"The worst part wasn't the monsters.It was realizing we wouldn't leave this place the same."
You don't notice how heavy a place is until you're almost free of it.
The Hollow had been breathing against our skin for so long, I thought I'd stopped noticing it. The pulsing walls, the rot-veined fog, the constant hum in the bones beneath our feet. All of it had become part of the rhythm. Normal.
But when we stepped into the Edge?
Everything stopped.
No whispers.
No sound.
No air movement.
Just stillness.
Like the Hollow had exhaled one last time, and now it was waiting—for us to leave… or for us to turn back.
We stood there for a while, Violet and I.
The sky above was the color of fading bruises—twilight tones stretched across a torn horizon, broken only by collapsed ruins and rust-red haze. This place was wider than I expected. Less claustrophobic. But not more alive.
Just…
Lonely.
We'd made it.
Almost.
And I didn't know how to feel.
"This used to be a city," Violet said quietly, kneeling beside a crumbling wall covered in claw marks and scorched writing. "Long before the Hollow took it."
I didn't respond.
She wasn't really talking to me.
We made camp beneath the remains of a bridge—one that hung crooked over a ravine full of bones. Not corpses. Not demon remains.
Bones.
Long since picked clean, sun-bleached under a sky that never shined.
I sat with my back to a pillar that looked like it had once held lights. It hummed now, faintly, as if trying to remember its old purpose.
Violet didn't sit.She paced.
Like she was searching for something she couldn't name.
I watched her, quietly sharpening my blade. The silence between us wasn't tense—it was full.
Loaded.
We'd survived things in that Hollow I still hadn't processed.Things that still clawed at the back of my skull when I closed my eyes too long.
But now that we were here…
Now that we were at the edge...
There was space to feel again.
And that scared me more than anything we'd killed.
We spent the next few days moving through the ruins—scavenging supplies, mapping the lay of the land. There were no new demons here. Not yet.
Just shadows of what had come before.
We found half-buried monuments, some still warm to the touch. Buildings carved into the cliffsides, sealed off with glyphs neither of us dared touch. Roads melted into slag. The bones of vehicles twisted into serpentine shapes.
Violet would occasionally stop and draw them in her Interlogue—eyes distant, lips tight, like she was cataloging ghosts.
She didn't ask me how I was doing.
I didn't ask her either.
At night, we'd lie in silence.She'd face the wall.
I'd face the dark.
And even with no beasts stalking us, I didn't sleep.
It wasn't until the fifth day that something shifted.
We found a tunnel buried beneath the ruin of what looked like an old military checkpoint. It led deep underground, carved into the rock like it had been etched by something bigger than man.
A hatch, sealed by two circular locks and a vein of Interlogue code.
Violet placed her hand on it—and the glyphs pulsed.
She froze.
Then slowly… pulled her hand away.
"You okay?" I asked.
She nodded.But she didn't look at me.
Instead, she opened her Interlogue and scrolled through a list of unread pings.
I walked up beside her, blade still sheathed.
"What is it?"
Her eyes scanned something.Paused.Read it again.
Then she took a slow breath—deep. Controlled.
"Scarlett," she said."I think I know where she is."
That was the first time I felt something cold bite through the haze.
Scarlett.
We hadn't spoken her name in weeks.
Violet looked at me then—really looked at me—and I knew.
I knew before she said it.
I just didn't want to believe it.
"I have to go."
I blinked.
Felt the words crack through my spine.
"What?"
She closed the Interlogue gently, the screen dimming in her palm.
"The signal's recent. Strong. I don't know how long it'll last."
"You want to leave? Now?""We're almost out, Violet. We're this close—"
"And I might not get another chance to find her."
Her voice didn't rise.It didn't break.
But mine did.
"So what—what, you're just walking away? After everything we just—"
"I'm not walking away from you.""I'm walking toward her."
I turned away from her.
Because I didn't know what would happen if I kept looking at her face.
My hands curled into fists.
"You're going to get yourself killed out there."
"Maybe."
"And you're okay with that?"
Silence.
Then:
"If it brings her home…"
I didn't move.
Couldn't.
Felt like my ribs were locked in place.
I thought we'd made it to the other side together.
And maybe we had.
But surviving the Hollow didn't mean we'd survive what came next side by side.
She walked up beside me, resting a hand on my shoulder.
I didn't look at her.
