Every Hollowed loses differently. The void takes what matters most to us, piece by piece. Memories. Emotions. Sensations. Eventually, identity itself."
"And you? What have you lost?"
Whisper didn't answer.
They descended the stairs in silence.
The city was called Veilholm.
Whisper explained it in fragments as they walked through streets that hurt Kael's eyes to look at directly. Once, millennia ago, this had been a place where Hollowed could exist without fear. A sanctuary built in the spaces between reality, hidden from both the empire and the Congregation.
"The Witnesses created it," Whisper said. "Before they were destroyed. Before the truth was buried."
"The truth about humanity coming from the void?"
"That's part of it." They passed a fountain that flowed upward, its water defying gravity to spiral into the bruised sky. "The complete truth is more complicated. And more dangerous."
"Tell me."
"Not yet. You're not ready."
"You keep saying that." Frustration sharpened Kael's voice. "You said Mama discovered something. That she died because of it. That I carry her memories, her proof. But I don't remember any of it."
"Because the memories are locked." Whisper stopped before a massive door of black iron, its surface covered in symbols that squirmed when Kael tried to focus on them. "Vara sealed them behind walls of void energy. They'll only unlock when you're powerful enough to survive receiving them."
"And if I never get powerful enough?"
"Then the Congregation wins. The truth stays buried. And everything your mother sacrificed was for nothing."
Whisper placed his palm against the door. The symbols flared—not with light, but with darkness, an anti-glow that made the surrounding shadows seem bright by comparison.
The door opened.
Beyond it lay a chamber that Kael's mind refused to fully process. The walls curved in directions that shouldn't exist. The floor was simultaneously flat and impossibly distant. And at the chamber's center stood a figure that made his void-touched arm scream with recognition.
It had been human once.
Now it was something else—a Remnant, but not like the mindless horrors that had attacked Thornwick. This one retained a shape, a presence, an intelligence that burned in eyes like dying stars. Its body was a sculpture of muscle and shadow, eight feet tall, with arms that ended in claws longer than Kael's forearm.
"What is that?"
"Your training partner." Whisper stepped aside, gesturing toward the chamber. "Her name was Lyessa. She Voided-tier six hundred years ago, but she refused to become a Remnant. Instead, she chose to anchor herself to this place. To exist as a guardian. A test."
The creature—Lyessa—turned its burning gaze toward Kael.
"Fragment." Her voice was like breaking stone. "You carry Vara's gift. Show me you are worthy of it."
She lunged.
Pain became Kael's teacher.
For hours—or days, or weeks, time moved strangely in Veilholm—he fought Lyessa in that impossible chamber. She never killed him. She came close, over and over, her claws opening wounds that should have been fatal, but Whisper was always there at the last moment to pull him back from the edge.
And each time Kael used the void to survive, he lost something else.
The taste of bread. The sound of his own heartbeat. The memory of the first book he'd ever read.
Small things. Meaningless things.
Except they weren't meaningless. They were him—pieces of his identity stripped away one by one, leaving hollow spaces that the void eagerly filled.
"You're thinking of it wrong." Whisper's voice cut through the fog of exhaustion after another failed bout. Kael lay on the chamber floor, bleeding from a dozen wounds, while Lyessa waited patiently for him to rise. "You see the losses as theft. As punishment. But they're not."
"Then what are they?"
"Payment." Whisper crouched beside him, those empty eyes studying his face. "The void doesn't take from you. It trades with you. Power for essence. Ability for identity. Every Hollowed makes this exchange, consciously or not."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"No. It's supposed to make you choose carefully." Whisper stood. "Right now, you're using your power desperately, reactively. Spending pieces of yourself without thinking about what you're buying. That's how Hollowed become Remnants—they trade everything away in a panic and wake up one day with nothing left."
"So what am I supposed to do? Just die instead of defending myself?"
"You're supposed to fight smarter. Use less power more precisely. And understand that every manifestation is a choice—a piece of yourself you're deliberately sacrificing for a specific outcome."
Kael pushed himself to his elbows. His entire body screamed in protest. "Easy to say when you're not the one getting shredded by an ancient monster."
"I've been shredded by worse." Something flickered in Whisper's voice—something that might have been memory, or might have been regret. "Your mother used to say the same thing. Before she learned."
"Learned what?"
Whisper was silent for a moment.
Then: "That the void takes what we love because love is what makes us powerful. Our connections to people, to places, to sensations—those are the anchors that keep us human. And human souls contain more void energy than any other source in existence."
"So we're... batteries?"
"In a sense. The Congregation believes that humanity was created specifically to store void energy. That we're vessels designed to be harvested." Whisper's empty eyes met Kael's. "Your mother believed something different. She believed we were created to transform void energy. To take the darkness and make it into something new."
