The Hollow hadn't changed much—still sagging under the weight of memory and moss. Trees leaned in close as if whispering secrets too old for daylight, and the air, damp with rot and regret, clung to every breath.
Kaelen drew his cloak tighter. Not from cold. He wasn't cold. Not anymore.
The path they followed had once been clear, beaten down by the boots of pilgrims and fools. Now it twisted through brambles that tugged at hems and hissed at ankles. Behind him, Mareth grunted, slicing a vine from her shoulder with a small curse.
"Do we really have to go through with this?" she muttered.
Kaelen didn't answer.
Further back, Fenn's footsteps slowed. "We could still turn around," he said, eyes scanning the overgrowth. "Nobody would blame us."
"I would," Kaelen said, and kept walking.
At the edge of the clearing, the Hollow came into view—not just the place, but the people. Or what remained of them. The gathering had already begun, cloaked figures standing in silence beneath the twisted old tree, its blackened bark like veins against the grey sky.
"They're waiting," Mareth whispered.
Kaelen nodded. "Let them."
They crossed into the clearing like ghosts returning to a haunted house—uninvited, unwelcomed, but not unexpected.
A tall man stepped forward. Elder Nyel, still wearing the same weathered bone charm around his throat. The wind shifted, and the smell of ash carried with it the bitter sting of old fires and older betrayals.
"You came back," Nyel said. His voice was gravel and dusk.
Kaelen bowed his head slightly, neither defiant nor apologetic. "We said we would."
Nyel's gaze flicked to Mareth, then to Fenn, pausing longer on the latter. "You were warned. The Hollow does not forget."
Fenn's lips pressed into a line. Mareth stepped beside him, hand resting loosely on the hilt of her blade.
Kaelen took a breath. "We didn't come to be forgiven. We came to make it right."
A murmur passed through the gathered crowd. Low. Uncertain.
Nyel raised a hand and silence returned. "Then speak your truth. But know this: words weigh less here than deeds."
Kaelen nodded. "Then let the weight fall where it must."
They gathered around the old firepit—now cold, its stones blackened and cracked. A ring of remembrance, where truth had once been spoken and oaths broken like brittle twigs.
Kaelen stepped inside its boundary. Mareth followed, hesitant. Fenn lingered, then crossed it as if stepping into his own grave.
"I took the Eye of Theros," Kaelen said. No flourish. No explanation. Just the truth, heavy and dull.
Gasps, sharp as flint, leapt from the crowd. Someone swore. Someone else spit in the dust.
Nyel's eyes narrowed. "Why admit it now?"
"Because hiding it broke more than revealing it ever could," Kaelen replied. "Because pretending to be better doesn't make you so."
"You speak like a martyr," a voice snapped—a woman in red leathers, face streaked with soot. "But your choices nearly killed us all."
Kaelen looked at her. "And I've lived with that."
The woman stepped forward. "Then you'll die with it."
Mareth moved between them before the threat could spark violence. "He's not here to beg," she said. "We're here to finish what we started—one way or another."
The woman's glare flicked to Mareth, then to the sword at her side.
"Blood or penance," Nyel intoned, ritualistic.
Kaelen didn't flinch. "Then name the price."
The night drew its curtain early, smothering the clearing in indigo gloom. Torches flared to life, casting gold halos that flickered with each whispered breath.
Nyel paced the ring. "Penance cannot be given. It must be earned. And blood cannot be spilled in shadow. Not anymore."
Kaelen's voice was low. "Then how?"
A rustle answered. From the crowd emerged a child—barefoot, face pale beneath wild hair. In her small hands, she held the broken talisman of Theros, bound with silver twine.
"This," Nyel said, "was once a covenant. Broken by your greed. Mended by her innocence."
The child approached Kaelen. Her gaze was unblinking.
"What do you see?" he asked her.
She tilted her head. "A man with too many pieces missing."
A beat of silence. Then Kaelen knelt, not in supplication but in surrender—to the truth, to the eyes that saw through it.
"I'm trying to find them again," he whispered.
The girl placed the talisman at his feet. "Then start here."
Mareth watched the exchange with something like hope blooming cautiously behind her ribs. Not trust—never that again—but a seed of something lighter.
Fenn, arms crossed, leaned toward her. "Do you think this will work?"
"No," she said, honest. "But it might matter anyway."
The crowd seemed to shift—not in position but in presence. The air softened. Even the fire hissed quieter.
