He smiled, and this time, it reached his eyes.
But deep down he knew the shadow inside him wasn’t done whispering.
Neither was the Hollow.
TWENTY-NINE
SERAPHINE
Cassian didn’t sleep that night.
Neither did she.
They sat shoulder to shoulder, backs against cracked obsidian, watching the embers of their fire flicker like they were afraid of the dark too.
She’d brought him back. But something had changed.
He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.
She couldfeelit. This new weight to his presence, like stormfire wrapped in shadow. Still him… but not only him. The Hollow had touched him. Left its mark. And yet, she hadn’t let go of his hand once.
Not even when the wind began to whisper again. Or when the final shard called to him.
He turned to her just before dawn, jaw clenched, eyes glowing faintly like twilight caught behind stormclouds.
“I know where the next one is.”
She didn’t ask how. She nodded.
“Let’s finish this.”
An ancient sanctum carved from volcanic glass and bone, hidden beneath the ruins of a forgotten House. One soold its name had been scorched from the tongues of every recordkeeper.
They passed beneath an archway chiseled with jagged glyphs—half Drakar, half something older, almost fungal in shape. No banners. No light. Just walls that shimmered faintly, slick with heat and age, like the stone itself remembered suffering.
It was said the House had fallen to fire before the First Empire ever drew its first breath. Not war. Not betrayal.
Sacrifice.
Now, that sacrifice sang again.
The path opened only to those who had touched both sides of the Veil. Those who haddied,and clawed their way back.
Cassian’s blood had already paid the toll.
That was why the wards didn’t pulse red when they passed. That was why the black tunnels didn’t swallow them whole.
The air felt different down here—like it was breathing. Each gust was slow and unnatural, dragging across her skin with a wetness that made her stomach churn. The walls weren’t solid. They throbbed. Trembled. As if they were stitched from old lungs that hadn’t yet realized they were dead.
very footstep echoed with something more than sound.
It was memory.
Warning.
Grief.
They walked in silence. She didn’t trust her voice not to crack. Not after what they’d been through. Not with the way the Hollowborn had moved lately—erratic, like they’d been severed from something vital. Or warned of something worse.