"What kind of something new?"
"That's what's locked in your memories. The answer she died to protect."
Before Kael could respond, Lyessa moved.
"ENOUGH TALK."
Her claws descended.
And this time, Kael didn't reach for the void blindly.
He chose.
The memory he sacrificed was his first day in Thornwick.
Not the facts of it—those remained, clinical and distant. He knew he'd arrived on a merchant's cart, half-starved and running from shadows. He knew he'd collapsed in an alley. He knew Sera had found him.
But the feeling of that day—the exhaustion, the fear, the desperate hope that maybe he'd finally found somewhere safe—vanished like smoke in wind.
In exchange, he bought something precise.
Not a desperate spatial jump. Not a panicked teleportation. Instead, Kael bent the space around Lyessa's descending claw, creating a fold in reality that redirected her strike three feet to his left.
She missed.
And for just an instant, her burning eyes widened with something that might have been surprise.
Kael rolled to his feet. His body still ached, his wounds still bled, but his mind was clear—clearer than it had been since the awakening. He could feel the void inside him now, not as a sleeping monster but as a tool. A weapon waiting to be wielded.
I can control this. I can choose what I lose. I can make the trades worthwhile.
"Better." Lyessa's voice held something new. Respect? Approval? "You are learning to see the path."
"The path?"
"The Hollow Path is not about becoming nothing." She circled him slowly, claws clicking against the impossible floor. "It is about choosing what to become. Every piece you sacrifice creates space for something else. The question is whether you will fill that space with void—or with purpose."
"Vara understood this." Whisper stepped forward, and Kael noticed something strange—a slight hesitation in his movements, a tension in his shoulders that hadn't been there before. "She was the first Hollowed in a thousand years to reach Voided-tier without losing her mind. Because she didn't trade pieces of herself randomly. She traded them strategically."
"For what?"
"For you." Whisper's voice was flat. "For the power to split her soul and give you half. For the strength to do what no other Hollowed had ever done."
She became a monster so I could stay human.
The realization hit Kael like a physical blow.
Every memory she lost, every emotion she sacrificed—it was all to protect me. To give me a chance.
And I've been running from her gift ever since.
He looked down at his left arm—still black, still pulsing with void energy, still other. But for the first time since the awakening, he didn't see it as a curse.
He saw it as a responsibility.
"Teach me," he said. "Teach me everything."
Whisper tilted his head. "You understand what that means? The training will only accelerate your losses. By the time you're ready to face the Congregation, you'll have sacrificed things you can't imagine living without."
"I know."
"And if you become a Remnant? If you lose yourself completely?"
Kael met those empty eyes without flinching. "Then you'll kill me before I hurt anyone. That's what Mama would have wanted."
For a long moment, Whisper was motionless.
Then, slowly, he removed his silver mask.
His face beneath was young—too young for the ancient exhaustion in his expression. Brown hair fell across features that might have been handsome before the void had hollowed them out. His eyes were empty, yes, but now Kael saw something else in them.
Grief.
"She would have wanted you to live," Whisper said quietly. "She would have wanted you to be happy. Instead, she got this." He gestured at the chamber, at Lyessa, at the nightmare city outside. "A child soldier in a war that should have ended millennia ago."
"Did you love her?"
The question hung in the air between them.
"Yes." Whisper's voice cracked on the word. "And she loved me. Once. Before the path took everything that made love possible."
"She still had enough love to save me."
"That's because you were different. You weren't just her son—you were the piece of her soul she chose to protect. The part of herself she refused to let the void touch." Whisper turned away, replacing his mask. "That's what makes you valuable, Fragment. And that's what makes you dangerous."
Before Kael could ask what he meant, the chamber's walls flickered.
Lyessa went still, her burning eyes fixing on something beyond the visible. "Someone approaches the city. Through the old paths."
Whisper's posture shifted instantly—relaxed calm replaced by coiled tension. "Who?"
"Human. Female. Touched-tier only. She carries... a token. One of the old ones." Lyessa's voice held confusion. "It bears your mark, Whisper."
Kael's heart clenched.
He knew who it was before Whisper spoke.
"Bring her in."
Sera looked like death.
Her red hair was matted with blood and ash. Her clothes were torn, burned in places, soaked in substances Kael didn't want to identify. A wound on her left arm had been crudely bandaged with strips of her own shirt, and she limped as she walked.
But her eyes were the same. Sharp. Calculating. Familiar.
She stopped three feet from Kael, swaying slightly on her feet. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then: "You look terrible."
Kael almost laughed. "You should see yourself."
