The silence that followed the Hollow's banishment was heavier than the one that had preceded it. Lio felt scoured out, his emotional landscape flattened. He kept touching his temples, a reflexive, useless gesture to see if his memories were still there. They were, but they were like furniture in a house he no longer lived in—familiar in shape, but holding no warmth. The family moved along the edge of the great fissure, a gaping wound in the earth, and the unspoken truth of what his mother had done lay between them, far wider and deeper.
They walked until the dim, grey light began to fail, and the fog glowed with the phantom orange of a setting sun that remained invisible. It was then that they saw it: the flicker of a real fire, a tiny spark of life in the overwhelming emptiness. Caution warred with a desperate need for warmth and a glimpse of another human face. Sera made the decision, guiding them toward the light with a slow, wary tread.
Huddled by the sputtering fire was a woman. She was weathered as an old seawall, her face a roadmap of hardships, but her eyes were sharp and intensely alive. She looked up as they approached, her hand resting on the handle of a rusty machete. But what made Lio stop and stare wasn't her weapon; it was her shadow. In the unsteady light of the flames, two shadows danced behind her on the rock face. One was a faithful, dark companion, mimicking her every move. The other was fainter, a watery grey, and it lagged a half second behind, its gestures softer, sadder.
"Close enough," the woman said, her voice like gravel rolling in a tin can. She gestured with her chin toward the fire. "Warm yourselves if you must. But keep your distance."
They obeyed, sinking to the ground on the opposite side of the small blaze. The heat felt miraculous on Lio's chilled skin. For a few minutes, no one spoke. The woman simply watched them, her shrewd gaze moving from one face to the next, lingering with a strange intensity.
"You're the mapmaker," she said, her eyes on Ira, who was staring into the flames, his expression utterly blank. He didn't respond.
The woman grunted. "Lost his tongue, has he? He was a talker, the last one."
Lio's head snapped up. "What do you mean, 'the last one'?"
The woman's gaze shifted to him. "I've seen your lot before. Pass through here every few years, it seems."
"That's impossible," Lio said immediately, a reflexive denial. "We've never been this far inland."
"Haven't you?" The woman gave a humorless smile. Her twin shadows swayed behind her. "Was about two years back. You were trying to cross the salt flats, west of here. Back when you could still call that place Port Blossom."
The name sent a jolt through Lio. That was the town on the map, the one whose name had bled into 'The Hollow End'.
"It wasn't us," Lio insisted, though his own certainty was failing him.
The woman leaned forward, the firelight catching the disturbing clarity in her eyes. "Oh, it was you. Same desperation. Same feeling you get from a dog that's been chasing its own tail for a week. But," she paused, her gaze sweeping over them again, "you had different faces."
She pointed a crooked finger toward Ira. "The father, he was a giant of a man. Red beard down to his chest. Roared when he talked. Not like this silent stone here."
Her finger moved to Sera. "The mother… she was a slip of a thing. Cried all the time. Looked like a strong wind would carry her off. Your mother," she said, her eyes narrowing at Sera, "looks like she could command the wind."
Sera stiffened, her jaw tight. Her hand crept to the satchel where the living map was hidden.
"And the boy," the woman's eyes settled on Lio, "he was younger than you. Scrawnier. Scared of his own shadow." She paused, and her gaze fell upon Mina, who was watching her without fear, clutching her red mitten. The woman's expression softened for a fraction of a second. "But the girl… the girl was the same. Always the same. Same quiet eyes. Same way of watching the world as if she's already seen how it ends."
A profound stillness fell over their small circle. The woman's words connected everything: Sera's strange familiarity with the landscape, the impossible appearance of their possessions in Echo Town, the feeling of walking in a dream.
"We have to go," Sera said abruptly, her voice sharp with an urgency that bordered on panic. She stood up, pulling at Lio's arm. Her composure was finally cracked. This woman's testimony was a truth she desperately did not want her family to hear.
As they backed away from the fire, the woman called out to them. "You can run from the water! You can even run from the Hollows! But you can't run from yourselves! You just end up walking in a circle to meet the ones you were before!"
Lio stumbled away into the darkness, his mother's hand gripping his arm like a vice. He looked back at his father's stooped, broken form and his sister's small, calm face. Different faces. Always the same girl. They weren't just a family. They were a pattern. An echo. And he was just the latest version, walking a path that others, who were also him, had walked before. The question was no longer how they would survive, but how many times they had already failed.