"There are names the world forgot—because to speak them was to summon extinction."— Scrolls of the Hollow King, Fragment I
They marched across a sea of glass.
What was once an ocean had been flash-frozen by time or something older—its waves now jagged mirrors reflecting dead stars. The map Cael found pointed here: the edge of the world, known only in whispers as The Shardsea.
Each step cracked the silence.
Elen, still shaken from the temple, gripped her cloak tighter.
"Tell me something true," she asked.
The Traveler paused.
"The Hollow King was never born."
"He was unwritten—a thought erased before the world could think it."
As the sun fell, they reached it.
A black citadel suspended upside-down, hanging in the sky like a tear that refused to fall. Ropes of shadow tied it to the heavens.
"That's where it ends," Cael whispered. "And maybe begins again."
Inside the Citadel of Echoes
The door was not a door—but a question.
A voice rang out in a hundred tongues:
"Who walks without name, without time, without truth?"
Cael stepped forward.
"I am the Memory of What Was Lost."
A crack split open in the air.
They entered.
Inside, time was broken.
Rooms looped into each other. A hallway ended before it began. A mirror showed a version of Elen who had burned the world already—smiling, alone, wearing a crown made of teeth.
"This place isn't real," she muttered.
"No," Cael said. "It's more than real. It's possibility."
The Traveler pressed forward.
"And it's feeding off us."
Suddenly, a voice echoed through the halls:
"He has returned. The Nameless. The Echo. The Hollow."
The walls bled ink.
And from the ceiling, he descended—the figure that had haunted Elen's dreams.
Clad in tattered regalia, faceless, but wearing a halo made of broken clocks.
"You came for the Heart?" the figure asked.
"No," the Traveler replied. "We came to end you."
The Hollow King laughed—a sound like glass weeping.
"But I am not a king…"
"…I am your shadow, Cael. I am the part of you that chose to forget."
The Truth of Cael
Flashes of memories surged through Cael.
A tower. A girl screaming. The Traveler dead at his feet. Elen burning the sky to save him.
And him—choosing to erase himself.
To be reborn fragment by fragment, so that the Hollow King would never take root.
"You were me," Cael said, stunned. "The part I sacrificed."
"I still remember the deal you made," the Hollow King whispered. "You gave up your soul to protect her. But what if I told you…"
"You chose wrong?"
Suddenly, the Hollow King surged forward.
His arm became a spiral of black flame, forming a weapon of anti-light.
Cael blocked it with the Shardblade, and the room erupted.
Screams twisted into wind.
Time shattered like pottery.
Elen screamed as a piece of the citadel fell toward her—but the Traveler caught it, bleeding, arm broken.
"We're not ready," he gasped. "We need the Heart—NOW!"
Cael turned.
"Then give it to me."
"Let me finish what I started."
Elen nodded.
She reached into her chest—into her dreammark—and pulled out something glowing.
The Heart.
A crystal formed from thousands of dreams, fears, and choices.
"Don't lose yourself again," she whispered.
Cael took it.
And in that moment—
He remembered everything.
Not just his life.
But every possible version of it.
And he screamed—
Not in pain.
But in fury.
"I AM THE ONE WHO WAS NEVER BORN—AND STILL I CHOSE THIS PATH!"
With one strike, he cleaved the Hollow King in half.
But as the body fell—it smiled.
"You kill me now…"
"But the Ending wakes."
Far above, the black and red stars aligned.
And in the skies, something blinked.
Not a god.
Not a world.
But a mind.
One older than time.
One dreaming still.