"I have. There's a reason I'm here instead of somewhere with actual medical care." Her gaze flickered to Whisper. "He gave me this years ago. Said if I ever needed sanctuary, I could use it to find my way here."
"You know each other?"
"Everyone knows Whisper." Sera's voice was flat. "He's the oldest living Hollowed. The only Voided-tier who ever escaped the Congregation's control. And according to my superiors, the most dangerous individual in the known world."
Whisper inclined his head. "Flattering, if somewhat inaccurate. I'm only the second most dangerous. Your organization's founder holds the top position."
Sera flinched. Barely visible, but Kael caught it.
"What organization?" he asked. "You mentioned it in Thornwick. You said you were sent to find me."
"The Covenant of the Severed." Sera's eyes met his, and for once, there was no calculation in them. Just exhaustion. "We're Hollowed who rejected both the Congregation and the Wardens. We believe there's a third path—a way to use the void without losing ourselves completely."
"And you were watching me because...?"
"Because you're Vara Ashford's son. Because the Fragment she created might be the key to everything we've been searching for." Sera swayed again, and this time she had to grab a nearby pillar to stay upright. "I was supposed to bring you in. Study you. Find out what your mother discovered."
"But instead you tried to kill me."
"I tried to give you a quick death." Her voice hardened. "The Hierophant was coming. The Wardens were going to vivisect you. My knife would have been mercy compared to either of those fates."
"How noble."
"I'm not claiming nobility." Sera pushed off the pillar, standing straight despite the obvious pain it caused her. "I'm claiming pragmatism. The same pragmatism that brought me here instead of back to my superiors."
Whisper stepped forward. "Explain."
"The Covenant has been compromised." Sera's voice dropped. "Three days ago, Congregation agents infiltrated our primary sanctuary. Twelve of our highest-tier members were killed. Our Founder went missing. And before the attack, our intelligence division received word that you—" she pointed at Kael "—awakened exactly as predicted."
"Predicted by whom?"
"By the Congregation itself. They knew you would awaken in Thornwick. They knew the Hierophant would come. They knew everything." Sera's eyes blazed with frustration. "We've been played. All of us. The Congregation wanted you to awaken under threat because newly-manifested Hollowed form stronger connections to the void through trauma."
"They attacked my home... to make me more powerful?"
"To accelerate your development. To force you onto the Hollow Path faster than you would have gone naturally." Sera shook her head. "I don't understand all of it—that's above my clearance. But I know this: whatever your mother hid inside you, whatever memories are locked away... the Congregation is terrified of them."
"Terrified enough to destroy a Covenant sanctuary?"
"Terrified enough to do worse." Sera reached into a pouch at her belt and withdrew something small—a sphere of crystallized void, black as absolute night. "This was recovered from the attack. It's a Message Stone, encoded by our Founder before she disappeared."
She held it out to Kael.
"It's addressed to you."
The stone was cold.
Not physically—Kael couldn't feel temperature in his left hand anymore—but essentially cold, radiating an absence of warmth that seeped into his soul. He held it carefully, turning it in his fingers, watching the way light seemed to fall into its surface and vanish.
"How do I access it?"
"Feed it void energy." Whisper's voice was tense. "But be warned—Message Stones extract payment. Whatever memory it costs you, you won't get to choose."
Kael hesitated. The last thing he wanted was to lose another piece of himself to something he didn't control.
But if this held answers—if this could explain what his mother had discovered, what the Congregation feared—
He reached for the void.
Take something small, he thought desperately. Something I won't miss. Please.
The stone drank his offering.
And in exchange, Kael lost the sound of his mother's voice.
Not the memory of her speaking—he could still remember conversations, still recall the words she'd said. But the actual sound—the timbre, the warmth, the unique music of her voice—was gone. When he tried to hear her in his mind, there was only silence.
Grief hit him like a hammer to the chest.
No. No, not that. Anything but that.
But it was too late. The trade was made. And the stone was activating.
Light—or something like light—poured from the sphere, coalescing into a figure that stood before Kael like a ghost made of shadows. A woman, middle-aged, with iron-gray hair and eyes that burned with the same emptiness as Whisper's.
But her face was kind. Scarred, weary, hardened by decades of war—but kind.
"Kael Ashford." Her voice echoed strangely, words coming from everywhere and nowhere. "If you're hearing this, the worst has happened. The Congregation has moved against us, and I have failed to protect what matters."
Sera made a small sound. Kael didn't look away from the projection.
"My name is Thessaly Morn. I founded the Covenant of the Severed thirty years ago, after your mother saved my life. She told me about you—about the Fragment she created, about the truth she died protecting. She made me promise to find you when the time came."
