CHAPTER 1582: STORY 1582: CRACKS IN THE HOLLOW

The fracture spread outward like a vein of light through black glass, jagged and trembling. For the first time since the storm’s collapse, the void moved.

Kael braced himself, planting his failing blade against nothing, as though even here he could anchor existence. The glow of the crack bled into his scars, making them flare like molten fissures across his skin. “There,” he rasped. “That’s where it breaks.”

Elara’s arms tightened around the boy as his glow surged again, no longer erratic but rhythmical, each pulse like a heartbeat. She kissed his damp hair and whispered fiercely, “You’re not just light—you’re a key. Open it.”

The widow drifted closer, her hands trembling. She placed her torn palms against the crack. For the first time in this place, she felt. The faintest vibration, like the breath of a buried world. Her eyes widened, her lips shaping soundless wonder: alive.

The scarred woman pressed the broken spear to the fracture. The void resisted, shuddering but not yielding. She snarled, leaning her weight against it. “You will not keep us hollow.” Her voice was swallowed, yet her intent seemed to sink into the glowing seam.

The farmer laid his drum against the crack and struck it with both fists. Again, no sound—yet something moved. The glow deepened, brightened, quivered like something waiting to hatch. He laughed breathlessly, half-mad. “Even silence can’t swallow rhythm forever.”

The Unborn’s voice rose from all directions, but now it was strained, stretched thin:

“You trespass where nothing endures. To break this hollow is to fall into worse. Beyond void lies only ruin.”

Kael bared his teeth, the heat of defiance burning through his broken body. “Then ruin will have to make room.” He raised his blade and, with a roar, drove it into the fracture. The weapon shattered instantly, shards dissolving into sparks of memory—but the crack spread.

The boy screamed, his glow exploding outward, flooding the void with raw brilliance. The fracture spiderwebbed, countless lines of light racing in every direction. The hollow shook, groaned, a universe of absence quivering under the weight of their defiance.

Elara shielded him with her body, her face pressed into his hair, whispering through tears: “Don’t stop—burn it all.”

The widow’s hands bled again, crimson seeping as though the void itself could not erase her wound anymore. She pressed harder. Her silence became an anchor, a refusal to vanish.

The scarred woman drove her broken spear deeper into the widening crack. Blood spilled from her palm, hissing against the glow. She laughed wildly. “If ruin waits, then we carve our place inside it!”

The farmer struck again and again, each mute blow widening the fracture, his chest heaving as though breath were returning with every strike.

The hollow screamed—not with voice but with tearing. Light ripped through the void, dazzling, burning, blinding.

The Unborn’s whisper thinned to a desperate thread:

“You would choose fracture... over peace?”

The boy’s glow answered, blazing like a second sun.

And the hollow shattered.