Malrec screamed.
But it wasn't the Beast's roar that echoed through the Hollow's canyons. It was his—ragged, human, and wounded. In the space between the Beast's mind and his own, something had cracked.
Chizzy had spoken his name.
Not with hatred.
Not as a curse.
But as if she knew him.
As if he mattered.
He staggered through the shattered landscape of his psyche—once a palace of darkness, now riddled with fissures glowing gold. Fragments of memory, long discarded, blinked at him like stars in a broken sky. The veil he had built over his past—woven from guilt, rage, and ambition—had begun to unravel.
"Malrec…"
Her voice haunted him still.
He saw her face—Chizzy's—bright with firelight and memory. And behind her, another face emerged from the fog of his soul. Softer. Familiar.
Liera.
He clutched his head, falling to his knees in the cavernous void that separated mind from monstrosity.
"No. No, I burned you from me. I severed that name. I became more than memory!"
But the truth seeped through anyway.
He hadn't always been this hollow vessel. Once, he had stood among the Keepers. He had worn the silver cords. He had guarded the Shard, not sought to possess it.
He had loved Liera.
And when she chose sacrifice over power, he shattered.
That was the day he let the void in. The day he cut himself from time and swore to erase all pain, all memory—believing forgetfulness would make him whole.
Instead, it made him nothing.
The Beast stirred beneath him, agitated. It thrashed in confusion, its form twitching with instability.
For the first time, they were no longer aligned.
"You… you hesitated," Malrec hissed, clutching his chest as if it would stop his soul from leaking. "You felt something."
The Beast didn't answer.
Because it didn't need to.
They were one—had always been—and yet now they weren't. The divide had begun. Chizzy's ritual had pierced the veil not just over the Hollow—but over him.
His fingers trembled as they hovered over the cracked stone altar within his sanctum. Once, this place had been filled with whispers of dark glory, of conquest and dominion over minds.
Now, all he heard were names.
Names he'd erased.
Faces he'd turned from.
He saw a boy holding a memory-glass pendant.
A girl laughing in a field of fire lilies.
A younger self reaching toward light—and being pulled away by shadows.
What have I become?
The question struck like a hammer to his chest. He gasped, the walls around him quaking. The spell runes flickered. Even the Beast—his prized creation—was losing coherence.
He stumbled toward the reflection pool, the one mirror he had never allowed to show his true face.
Tonight, it did.
He didn't recognize himself.
Gaunt. Pale. Eyes sunken not from age but absence. An echo of a man, stretched too thin over centuries of silence.
He reached for the mirror—and saw something shift within.
A boy.
Bright-eyed. Kind.
Still inside.
Still there.
He recoiled, panting. "No… I won't be undone by sentiment. I chose the void. I am the void!"
But his voice broke on the last word.
Because deep down, he knew the truth.
He was not the void.
He was fleeing it.
And Chizzy's voice had called him back from the edge.
The bond to the Beast strained. It twisted in defiance, trying to reassert dominance, to surge back toward the Hollow.
But now, the tether wavered.
Malrec staggered back into the shadows of his sanctum.
For the first time in centuries, the great destroyer hesitated.