The projection flickered.
"But I've been compromised. I'm not sure how. I'm not sure by whom. All I know is that everything I've built has been corrupted from within, and I cannot trust anyone in my organization except one person."
The projection's eyes seemed to focus directly on Kael.
"Sera Vance was the only agent I assigned to you directly. No one else in the Covenant knows her true mission. If she has brought you this message, it means she has chosen you over her handlers—and that choice means she can be trusted."
Kael's gaze snapped to Sera. Her face was pale, her expression unreadable.
"Listen carefully, Fragment. The Congregation is coming for you, and they will not stop. But Whisper cannot protect you forever—his path is almost complete. Soon, he will have nothing left to trade. Nothing left to sacrifice. And when that happens, he will become something terrible."
The projection looked toward where Whisper stood. Something passed between them—recognition, sorrow, acceptance.
"The only way to survive is to unlock the memories your mother sealed inside you. And the only way to do that is to reach Shattered-tier before the Congregation finds you."
Kael's blood ran cold.
Shattered-tier. The level just below Voided. The level where Hollowed lost major aspects of themselves—entire relationships, entire senses, entire dimensions of experience.
"I know what I'm asking. I know the cost. But your mother believed it was worth paying. She believed you could do what no other Hollowed has ever done: reach the threshold of Remnant and come back."
The projection began to fade.
"Trust Sera. Trust Whisper while you can. And when the time comes—when you finally remember what she discovered—you'll understand why all of this was necessary."
"Good luck, Fragment. The world is depending on you."
The light died.
The stone crumbled to dust in Kael's palm.
Silence filled the chamber.
Kael stared at the space where the projection had been, his mind racing. Shattered-tier. His mother's memories. A conspiracy that spanned the entire Covenant. And Whisper—the only ally he had in this nightmare—was apparently running out of time.
"Is it true?" He turned to face the masked man. "Are you... ending?"
Whisper didn't answer immediately.
"The Hollow Path has a terminus," he said finally. "A point where there's nothing left to trade. Most Hollowed become Remnants long before they reach it. I've been... more careful. More strategic. But yes. I'm close to the end."
"How close?"
"Close enough that I was prepared to spend what I had left killing the Hierophant if necessary." Whisper's voice was matter-of-fact. "Close enough that training you may cost me everything I have remaining."
"Then why help me at all?"
"Because your mother asked me to. Because I made her a promise." Whisper removed his mask again, and Kael saw something in his empty eyes that hadn't been there before.
Hope.
"And because if you can really do what Thessaly claims—if you can reach the threshold and come back—then maybe I can too."
The words hung in the air between them.
Kael looked at Sera—the spy who had betrayed him, the friend who had tried to kill him, the agent who had apparently been loyal all along. She met his gaze without flinching.
"I don't expect you to trust me," she said. "I don't deserve it. But I'm here. And I'll do whatever it takes to help you survive."
"Why?"
"Because Thessaly saved me from the void when I was twelve years old. Because I owe her everything." Sera's voice cracked. "And because you're the only chance any of us have left."
Kael closed his eyes.
His mother's voice was gone. He would never hear it again, not even in memory. The price of a single message, a single moment of clarity.
How much more will I have to pay before this is over?
But he already knew the answer.
Everything. I'll have to pay everything.
He opened his eyes.
"Teach me," he said to Whisper. "Push me harder. Faster. I'll reach Shattered-tier, unlock my mother's memories, and find out what the Congregation is so afraid of."
"And if you lose yourself along the way?"
Kael's left arm pulsed with void energy. The blackness had spread past his shoulder now, creeping toward his collarbone. Soon it would reach his chest. His heart.
"Then at least I'll have tried."
Whisper nodded slowly.
"Training resumes at dawn. Both of you—rest while you can." He turned toward the chamber's exit. "Tomorrow, we begin your descent."
That night, Kael dreamed of his mother.
Not the nightmare he'd had for nine years—not the smile stretching wrong, the eyes emptying, the darkness pouring through. This dream was different.
She stood in a field of flowers that couldn't exist, colors that had no names blooming around her like prayers made visible. Her eyes were whole. Her smile was real. And when she spoke, he couldn't hear the words—couldn't hear anything at all—but somehow he understood them anyway.
I'm proud of you.
I'm sorry for what's coming.
And I'll be waiting, when you're ready to remember.
He woke with tears on his cheeks and an ache in his chest where her voice used to live.
And somewhere in the depths of Veilholm, something ancient stirred.
Something that had been sleeping for a very long time.
Something that recognized the taste of a Fragment finally beginning to ripen.
[END OF CHAPTER THREE]