The city's twisted heart beat slower, but heavier — like a corpse dragging itself across cracked stone. Nerin's breath came ragged, every inhale a shard of ice piercing his lungs, every exhale a whisper of the memories bleeding from his mind.
The ritual had begun.
Sylra's chant slithered through the cold air, a fractured hymn in an ancient tongue. The ground beneath them pulsed with sickly light, veins of black fire licking the walls, while the blood-red moss writhed as if alive, feeding off their torment.
Nerin's skin burned beneath the Hollow Mark — the black sun split in two — its cold fire now a furnace of pain. His memories, precious and fragile, cracked and splintered like shattered glass.
He saw flashes — moments of laughter with a sister long dead, the faint scent of a mother's embrace, the taste of freedom before the curse — slipping away, dissolving into an endless void.
Each sacrifice carved deeper, the cost of severance exacted in memories stolen, dreams erased.
His mind fought to hold fast, but the shadows clawed relentlessly, dragging fragments into darkness.
"Let go," Sylra whispered, voice both cruel and tender. "Only by losing can you be free."
Nerin's vision blurred. The world warped and twisted, the screaming city falling away as cold numbness spread through his veins. His soul was unraveling — a thread pulled taut until it snapped.
Then, silence.
When the pain receded, the Mark flickered — no longer burning, but dimming, cracked, fragmented.
A hollow freedom.
But the price had been paid.
Nerin blinked, breath shallow, memories missing like holes carved into his very being.
The city was still a tomb.
But now… maybe, just maybe, a lock was undone.
Yet in the shadows, something deeper stirred — an ancient will awakened by the fracture.
And the true cost of freedom was yet to be revealed.
Nerin staggered beneath the weight of his stolen memories, the cold void where fragments of his past had once lived now an aching emptiness gnawing at his mind. The city around him pulsed with a sick rhythm, its twisted streets whispering in tongues older than time.
The Hollow Mark, once a blazing brand of pain, now flickered like a dying ember—fractured but alive. Freedom tasted bitter, a mouthful of ash and loss. Yet beneath the surface of this fractured peace, something else stirred—something ancient, dark, and hungry.
From the depths of the city's ruined catacombs, a tremor rippled through the rotten stone. Shadows detached from walls, coalescing into a towering figure—an entity forged from forgotten nightmares, its eyes twin voids burning with cold hunger.
The ancient will—the Warden of the Hollow—had awakened.
It moved with the grace of a predator and the inevitability of death. Its voice echoed inside Nerin's skull, a corrosive whisper:
"You dared fracture the chain… but freedom is an illusion. The Hollow remembers. The Hollow consumes."
Nerin gripped the Edge of Remembrance, its cold fire flickering weakly. His heart pounded like a war drum, a defiant pulse against the creeping void.
"Then I'll burn brighter," he growled, voice ragged but resolute. "You won't own me."
The Warden laughed—a sound like shattering glass and bone splintering. "We shall see, Hollowed. The trial has only just begun."
The city trembled as ancient powers clashed beneath the bruised sky.
Nerin's shattered memories might have been the price of severance, but the battle for his soul had only just ignited.
Because in the Hollowed City, salvation was forged in fire and blood—and the darkest shadows had yet to fall.
The air thickened with rot and thunder as the Warden loomed over Nerin—a colossus of shadow and shattered bone, eyes burning with a cold fire that promised oblivion. The city itself seemed to recoil, the blood-red moss curling tighter around crumbling stone like a suffocating vice.
Nerin tightened his grip on the Edge of Remembrance, the blade humming with a fragile light born from stolen memories and raw defiance. His soul still bore the scars of sacrifice, the hollow ache of loss biting deep into his marrow. Yet beneath that fracture, something fierce still burned—a flicker of unyielding flame.
"You think breaking the chains is enough?" The Warden's voice was a venomous growl, shaking the very ground beneath their feet. "The Hollow is hunger incarnate. It devours all who defy it. Your freedom is a debt unpaid."
Nerin's jaw clenched, teeth grinding like flint. "I'll pay my debt with your blood."
Steel sang through the air, a cold flash cutting through shadow. The Edge of Remembrance met the Warden's sprawling limbs, sparks of forbidden fire igniting in the impact. The city shook with the violence of their clash, ancient curses roaring from broken windows like banshees in torment.
But the Warden was no mere beast. It moved with ruthless cunning—each strike a calculated trap, each step a puzzle of death. Its chains, forged from lost souls and broken promises, writhed like serpents, lashing and constricting.
Nerin dodged, felt the cold bite of spectral iron graze his ribs. Pain flared, but he twisted deeper into the fight, fueled by a desperate will to survive—and to reclaim what was stolen from him.
A memory flickered—a face, a name lost in the haze. He grasped it, clinging to that shard like a lifeline.
The Warden's eyes narrowed, sensing the fragile thread of Nerin's spirit. "You will break, Hollowed. You will fall. And the city will swallow what remains."
But Nerin roared—a sound of fury and pain—and plunged the Edge of Remembrance deep into the Warden's shadowed heart.
The chains screamed.
The ground cracked.
And the fight for the Hollow's soul burned hotter than ever.