The Black Verge Mountains were not on any map that still made sense. They had once marked the edge of Vaelmir's northern frontier, before the Sundering had warped the land like molten glass. Now, the mountains jutted toward the heavens like the ribs of some ancient god, their peaks swathed in storms that never moved and snow that never melted.
Nyssa stood at their base, staring into the jagged expanse. The Ashen Compass pulsed against her palm, its needle straining toward the summit. Toward the breach.
Marek surveyed the terrain with a skeptical eye. "Remind me again why the gate to a forgotten world had to be in the most cursed mountain range in all of Elandir?"
"Because the gods hate us," Nyssa muttered.
"Ah. That tracks."
They pressed on, climbing higher through broken trails and frost-rimed ruins. As they ascended, the air grew thin and heavy, and the sky dimmed unnaturally—as if dusk had settled and refused to leave. Runes etched in old stone whispered beneath their boots, remnants of lost languages only the mountains still remembered.
Each night, Nyssa dreamed of Jack.
Not memories. Echoes.
One night she saw him running through a dark forest where the trees bled light.
Another night he stood at the edge of a mirror-like lake, his reflection not his own.
And last night, he had whispered her name—not in despair, but in warning.
"Don't follow me."
She ignored it.
They reached the summit on the seventh day, frostbitten and weary. A stone altar stood atop the highest ridge, surrounded by a perfect ring of blackened snow. The wind didn't touch the space inside it. Sound didn't carry within its bounds.
The Gate of the End was not a door, but a tear. A wound in the air itself.
It shimmered like water caught in moonlight, a vertical slash suspended between twin stone spires. And beyond it—nothing.
No sky.
No stars.
Just the Hollow.
Marek's voice was unusually quiet. "We actually doing this?"
Nyssa's hand gripped the Compass. "I have to."
"You could die."
"I will die," she said. "If I don't do this."
Marek looked at the rift, then at her. "Well then, I guess I'm dying too."
She hesitated. "You don't have to follow me."
He gave her a crooked grin. "You'd get yourself killed five minutes in. And who else is going to be around to save your dramatic self-sacrificing butt?"
Before she could reply, the Compass let out a low, mournful hum—and the Gate opened wide.
Air rushed inward, as if the Hollow itself had been holding its breath. Light bent. Space warped.
And then everything was gone.
They awoke not in darkness—but in silence.
The Hollow World was a realm unanchored. The ground beneath their feet felt too smooth, too perfect, like glass laid over forgotten memory. Above them stretched an endless sky of swirling grey, where stars moved like eyes and clouds whispered in languages neither of them understood.
There were no cities. No mountains. Only fragments.
Floating pieces of land hovered in the distance—cracked towers, shattered trees, bridges that began nowhere and ended in open air. The world was coming apart at the seams.
And in the center of it all stood a tree.
Black as obsidian.
Rootless. Leafless.
Towering higher than any castle in Vaelmir.
The Hollow Tree.
Marek swore. "That thing's real? I thought it was just some spooky bedtime tale."
Nyssa's voice trembled. "It's real. And it's dying."
The Compass in her hand was still glowing, but now it pulsed in time with her heartbeat. A direction. A path.
And then she felt it.
Faint, but there—like a whisper carried by wind across a great distance.
"Nyssa."
Jack's voice.
Alive.
Calling to her.
She bolted forward without a word. Marek followed.
They moved between floating fragments of the Hollow, leaping across impossible spaces that folded like paper when they stepped. Time stuttered here. One moment it was dusk; the next, dawn. Shadows walked where no one stood. And beneath the floating debris, an ocean of void shimmered—endless, black, hungry.
It was on the fifth island that they found their first sign of him.
A mark burned into the stone.
Jack's mark.
Three lines interwoven in a spiral. The mark he had carved as a child, on trees, on books, on the edge of Auren's staff. The same mark now etched deep into the Hollow's skin.
"He's close," Nyssa whispered.
But even as she said it, something shifted.
The wind stilled.
And from the void below, they came.
Wraiths of the Hollow.
Shadows with no form, no faces—only hunger.
They rose like smoke, shrieking without sound, latching onto the edge of the island.
Nyssa drew her blade. Marek raised his twin daggers.
The wraiths struck.
Magic faltered in the Hollow. Every spell Nyssa cast cracked like old ice. She fought with raw force, carving paths through the air with her enchanted steel. But for every shadow that fell, three more rose.
One of them reached Marek. It grazed his shoulder—and he screamed.
His skin blistered, darkening where it touched.
"Don't let them touch you!" Nyssa shouted, slicing through another.
They ran.
Leapt across a fracture to another island, the void swirling beneath their feet. The Compass throbbed in her hand, and the path shifted—twisting, turning, spiraling in new directions.
Finally, the wraiths pulled back. Faded into the mist.
Marek collapsed, panting, his face pale.
"I think I left my soul back there."
Nyssa knelt beside him, checking the wound. It hadn't spread, but it pulsed faintly with a violet glow. The Hollow's corruption.
"You'll be okay," she lied.
He gave a dry smile. "Liar."
Nyssa's gaze turned ahead, to where the Compass now pointed—toward the Hollow Tree.
And there, silhouetted in the distance, a figure stood.
Tall.
Still.
Watching.
Jack.
Or what was left of him.