Chapter 7 – The Hunger of the Hollow Heart
Narrator: Lei
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It started with a scent.
Not decay. Not burning. Not even dust.
But a void. The absence of sensation. As if something had devoured the very idea of presence.
We didn't find it on a map, nor in any of the dimensional scrolls guarded by the Oracle libraries of the Golden Sect. No coordinates, no gates, no chants could summon it.
Yet the whisper came:
To find the Ring of Devourer, one must forget the path that leads to it.
So we walked—through storms of misdirection, through ruins that erased footsteps after we passed, and finally, we arrived at what the ancients called:
The Hollow Heart.
It wasn't a place. It was an absence. A non-location. The world didn't bend around it. It simply stopped existing.
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The Power System – Soulframes and the Rings
Our world isn't built on nations, empires, or even history.
It is built on the remnants of five primordial artifacts, created in the era before Rebirth began. Each Ring governs an ancient law of reality.
These Rings are not tools. They are fragments of conscious will—each containing a sentience, a hunger, a rule.
The Five Rings:
1. Ring of Motion – Master of kinetic truth. Allows users to manipulate momentum, inertia, and velocity. Mine.
2. Ring of Law – Governs structure, sequence, and rule-binding across dimensions. Rui's current inheritance.
3. Ring of Devourer – A paradox: consumes energy, knowledge, and essence to transmute it into strength or nothingness.
4. Ring of Silence – Still hidden. It is said to govern the threshold between thought and voice, between vibration and emptiness.
5. Ring of Dream – Unstable. A Ring of manifestation and chaos. Said to infect time itself.
Soulframes – The Layers of Power
Every reincarnated bearer awakens abilities through their Soulframe:
Surface Flow – Basic activation of Ring-bound powers.
Pulse Layer – Emotional tuning that amplifies or distorts power.
Echo Tier – Accesses ancestral memory techniques from past reincarnations.
Fracture State – Wields damaged parts of the soul, unlocking unstable but powerful transformations.
Ascendant Thread – Full synchronization with the Ring's original will.
Each Ringholder's evolution through these stages reflects their inner journey. But the more power you claim, the more fractured your soul becomes.
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Entering the Hollow Heart
At the threshold, we were asked to pay a toll—not of coin, but of memory.
Rui chose to give up the memory of our mother's laughter.
I surrendered the identity of my first true friend.
And just like that—they ceased to exist in our minds.
The gate opened not with sound, but with forgetting.
As we stepped through, the very air changed. Not because it grew thicker or colder—but because we could no longer remember what air was supposed to feel like.
The Hollow Heart was a prison of un-being.
Walls flickered in and out of existence. Paintings depicted moments we never lived. Voices echoed, but only said things we never wanted to hear.
That's when we saw it.
A humanoid silhouette—tall, slender, faceless. Drifting like a shadow wearing a robe.
It mirrored us. Two sets of eyes. Two rings embedded in its chest. One cracked.
The Hollowed Echo.
It wasn't alive. It wasn't dead. It was what remained when a soul had been eaten and rebuilt over and over, until identity itself broke.
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Battle: Starvation of Self
When it attacked, it didn't use fists or weapons.
It attacked memory.
Rui fell first. His eyes glazed over. His voice called me "Stranger."
Then it touched me—and I forgot why I carried the Ring of Motion.
Suddenly, we were children again. Lost. Powerless.
I found myself back in the courtyard of our first monastery. My master stood tall, voice sharp:
> "You ask too many questions, Lei. Truth is not for children."
I believed him. Again.
But a sliver of defiance flickered. My body remembered something my mind had lost.
I bit my thumb. Blood.
Pain anchors the soul.
My Soulframe cracked.
A sliver of soul, once sealed, now pulsed with heat.
Fracture State: awakened.
I could feel the momentum of past selves surging into my body—every version of me that had fought, lost, died. All channeling into now.
My feet ignited with force. I dashed forward—each step borrowing speed from potential futures.
My fist slammed into the Hollowed Echo. Cracks spread like veins of glass. But it didn't shatter.
Because it wasn't an enemy. It was a mirror.
To destroy it… we had to remember and accept who we were—even the broken parts.
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Rui's Awakening
Rui staggered beside me, tears in his eyes.
"I remember now," he whispered. "In one life, I enforced the Codes of Tyranny. I sentenced innocents. In another, I ruled a city and watched it fall for pride."
I nodded.
"I was a coward. I ran every time things got hard. I left you behind more than once."
We stood together, facing the Echo.
"We accept you," we said—not as a spell, but as a truth.
And the Echo collapsed.
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The Ring of Devourer
From the remains, a flicker of red-gold light rose—a ring jagged like a jawbone, pulsing like a heartbeat.
It didn't hover.
It growled.
And it chose Rui.
He collapsed, screaming, as the second Ring carved itself into his soulframe.
His aura surged—both structured and ravenous.
His eyes changed. Gold around the iris. Pupils like vertical slits.
He was still Rui… but less human. More purposeful.
The Ring of Devourer had begun rewriting him.
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A New Threat Awakens
As we limped out of the Hollow Heart, a gust of memory surged behind us—screams, cities, names we didn't recognize.
But one message echoed in both our minds:
> "The others are stirring. Not all Ringbearers seek balance."
Enemies were awakening.
We weren't alone anymore.