It felt like drowning in starlight.
Maelin's fingers, pressed to the heart of the Hollow Light, pulsed with both agony and warmth. She wasn't just touching it — she was inside it. Memory, regret, sorrow, brilliance — they were woven together in a tapestry of broken dreams that once belonged to the Choir's greatest singer.
Liraen.
She saw it now.
The Hollow Light wasn't his body.
It was his grief.
The pieces of his soul, shattered across millennia, had gathered here not to conquer…
…but to be remembered.
Inside the light, the fragments whispered in melodies unfinished. The notes trembled with confusion, as if waiting for something they no longer believed in.
> "You remember them," Maelin whispered, "don't you?"
The light quivered.
> "The ones who sang with you. The ones who feared what they couldn't understand. But you were never trying to end the stars…"
She closed her eyes.
> "You were trying to warn them."
A shape emerged in the glow — faint, spectral — Liraen, not as a god or monster, but as a man, eyes full of sorrow.
"Why now?" he asked.
"Because I listened," Maelin said, voice steady. "And I heard what you were really saying."
The Celestial Locket flared once more — not with violence, but with harmony. For the first time, the broken lines of the Whisper aligned.
Seven stars.
One note.
A final refrain.
> Maelin didn't destroy Liraen.
She sang him home.
The Hollow Light shattered — not like glass, but like mist under morning sun. The darkness unraveled, and with it, the endless loop of futures that had always ended the same way.
The Whisper fell silent.
And so did Maelin.
---
Outside the Gate
The obsidian monolith crumbled.
Eira stepped forward as Maelin collapsed into Caelum's arms. Her eyes were closed, her face pale, but she was breathing.
"She did it," Eira said softly. "She found the note we never could."
Caelum brushed dust from Maelin's brow. "But what did it cost her?"
Eira looked to the stars.
They were realigned.
But one was missing.