"You saved me back there," she said."In more ways than I can ever say."
She paused.
"Now let me do the same—for someone else."
I didn't remember nodding.
But I must've.
Because the next moment, she was hugging me.
Tight.
Then gone.
Just like that.
I watched her vanish into the haze.
Her silhouette a smear of violet against the red horizon.
And for the first time since I woke up in that forest, I felt…
alone.
We'd made it to the edge.
But I wasn't ready to cross it yet.
Not without her.
So I stayed one more night beneath the ruined bridge.
Alone.
Listening to the wind.
And wondering if I'd ever see her again.
"If I do," I whispered to the dark,"I swear I won't let go next time."
It took me a full day to realize I hadn't spoken aloud since she left.
Another half-day to realize I hadn't breathed right either.
The Hollow was behind me.The Underground somewhere ahead.
But I was standing at the edge like my body didn't know what direction was forward anymore.
The longer I stayed under that shattered bridge, the worse it got.
I'd trained myself to listen—always.The whispers in the Hollow.The rhythm of my own breath.The pulse of Essence coiled in my spine.
But now?
Now the silence didn't feel earned.
It felt like a punishment.
I tried to call my Essence forward.
Nothing came.
The glow didn't flare.The rhythm didn't rise.It just… stuttered.
Like it didn't recognize me anymore.
I thought about Violet.
How she walked away like it hurt her, but not enough to stop her.
How she didn't ask me to come with her.
How I didn't ask her to stay.
"Stupid."
That's what I muttered to myself. Over and over.
Stupid for thinking the edge of the Hollow was the end of anything.
Stupid for thinking I was strong enough to pull her through and still hold her hand.
When night hit, I tried to meditate.Tried to draw my breath deep, anchor my soul to something steady.
But all I felt was drift.
Like I was sitting at the bottom of a river, watching my own body float away from me.
I kept seeing her face.
Not the one that left.
The one from the shrine.Screaming.Broken.Calling for me through the void.
And now I wasn't there.
The air got colder.The sky dimmer.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt small again.
Not just tired. Not just wounded.
Empty.
That night, I had no dreams.But when I woke, my blade was shaking in its sheath.
I hadn't touched it.
I walked.
Not toward the Underground.
Not toward anything.
Just… away.
Feet dragging through scorched gravel, mind folding in on itself.
I stopped eating.Stopped checking the my surroundings then.
Stopped caring.
My Essence started whispering things I didn't want to hear.
You're weak.
She left because you couldn't protect her.
You're not a weapon.
You're a reminder.
A relic of something long broken and never mended.
By the time the ground began to change beneath my boots—stone turning to molten dust, cracks glowing orange beneath layers of volcanic ash—
I didn't feel dread.
I didn't feel anything.
I'd entered the Mortar Zone without realizing it.
A no-man's land.
A place the Dracus hit with daily airstrikes, pulse-bombs, and seismic eruptions to scorch the crossing routes and bury anyone stupid enough to survive the Hollow.
I was one of those people now.
The sky above was bruised black—constant thunder, even with no clouds.
The sound of jets ripping holes in the air overhead.
The distant shriek of missiles vaporizing stone ridges half a mile away.
Every few hours, the sky would flash white—and a new crater would be carved into the terrain by something fired from orbit.
I was moving with a limp.
Couldn't remember where I got it.
Couldn't remember much of anything that mattered.
Except the way she said goodbye.
Not like she meant to hurt me.
Just like she had no other choice.
Every time I tried to focus, my senses dulled.
I barely heard the first demon that leapt at me from beneath a slag mound.
It cut me across the ribs before I even reacted.
I killed it, sure.
But sloppily.
Not like me.
Not like the warrior who survived the shrine, the spiderborn, the skinwalkers.
This version of me?
He was tired.
I made it to a plateau that overlooked the next ridge.
I sat there for hours.
Bombs rained down somewhere in the distance.
The wind carried screams that might've just been metal howling through tunnels.
And I whispered something without meaning to.
"I miss her."
It wasn't just Violet.
It was Nyxia.
It was who I used to be before all this.
Before the forest. Before the Hollow. Before death became the only constant rhythm I understood.
I wasn't crying.
But my hands were shaking.
And I could feel it—that tipping point.
Where a soul either fractures…or starts to burn again.
And I didn't know which one I was about to become.