Nyel spoke once more. "You will remain here. For three nights. Tend the Hollow. Hear its voices. Let its silence answer you."
Kaelen nodded. "And if it finds us wanting?"
"Then it will know," Nyel said simply. "And so will we."
As the torches guttered, the crowd dispersed, some with grim glances, others with something more fragile. The child lingered a moment longer, then turned back into the trees.
Kaelen sat where the fire used to burn, hands resting on his knees.
No chains. No judgment. Just waiting.
The Hollow would decide.
By the second night, Kaelen heard them—whispers not from mouths, but from stone, from roots, from the sigh of wind through hollow bark.
They spoke of betrayals old and fresh, of bonds twisted into garrotes, of truth worn thin by fear. Each word pressed against his chest like a weight. But he bore it. He must.
Mareth tended a vine-choked shrine, her hands black with soil and soot. Fenn gathered wood from the deadfall, though his gaze lingered often on the tree at the clearing's edge—the one that had once hung justice by its throat.
That night, the child returned. No words. Just her small hand pressing the talisman into his palm again. Then gone.
Kaelen didn't ask why.
He only closed his fingers around it, and let the weight settle in his palm like the first stone of rebuilding.
On the third morning, the Hollow was quiet—not empty, not still, but expectant.
Kaelen rose before the others. The firepit was still cold, but something in the air had changed. The kind of silence that follows an answer, not a question.
He stood alone in the center, talisman in hand.
"I was wrong," he said aloud. "Not just in action. In belief. I thought strength meant control. I thought redemption was a story told after the end."
He paused. Let the words sink into the earth.
"But the Hollow... it's not just a place. It's what remains. And maybe... what begins again."
Leaves rustled. Somewhere, a bird called.
Mareth stepped beside him, face unreadable. "So?"
He offered her the talisman.
"Now," he said, "we see if it's enough."
That night, they stayed awake beside a newly lit fire. Not one of punishment, but of presence.
Villagers returned in trickles. Not to forgive, not yet—but to witness. Children peeked from behind tree trunks. The woman in red leathers offered bread, roughly torn but shared.
No grand proclamations followed. Just tasks done in silence, meals eaten in slow trust, the world exhaling its fear inch by inch.
Kaelen watched Mareth laugh—just once, low and short, but real. Fenn fell asleep beside a stump, his arms behind his head, no weapon near.
The talisman rested on the stones now, not worn but placed. Not a burden. A marker.
Kaelen stretched his legs toward the flames and closed his eyes.
The Hollow breathed.
And for once, he let himself believe they could too.
The final morning rose soft and colorless, wrapped in fog like wool. Dew clung to every blade of grass, and the birds had not yet remembered their songs.
Kaelen stood before the old tree—its twisted branches reaching like questions.
Nyel approached from the mist, hands folded.
"You listened," he said.
Kaelen nodded. "I did."
"And did you hear?"
Kaelen thought of the whispers, the silence, the child's eyes, the laughter beside the fire. "Yes."
Nyel studied him for a long moment. Then he extended his hand.
"You may leave the Hollow. But do not leave what you've found here."
Kaelen took the offered hand, rough and warm. "I won't."
He turned back to Mareth and Fenn, already packed and waiting.
As they walked away, the Hollow behind them faded into mist. But something stayed with them—lighter than regret, quieter than forgiveness.
A beginning, perhaps.
They followed no marked trail—just a sense, a leaning of the land that nudged them forward. Birds returned by noon, tentative melodies stitching the silence.
Mareth broke a twig beneath her boot. "Do you think they'll come for us again?"
"No," Kaelen said. "Not if we carry this right."
Fenn glanced back. "What if we don't?"
Kaelen smiled—small, worn. "Then the Hollow will call us home."
They camped that night beside a stream, its water silvered by moonlight. Mareth hung her blade from a branch, let it swing like a wind chime. Fenn told a story he barely remembered, and Kaelen laughed once.
When they lay down, it was without watch, without plan.
Above them, stars blinked through the branches—soft, flickering things. Not promises. Just presence.
And Kaelen slept with the talisman beneath his head, not for guilt, but for comfort.
In the days that followed, they found no need to speak of what had passed. Not because it hurt—but because it had settled. Like dust. Like truth.
Each village they entered greeted them with cautious eyes, but no stones. No scorn.
Rumors shifted. They were no longer thieves or deserters. Just travelers, perhaps touched by something old. Something that listened.
