The march began in silence.
The kind of silence that didn't just sit between footsteps—
It pushed back.
Sound didn't travel here. It was stolen.
The trench was not echoing anymore. It was absorbing.
Even Hero's steps, usually crisp and firm, vanished the second they touched the ash-layered ground.
The trench beneath them was scarred.
Not carved or constructed—but cracked, bent, and forcibly shifted. The Hollow March had no clean paths, no defined descent. Only half-collapsed roads, fractured terrain, and sharp ledges that tilted without warning.
Above them loomed sheer cliffs, jagged like fractured jawlines. Beneath their feet, the stone was uneven, interrupted by craters and gouged pressure trails—signs that something large had passed this way. Recently.
Nahr scanned ahead.
Three hundred meters beyond, the path narrowed. A shallow incline dropped into a broken ridge where collapsed platforms still hung by tension cables. Beyond that was a structure—half-submerged into the trench wall. Possibly shelter. Possibly trap.
There was no sign of Cores.
No signal.
No return.
Only cold.
And four of them.
Nahr. Hero.
And two broken forms they'd recovered from a collapsed signal shelter—
Slate and Kelar.
The two Cores had been found tangled in a melted corridor of spiraled iron—buried in a memory-collapse pocket. Alive, but stripped of their Galieyas and unable to walk without assistance.
Their systems were intact. But their burdens were locked—compressed and frozen under trench backlash.
Weight-bound.
Hero carried Slate over one shoulder. Nahr had Kelar balanced across his back, both arms fastened forward with synthetic cable.
Neither moved.
But both still breathed.
Still watched.
Still recorded.
They weren't cargo.
They were witnesses.
Nahr took the lead.
—
The Hollow March wasn't named for its terrain.
It was named for what it left behind.
Half an hour in, Nahr began to feel it.
The trench didn't press down here like before.
It pulled.
Not physically.
But inward.
Like it was trying to drag thoughts from the past and sew them into the present.
He stepped around a ledge.
Paused.
Saw something.
His own frame—
But lying face-down in the ash.
Armor cracked.
Chestplate caved.
Motionless.
He blinked.
It was gone.
Hero stepped beside him.
Saw nothing.
Didn't ask.
They moved on.
Another kilometer passed.
The slope steepened.
The incline reached nearly thirty degrees.
Dragging two weight-bound Cores over unstable ground felt like hauling anchor stones over shale.
Their boots scraped.
One slip meant death.
The trench didn't allow repositioning here.
Only commitment.
Nahr's arms ached.
Kelar's mass, while lighter than normal, shifted unevenly.
Like something inside him was still fighting to move.
To pull toward something deeper.
"Rest point," Hero finally said, voice clipped.
Nahr nodded.
They reached a ledge.
Small.
Barely wide enough for the four of them.
But it would do.
They set the two broken Cores down.
Tethered them to anchor hooks.
Hero pulled a collapsible rest-bar from his shoulder frame and planted it.
Nahr didn't rest.
He scanned.
Looked over the ridge again.
That submerged structure still sat in the distance.
Now closer.
But more unsettling.
He counted the entrance apertures.
Two at the front.
One overhead.
And something else—barely visible.
A drag line across the dust.
Pulled toward the open door.
It wasn't a shelter.
It was a trap well.
The trench lured the burdened in, offering false memory sanctuaries.
And then hollowed them out.
"We're not going through that," Nahr said.
Hero followed his eyes.
"I wasn't planning to."
"We skirt it wide. Move down through the collapsed scaffolds and use the pressure rails to cross the ridge."
Hero gave a slow nod.
Then looked back at Slate and Kelar.
"We can't carry them across those cables."
"I know."
"Then what?"
Nahr didn't speak for a while.
Then—
"We lighten them."
Hero turned slowly.
"They'll die."
"No. They'll forget."
"Same thing."
Nahr stood.
Walked to Slate.
Crouched.
Activated the burden interface.
Slate's HUD was still dimmed—but his eyes flickered.
Alive.
Still registering.
Still waiting.
"You can't come with all of it," Nahr said quietly.
"No Core passes the March intact."
He tapped the shard implant on Slate's shoulder.
"Four fragments. We cut two."
Slate's fingers twitched.
Approval.
