Kael moved with purpose.
For the first time in days,
he wasn't wandering.
He wasn't searching.
He was returning.
The caverns behind him dimmed.
The memory-wall faded from his thoughts.
The bottle at his hip pulsed steadily—
not in alarm,
not in grief,
but like a compass humming toward its origin.
Stone turned to shale.
Shale to dust.
And then—
Old metal.
A broken lattice embedded in a slope of dead glass.
Kael knelt.
Brushed dust from its surface.
A rune flickered.
Soft green, barely breathing.
Then—
the bottle pulsed once,
and the panel responded.
"Signal bridge located."
"Witness node: alive."
"Pathway: unstable, but active."
"Hollow response… pending."
Kael stood.
The air shifted.
He wasn't being called.
He was being watched.
The sky above broke open in gray light as he stepped over a rise.
The Hollow was still days away,
but here,
in the ridge,
a listening post had long ago been buried.
And now, it was listening back.
The bottle grew warm.
Kael didn't flinch.
He kept walking.
At the basin edge, he paused.
Below—
A shallow valley.
Ruined buildings.
And at its center:
Movement.
Not beasts.
Not Elric.
Not Hollow-born.
Figures.
Five. Maybe six.
Clad in cloth and mirrored mesh.
Too silent.
Too ordered.
Too far from where they should be.
One of them stopped.
Looked up.
Directly at him.
Kael stepped back.
The bottle pulsed harder.
And then—
A voice.
Not from outside.
From inside.
"Don't trust him."
Kael froze.
The words weren't from the bottle.
Weren't from Mara.
They came from deeper.
From Elric.
His knees almost buckled.
The voice was raw.
Weakened.
Strained across distance and time and memory.
But it was him.
The bottle flashed green.
A single glyph blinked across its surface.
"Thread divergence imminent."
Kael turned away from the ridge.
Not in fear.
In readiness.
Whatever was waiting—
in the Hollow,
in the valley,
in himself—
he would face it.