The temple shook.
Water rippled around their feet, once still, now trembling with pulses that didn't match time. Above them, the sky cracked through the temple ceiling—not literally, but visibly, like a dream bleeding through stone.
And in the center of it all, the chained Kael—the First Echo—breathed in.
That breath sounded like a hundred timelines dying at once.
Zeeler stepped forward. "You're him… the one they called the Alpha Thread."
Kael didn't answer.
But the temple did.
Flickers appeared around the room—fragments of all the Kaels that could've been. One held the world in chains. One wept beside Rythe's corpse. One had no eyes, just mouths screaming across his skin.
Zeeler gripped his staff tighter.
Kael—the real Kael beside him—clenched his jaw, eyes on the chained version of himself. "He's not me."
The chained Kael spoke at last, voice like cracked mirrors:
"You will be. If the Hollowborn touches you, it won't erase you. It'll echo you into something worse."
Rythe drew his blades. "We didn't come here to listen to fate speeches."
The woman in smoke—one of the other Fractureborn—raised her hand. "If the Hollowborn awakens fully, it doesn't just eat time. It eats choice. It'll erase all Fractureborn. Even you."
Another figure stepped forward—this one a man missing half his face, memory glyphs stitched across his skin. "But we don't agree. Some of us believe letting him out is the only way to end the loops."
"What loops?" Zeeler snapped.
The stitched man smiled grimly. "You. Kael. Rythe. The war. The Hollowborn hunting us… It's all happened before. Over and over. We've died a thousand ways. We always meet here."
"And what happens?" Kael asked quietly.
"We choose."
---
A voice echoed from the deep.
Low. Cold. Gentle.
"You don't have to choose anymore."
The water boiled.
From beneath the temple floor, something massive stirred. Not flesh. Not shadow. Something… formless. Like if a thought had turned bitter and become a wound.
The Hollowborn had heard them.
Zeeler spun, raising a Resonance Veil around Kael and Rythe. "That voice—"
"It's inside the root," Kael whispered. "Feeding. On us."
The woman in smoke stepped toward the chained Kael. "He's been leaking into this temple for ages. It was only a matter of time."
"And now we brought him food," Zeeler muttered.
The chained Kael's chains snapped—not broken, but willingly released.
He dropped into the water.
It didn't ripple.
He rose again, now glowing with an impossible blend of every Fractureborn power. His eyes weren't eyes—just spinning threads of future-sight tangled together.
He pointed at Kael.
"You're the final key."
Kael's hand twitched. "I didn't ask to be born."
"No one does," the chained one whispered.
Then he turned to Zeeler.
"And you… You're the one that never chooses. That's why the Hollowborn wants you most."
Zeeler's pulse quickened.
In that moment—something exploded beneath the water.
A limb of pure void punched through the floor, twisting upward in impossible geometry. Not shadow, not light—just absence. Everywhere it touched, the water froze. The temple cracked.
The Hollowborn was rising.
---
Rythe didn't wait.
He fractured forward, blades coated in reflective energy, and slammed them into the limb. Reality snarled—the air itself tore in protest—but the strike landed. The limb retracted, thrashing.
"GO!" Rythe barked. "Before it finds Kael!"
Zeeler grabbed Kael's arm and moved, flickering between skips.
The chained Kael followed them—hovering, now detached from time entirely.
"You can't run from this," he called. "You have to decide!"
The woman in smoke stayed behind with Rythe—unleashing a storm of memory-threads that tangled around the Hollowborn's arm, binding it temporarily. Her scream echoed as time bent around her.
They ran.
---
Deep into the temple—where the Root pulsed.
Not stone. Not even matter. Just thought given shape. A glowing spiral of memory and choice. Every decision Zeeler had ever made flickered across its surface.
Kael hesitated.
"I… I think I remember this place," he said, voice cracking. "Before I was even born, I saw this in dreams."
"It's the source," Zeeler muttered. "Of us."
Behind them, the chained Kael appeared again.
He placed a hand on the Root.
And something opened.
A portal—not to space.
To choice.
Inside, Zeeler saw every version of himself.
In one, he was a tyrant.
In another, he never found Kael.
In another, he was dead.
And in one… he was Hollowborn.
Kael stepped back, shaking.
"I don't want this."
"You don't get to want," the chained Kael whispered. "You either fracture the root… or let him consume it. But there is a third path."
Zeeler narrowed his eyes. "What?"
The chained one turned to him.
"You fight me. Take my place. Become the next root guardian. Lock the Hollowborn away by tying your soul to the echo spiral forever."
Kael stepped in front of Zeeler.
"No. He saved me. He's not ending here."
"I'm not deciding that," Zeeler said quietly.
The Root pulsed.
And the Hollowborn's voice thundered one more time.
"Choose."
---
The ceiling of the chamber burst.
Black light poured through.
The Hollowborn descended—a form with no face, no mass, just wrongness. Reality folded around it like paper. The Fractureborn above screamed. Some vanished. Some were rewritten mid-breath.
Rythe fell through the hole—body bleeding, blades shattered—but still alive.
Kael turned to Zeeler.
"If you go in there, you won't come back."
Zeeler looked at the chained Kael.
Then at Kael.
And finally at the Root.
"…Good."
He turned his staff.
And shattered the Resonant Shard embedded in his chest.
Power exploded.
Not raw magic.
Not light.
Just possibility.
It wrapped around his body like thread.
He turned to Rythe and Kael.
"Keep living."
And walked into the spiral.
---
Everything folded.
He didn't die.
He became the echo spiral itself.
The Hollowborn screamed.
It lunged—
—but was pulled into the root.
Trapped.
Bound by Zeeler's will.
The chained Kael vanished.
The spiral closed.
The temple quieted.
---
Kael stood in the water, trembling.
Rythe put a hand on his shoulder.
"…He chose."
Kael whispered, "…Then we live."
The Root pulsed once more.
Not in warning.
In peace.
But in its quiet echo… something remained.
A voice. Familiar.
From everywhere and nowhere:
"I'm still with you."
To be continued…