The axe came low, fast, and wide—like a promise broken mid-swing.
I ducked beneath its arc, the wind of it brushing my cheek with death's whisper.
The Raider's iron helm caught the torchlight, scattering fire across the dark like shattered stars.
I pivoted, boots grinding ash and grit beneath me, and let my curved blade sing its answer.
Sching—a clean slash across his leather cuirass, parting the straps like old rope.
He reeled, breath rattling behind his helm, and I stepped in—firm, unforgiving—plunging my blade downward in a spiral arc.
Steel met wood and bone with a sound like thunder cracking through a drumline.
His shield split down to the elbow, the force sending him sprawling backward, blood slicking his gauntlet as he scrabbled to rise.
His curses were choked, bitter, seasoned with fear.
All around me, the Twilight Gate pulsed with ward-light, casting the ruin in hues of molten amber and deep-rooted green.
The stone arch stood half-devoured by vine and time, but it held—a beacon defiant in the dark. Our formation flickered at the edges.
We were holding, but just barely.
Smoke curled on the wind.
I tasted the ghost of fire and remembered the first time I swore to stand here—to be a blade between the Hollow and the void.
Hold fast, I told myself, pressing forward through the smoke and din.
For the Hollow.
For every ember that dares to burn against the dark.
Lyra leapt onto the shattered rampart, bloomsteel blade a radiant blur in her hands.
Her landing was a whisper against the groaning wood—balanced, fluid, deadly.
Below her, three Raiders surged through the wreckage like wolves in formation, flails spinning in unison, each chain slicing the air with cruel rhythm.
The first flail snapped toward her ribs, a blur of rusted iron and fury.
She turned sideways, breath held, letting the weapon kiss the hem of her tunic.
Then she rose, blade slicing horizontally—tang!—severing the chain mid-spin.
The iron ball whipped away, lost to the dark.
No time.
She twisted, dropping her stance low, and drove her blade deep into the thigh of the second attacker. Blood flowered in a sudden burst, soaking leather and linen alike.
He crumpled with a groan, his flail falling silent.
The third Raider roared, swinging wild in retaliation.
Lyra pivoted, reversed her grip, and drove the pommel of her sword squarely into his chest. Thwack.
His breath fled him in a rush.
He stumbled backward, arms windmilling, and vanished into the rubble.
She crouched then—heart pounding, breath a mist in the cool night air.
Her eyes swept the battlefield.
Across the gate, she heard Kaien's voice—a rallying cry edged with exhaustion and grit.
Without pause, she vaulted back down.
Not done yet.
You move through moonlight and ruin, the courtyard silent but for the crunch of old stone beneath your boots.
The last Raider crawls beside the fallen archway, blood soaking through cloth and chainmail.
His breath rattles, but his blade lies broken.
You approach—calm, steady.
Your dagger gleams faintly in the twilight, but your hand is soft.
He flinches as you reach him.
You kneel.
The blade doesn't strike—it severs only the bandoleer wrapped tight around his shoulder.
A whisper of steel, nothing more.
Then your hand finds the wound.
Warmth radiates from your palm as the green glow of healing glyphs unfurls, coiling down his arm like ivy grown in fast-forward.
The bleeding slows.
His eyes go wide.
Hope and confusion twist inside them.
You brush ash from his cheek with the back of your hand.
"Tell them," you say, voice like wind through leaves,
"the Twilight Gate still stands—because memory outlives steel."
His throat works once before words find it. "I… remember."
You let him go.
He slips into the tree-line, a wounded man no longer an enemy, only a witness.
A seed planted.
Even here, far from its trunk, I feel the Spiral Tree pulse beneath my skin.
Its roots stretch longer than roads, deeper than time, whispering through the soil like old songs remembered.
My fingers scribe glyphs in the air—tight coils and mirrored loops, shaped by breath and conviction.
Each stroke anchors the Twilight Gate to the bones of the past, etching memory into mortar.
The wards shiver.
Pressure builds.
Somewhere behind the veil, enemy magic slithers like worms through sacred text—trying to unwrite us.
I don't flinch.
Instead, I press my wand into the cracked foundation and whisper the vow etched into every scholar of the Hollow:
"In memory's name, be bound.By root and flame, by sacred sound."
The words ignite.
Amber light flares from the runes carved into the arch.
They burn like coals beneath water—subtle, endless.
The gate groans, exhales, then settles.
Whole again.
The enemy's echo fades.
Their unraveling falters.
I rise, body trembling, but voice steady.
"We stand unbroken."
3rd Person – Kaien (Closing)
Kaien stood at the base of the gate, blade slick and heavy in his hand.
The smoke drifted higher now—no longer choking, but lingering, like incense after battle.
Around him, his comrades returned one by one: Lyra with blood on her blade and clarity in her eyes; Aira brushing ash from her hands, healing glow gone quiet; Rin emerging like a prophet from shadow, his wards humming in the stone.
Kaien reached out and laid his gauntlet against the keystone, its moss-wrapped face cool beneath his fingers.
He felt it—not just stone, but a heartbeat. Memory thrumming against skin.
Above them, the sky had cleared.
The first stars blinked into view, trembling behind the smoke's last veil.
And somewhere beyond, the Spiral Tree listened.
He turned to the others, voice low and worn but full of flame.
"Another gate held. Another promise kept."
They did not need to speak. A nod, a breath, a shared silence was enough.
Each of them bore the Hollow's fire now—not just in magic, but in marrow.
Beyond the gate, the forest waited.
It sighed like an old guardian, folding darkness and starlight into its arms.
And so they walked onward, their footfalls echoing not in sound, but in the song of what was saved.
For in this world of ash and amber, flame that remembers does not die.
It endures.