Mareth traded stories for food. Fenn sang once in a tavern and earned applause. Kaelen walked ahead, but not alone.
One evening, they passed a shrine built in the shape of a tree. Its bark carved with names, its roots coiled with vines of memory.
Kaelen paused. Ran his fingers along the carving of a child's handprint.
And smiled.
Rain came soft and steady, draping the world in silver hush.
They took shelter beneath a collapsed archway, moss-covered and ancient, bones of a ruin too old to name.
Mareth lit a fire with dry kindling she'd kept in her cloak. Fenn passed around a flask. No words—just warmth.
Kaelen stared into the flames. The talisman hung now from his wrist, tied with a bit of Mareth's braid. Not sacred. Not forgotten.
"You look lighter," she said, half a smile beneath her hood.
He shrugged. "Maybe I'm just tired."
"Good tired?"
"The kind that comes after surviving something you thought would break you."
She nodded. "Then rest. The road's not done yet."
He leaned back against the stone, eyes closing to the sound of fire, rain, and distant thunder.
In a dream, Kaelen stood in the Hollow again—alone this time. But it wasn't the same. The trees were younger. The air warmer. The silence kind.
The child approached, older now, eyes wise and worn.
"You kept it," she said, nodding to the talisman.
"I did."
"And did it help?"
Kaelen looked at his hands. At the lines carved by choices, old and new. "I think it reminded me I could."
The girl smiled, not with joy, but with understanding. "Then that's enough."
He woke with dawn in his eyes and a soft ache behind his ribs.
The fire was out. The rain had stopped. And the road waited—patient, winding, and entirely theirs.
They moved with ease now—less as fugitives, more as fragments becoming whole. The path beneath their boots held no dread, only direction.
At a fork in the road, they paused.
"Left leads toward the cities," Mareth said, reading the weathered sign.
"Right toward the coast," Fenn added, shielding his eyes from the rising sun.
Kaelen didn't answer immediately. He closed his eyes, listened—not for voices, but for the quiet that followed them.
"Right," he said. "Let's see what waits by the sea."
They turned without ceremony. Just three travelers and a road.
Behind them, the Hollow lay hidden in forest and fog.
Ahead, the world waited. And Kaelen, for the first time in a long time, felt ready to meet it.
At dusk, they found a hill overlooking the valley—a quiet place to stop.
Kaelen sat apart, watching the sun melt behind purple ridges. In his palm, the talisman gleamed faintly, its edges smoothed by days of holding, not hiding.
"Think it's over?" Fenn asked, settling beside him.
Kaelen shook his head. "Not over. Just... not the same."
Mareth joined them with three mugs of tea, steam curling like ghosts. She passed one to Kaelen, her fingers brushing his.
"To endings," she said.
Kaelen raised his mug. "And to whatever comes next."
They drank as stars blinked awake.
The fire crackled. A wind stirred the grass.
And in that still moment, with no monsters looming and no lies between them, Kaelen smiled.
Small. Honest. Enough.
They walked for hours the next day, until the forest thinned and the air carried the salt-slick tang of the sea.
The cliffs came suddenly—sheer drops dressed in wild grass and gull cries. Below, the ocean churned against the rocks like it had a grudge against the land.
Kaelen stood at the edge, boots inches from the fall. He let the wind shove through his cloak, strip his hair of its careful knots.
Mareth joined him, squinting. "You ever been to the coast?"
He shook his head. "I never thought I'd get this far."
Fenn flopped onto the grass. "Let's not make it dramatic. It's a view. A damn good one, sure, but a view."
Kaelen chuckled. "Sometimes that's enough."
They stayed until sunset bled the sea red.
And for the first time, Kaelen didn't brace for what might follow.
They made camp among sea-blown grasses, the fire crackling low between stones warmed by sun.
Fenn found driftwood shaped like a bird and set it beside the flame. Mareth traced runes into the dirt—nothing binding, just memory work.
Kaelen lay on his back, eyes fixed on the stars. No constellations he knew. Just light, scattered and stubborn.
"What now?" Mareth asked.
Kaelen turned his head. "Now we keep going. Not because we have to. Because we can."
Fenn snorted. "Poetic."
Mareth smiled. "Let him have it."
Kaelen closed his eyes, the talisman cool against his chest.
The Hollow was behind them. The road ahead.
And within him, something whole enough to carry.