Or surrender.
That was enough.
Nahr began the procedure.
It was precise.
Controlled.
A trench-level reduction.
He didn't wipe.
He traded.
Slate would lose all detail of his previous rank.
His past cohort.
But he would remember his weapon grip.
His steps.
His weight signature.
Enough to walk again.
Maybe enough to fight.
Maybe.
Hero did the same to Kelar.
Together, they rewrote both.
Just enough.
Slate's breathing changed.
Steady.
Kelar blinked.
Looked at his own feet.
Then—
Stood.
Wobbly.
But upright.
"Who are you?" he asked, quietly.
Nahr didn't answer.
Just handed him a stabilizing rod.
"You'll remember soon enough."
—
They crossed the pressure rails in sequence.
Two active.
Two passive.
Hero led Slate.
Nahr followed with Kelar.
Each rail was slick with trench dust.
One misstep and it was a fall into echo-crush depth.
Nahr's boots slipped once.
Kelar grunted.
Nahr adjusted mid-swing.
Balanced.
Stepped forward.
The final platform trembled beneath them.
But it held.
They moved fast.
The trap well behind them flickered.
Then went dark.
Denied.
The trench had noticed.
—
Beyond the ridge, the terrain opened into a wide basin.
An old Core station—long since collapsed.
Signal pylons leaned sideways, bent from trenchshifts.
Scrap wiring fluttered in faint thermal current.
Nahr led them into the basin.
Checked corners.
Only static.
They established camp inside the bent housing of an abandoned uplink node.
Hero secured the perimeter.
Kelar collapsed without a word.
Slate stared at the ceiling.
And Nahr—
Nahr sat on a broken panel and stared into the ground.
There were no more clear directives.
Only survival.
And he was no longer sure that was the right goal.
Hero sat beside him.
"You didn't have to carry both."
"I know."
"But you did."
Nahr didn't reply.
Hero tilted his head.
"You care."
"No," Nahr said quietly. "I remember."
Hero leaned back against the pylon wall.
"We'll need to decide soon."
"About?"
"About the next path."
"There's only one."
Hero looked up.
Not at Nahr.
At the trench walls rising beyond the basin.
Black and steep.
Echoes flickering in the distance.
"They're testing."
"They always test."
"Not us. Them."
Nahr narrowed his eyes.
"What do you mean?"
Hero's voice was quiet.
Low.
Measured.
"The trench doesn't test Cores to find survivors."
"Then what?"
"It tests the survivors… to find Cores."
Nahr stared at him.
Then back at Slate and Kelar.
They were awake now.
Sitting in silence.
Processing fragments of lives they no longer owned.
Were they still Cores?
Or were they just carriers of something else?
And if so—
What was Nahr?
—
That night, the trench shifted again.
Not a quake.
A pulse.
Felt through the wall.
Through the air.
Through the soul.
All four Cores stood instantly.
Galieyas drawn.
No enemy.
Just… awareness.
The trench saw them.
All of them.
Together.
Unburdened.
Unbroken.
Unwelcome.
A line appeared on Nahr's HUD.
No sound.
Just black text.
[TO MARCH IS TO REMEMBER THE BURDEN WAS YOURS TO BEGIN WITH]
He lowered his head.
Gripped his lance tighter.
Then looked to Hero.
And whispered one word.
"Forward."
The trench wall ahead wasn't natural.
It was carved.
Deliberate.
Not by Cores, not by tools—but by repetition.
Too many had passed here.
Too few had returned.
A narrow tunnel split the base of the wall.
Low.
Barely wide enough for one Core at a time.
Ash curled at its edge, spilling outward like breath from an unseen mouth.
There were no symbols above it.
No warnings.
Just the undeniable pressure of being watched.
Slate approached it first.
Stopped.
Then looked back at Nahr.
"Do we go in?"
Hero didn't answer.
Kelar turned his head, but remained silent.
All three looked to Nahr.
He stepped forward.
Looked into the dark.
Smelled iron.
Felt the pull of memory just past the threshold.
Then said, without ceremony:
"We carry what's left."
And stepped inside.
One by one, the others followed.
Their silhouettes vanished into the trench's throat.
The ash settled again.
And the Hollow March fell still.
Until the next weight demanded payment.