Word of the Hollow Names spread slowly—by murmurs, not proclamations. Across scattered settlements and fading strongholds, people began whispering not about rebellion… but remembrance. The Circle of Shadowlight was not a movement. It was an invitation to reclaim what the light had buried: the full, complex truth of being.
And this truth did not go unnoticed.
Far across the drowned lands, in the marble chambers of the Light Accord, an unsettling thing happened: silence entered their halls. Missions failed without battle. Bearers laid down their shards willingly. Generals dreamed of shadows—and woke with names they did not know carved into their palms.
It was not sabotage.
It was transformation.
Faced with this quiet tide, the Accord's inner circle convened one final time. There, High Seer Andrelis, the oldest voice of light still unbent, demanded a countermeasure—not of violence, but of purity. "If the dark coaxes our truth," he said, "then we must become pure light. Unsullied. Singular. Absolute."
His solution: The Burnlight Protocol—an act that would extract the core of every remaining shard, fuse them into a singular beam, and erase all who carried shadowlight, memory, or doubt.
A final severance.
But not all within the Accord agreed.
That night, Lysa Vane, once a scribe and now a reluctant judge, defected—taking with her the hidden texts detailing the forgotten origins of light and dark. She fled to Aerryn's Drift, where Maelon and Solin had begun scribing not just names, but stories. There, she did not ask for shelter.
She asked for atonement.
And she brought with her something none of them expected: the Seventh Darkshard—formed not from peace or pain, but from responsibility. It pulsed with the weight of choices unmade and truths delayed too long.
They called it The Shard of Reckoning.
And when Solin touched it, he didn't glow.
He remembered every story he'd forgotten to tell.
Shall we journey into Chapter 8 next—perhaps to the fractured chamber where the Burnlight Protocol begins, or into the heart-minds of those who now carry both light and dark? The final chords are being tuned… and not every melody ends in triumph. 🌘🖤📜