The Hollow didn't wait patiently.
By morning, the house had shifted again.
The west corridor no longer led to the guest wing—it spiraled downward into unfamiliar stone, old and damp with moss. When Lyra stepped toward it, the air grew colder, like breath on the back of her neck. She didn't enter.
Not yet.
Velan stood at the edge of the threshold, staring down.
"It's remembering," he said.
Lyra looked at him. "You mean the Hollow?"
He nodded. "The old shape. The shape before the Vale was even settled. Before Elira. Before me."
She frowned. "What does it want me to see?"
Velan's eyes flicked to hers. "Not see. Feel. It's trying to bind you in its memory."
---
Elias didn't want her to go in.
"If it's rewriting the house," he said, "then it's rewriting you."
"I'm not afraid of it," Lyra answered, though that wasn't entirely true. "It already lives in me. I think it always has."
"You think that's a good thing?"
"I think I need to understand it."
She left him standing in the old hall, his face twisted with worry. The candles flickered behind him like the house was breathing.
---
The descent into the Hollow's memory was like walking into a wound.
The deeper Lyra went, the more distorted the walls became. They weren't stone anymore—they were root and bark, pulsing with reddish veins. The light came from somewhere unseen, a soft green glow like light filtered through leaves. She lost track of how many steps she took. Time unraveled.
Eventually, she reached a cavern.
It wasn't man-made. It had grown there.
And in the center was a basin, carved from what looked like petrified bone.
Inside, a surface of black water waited, still and thick as ink.
She knew what it was.
A memory pool.
---
Lyra stepped close and looked in.
She expected to see her own face—but instead, she saw a girl.
Not Elira. Not herself.
Someone older. Wilder.
Barefoot, hair tangled, eyes like burning coals. The girl knelt beside a grave and whispered into the earth.
And then the scene changed.
Flashes of rituals. A circle of villagers, chanting in a tongue Lyra didn't know but somehow understood. A man—Velan, younger and unburdened—stood at the center, palms bleeding into the ground. Roots twisted from his veins.
Then the Hollow—bare and vast—grew around them.
A sanctuary built on grief. On sacrifice.
The girl's voice whispered through the chamber.
We were never meant to build it. We were meant to hold it.
---
Lyra stepped back, gasping.
The cavern pulsed once, and a crack opened in the floor beside the basin. Inside it was a folded piece of cloth, sealed in wax.
Her fingers trembled as she took it out and broke the seal.
Inside was a sigil—a symbol she had never seen but somehow recognized. A circle of thorns around an open eye. At the center: a name written in red ink.
Amaris.
She staggered.
The name Velan had spoken.
The first memory. The true mother of the Hollow.
---
When Lyra emerged from the passage, hours had passed.
Elias ran to her. "Where did you go? I couldn't find you—I thought…"
She held up the sigil.
"I know the name," she said.
Velan appeared behind Elias, his expression unreadable. "Then you must decide how to speak it. Names carry weight."
Lyra looked at the symbol again. "It's not just a name. It's a door."
"Exactly," Velan said. "And once opened…"
"You can't close it," Elias finished.
---
That night, the mirror didn't whisper.
It watched.
And waited.