CHAPTER 1581: STORY 1581:THE HOLLOW BEYOND

The stillness was suffocating. No ground beneath their feet, no air in their lungs, no horizon to anchor their eyes. Yet they did not fall. They simply were—adrift in the hollow beyond the Unborn’s storm.

Kael’s blade flickered faintly, its cracks glowing like dying embers. He tightened his grip though it weighed nothing here. His breath came ragged, though he could not feel air moving through his throat. “This isn’t death,” he muttered hoarsely. “Death has weight. This is... something else.”

Elara cradled the boy, his glow pulsing fitfully against her chest. She rocked him as if motion alone could keep him tethered. His chant was gone now, smothered by the emptiness. She whispered fiercely into his ear, voice trembling: “Don’t go quiet. Not here. Not now.”

The widow floated nearby, her blood no longer spilling, her wounds neither closing nor worsening. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound came—not even the ragged silence she had worn for so long. Her lips curled into a bitter smile. “Even my silence is stolen.”

The scarred woman twisted in the void, her broken spear still clutched in hand. She pressed its jagged edge against her palm, but even pain would not answer. No blood welled, no throb of life replied. Her jaw tightened as she spat into the nothing: “It wants us hollow again.”

The farmer held his drum close. He struck it once. His hands moved, the skin reverberated, yet there was nothing—no echo, no thud. His eyes widened with despair. “It’s not silence,” he whispered. “It’s... erasure. Even flaws can’t live here.”

For the first time, true dread seeped into them. The storm had been violence, but this was absence—gentle, suffocating, infinite. A place where even memory threatened to dissolve.

Then the Unborn’s voice slid into the void. No thunder now, no mockery. It was soft, intimate, as though whispering from inside their veins:

“You have undone me. And so you undo yourselves. You did not defeat silence—you became it. This is your crown, your rest, your purity. Here, at last, nothing can wound you.”

Kael snarled, his scars burning faintly with the last heat of defiance. He forced his throat raw, dragging a guttural sound from deep inside himself. It was faint, almost nothing, but it hurt. The pain proved he was still alive. “If this is purity, I’ll stay broken.”

The boy stirred. His glow flared dimly, a pulse rather than a chant. It spread outward, faint ripples through the void. Elara clutched him tighter, tears streaking down her face. “Yes. Even a flicker is enough. Don’t let it unmake you.”

The widow reached out, her fingers brushing Kael’s scarred arm. The scarred woman pressed her jagged spear against the faint glow. The farmer laid his drum beneath the pulse.

For a moment, the void shivered.

The Unborn’s voice trembled, almost uncertain:

“You fracture still?”

The boy’s glow pulsed again—brighter.

And the hollow beyond cracked, like the first faultline in an endless wall.