The Hollow Flame had no light.
It burned beneath the Wellspring—a slow, pulsing ember hidden beneath layers of stone, time, and grief. Few knew it existed. Fewer dared approach.
Seris descended alone.
She left her crown behind, left Kaelen's embrace, left the village where echoes still clung to the wind. What stirred beneath Solvyris was older than her titles. Older than her fire.
It required not a Sovereign.
But a seeker.
The cavern opened like a throat beneath the Citadel, swallowed in endless dark. The walls breathed with magic older than the bindings, raw, whispering, sad.
When she reached the core, the Hollow Flame greeted her.
Not with heat.
But with memory.
It flickered with no color, yet Seris saw every moment of her life ripple through its glow. The orchard. The first spark. Her mother's lullaby. Kaelen's hand on hers. The deaths. The screams. The fire she once used to forget.
And at the center of the flame—
—herself.
A girl. A shadow. A future. An echo.
> "You've come," it said.
She didn't flinch. "You've waited long enough."
> "You carry a crown. A pact. A world's hope."
"I carry their pain."
> "Then you may bear the veil."
The Hollow Flame rose, forming a spiral of silent fire. It didn't burn, didn't roar—it revealed. Threads of soul. Lines of fate.
Seris stepped into it.
And everything fell away.
---
She was nowhere.
Floating in a void laced with flame-ribbons and echo-shards. Around her spun scenes from lives never lived. Seris as a tyrant. Seris as a martyr. Seris vanishing in the Mirror War. Seris never born.
Every version of her twisted in a dance of possibility.
> "You are not just what you chose," said the voice of the Hollow Flame. "You are what you denied."
She gasped, catching a glimpse—Kaelen dead at her feet. Arin corrupted by the pact. Ashra chained by guilt. Flame devouring sky.
> "You walk the thread between light and loss."
> "Do you choose fire?"
> "Or the veil?"
Seris stood firm. "I choose the truth."
The void quieted.
Then the Hollow Flame entered her.
It didn't claim. It didn't scorch.
It wove.
Thread by thread, it layered into her magic—an undercurrent of knowing, of reflection deeper than the Mirror Realm's lies. Where the Sovereign's fire had brought strength, this new power brought understanding.
The Veil of the Hollow Flame.
She opened her eyes.
And she was back.
---
Ashra and Arin met her at the Citadel's threshold, their faces pale with fear and wonder.
"You went where no Sovereign's stepped since the Sundering," Ashra breathed.
"You shouldn't be standing," Arin said.
"I'm not," Seris replied. "I'm becoming."
She looked down at her hands. Her flames no longer danced red and gold. They shimmered in silent tones of glass-fire—opaque, resonant, impossible.
"I see now," she said. "The Shadow can't be burned away. It must be named. Known. Bound through truth."
Kaelen emerged from the courtyard, his gaze finding hers.
"What did you bring back?" he asked.
She looked up toward the sky, where stars had begun to realign.
"Not a weapon."
She turned to them all, voice steady.
"A mirror. For the world to face itself."
---
At dawn, the sky cracked.
Over the far eastern peaks, a new rift tore through reality—not fire, not illusion. But silence incarnate.
The Shadow had found its path.
And this time, it did not hide.
It came wearing a face.
Seris's.
But hollow.
Her reflection walked through the breach, dressed in soot and mourning, wearing no crown—only sorrow. Its eyes were endless. Its presence stilled the wind.
The Mirror Queen's last spell, warped by something deeper.
"A memory?" Arin asked, frozen.
"No," Seris whispered. "A possibility."
The Hollow Seris smiled, bitter.
> "You think you've chosen. But every choice leaves a ghost."
The Sovereign's Crown flared in warning.
But Seris did not attack.
Instead, she stepped forward and held out her hand.
"Then let's meet."
Their palms touched.
And fire met shadow.
Echo met flame.
The world held its breath.