The wind changed.
It wasn't the scent that caught David's attention—it was the absence of it. As he descended the mountain range east of Myndros, where even silence should have rustled with dry leaves or the cry of distant hawks, there was nothing. The stillness was too complete. It was as if the air itself was holding its breath.
He paused, one hand on the old stone of a weathered cliffside, and closed his eyes.
Mana.
It no longer flowed here. Not into him, nor around him.
His Well remained intact—always filling, always refining—but the world around him was different. Hollowed.
And that was when he felt it.
A presence—not hostile, not violent, but aware. Something vast and watching.
He followed the sensation into the Valley of Kethera, a forgotten expanse buried between cliff walls so high they kissed the clouds. Its name had faded from memory, but the mana—thin and wounded here—whispered its name to David through the Well.
In the center of the valley stood a massive stone structure: circular, smooth, domed, and covered in thousands of etched symbols spiraling inward toward a massive central eye carved into the stone.
He knew instinctively: this was the Eye of the Hollow.
And it had been waiting for him.
As he stepped across the threshold of the great circle, the world blinked.
Not visually—spiritually.
The land fell away, and David stood in an endless void of shifting stars and black fog.
Then the Eye opened.
It was not a creature, not an entity in the traditional sense. It was a convergence of perception. A wound in the world that looked back.
"You seek to rise, Wellborn."
The voice was felt, not heard. It vibrated along his ribs, inside his skull, deep in his spine.
"I do."
"Why?"
"To become whole," David answered without hesitation.
"And if wholeness costs the world?"
David narrowed his eyes. "Then I will change the world's shape."
The Eye pulsed. Then the fog parted, revealing images—not imagined, but possible. Worlds where David lost control. Cities flattened. Oceans torn as mana overflowed. Innocents scorched in invisible fire.
"All Wells rise. But most... collapse."
"I am not like them."
"They thought the same."
The Eye shifted. A figure stepped forth from the mist: a version of David. Taller. Radiant. But wrong.
His face was blank. His mana wasn't flowing—it was consuming. Pulling everything inward.
The Hollow's Echo.
It lunged.
The battle was unlike any David had faced.
His double matched him blow for blow, each movement a mirror. But where David's mana harmonized with the world, the Echo's devoured it. The air warped, the ground cracked.
David focused.
He couldn't overwhelm this enemy—not with raw force. Every surge of power fed the Hollow's Echo, just as it had during the Trial of Myndros. This wasn't a fight of might—it was a test of foundation.
He centered his breath. Called the Well to flow not outward, but inward—into his awareness.
He stepped aside, letting the Echo's fist pass within an inch of his skin, then struck—not at the body, but at the connection.
A ripple passed between them. The Echo staggered.
David spoke quietly.
"You're not me. You're only what I would become… if I lost why I grow."
The Eye closed.
The void returned to the valley, and David stood alone before the ancient stone. Except now, the carvings were gone. The symbols had vanished.
He turned—and found someone waiting.
A woman, wrapped in gray robes, her face veiled in silk. Her presence was calm, but behind it, David sensed immense strength.
"You survived the Eye," she said.
"I was never meant to fight it," he answered. "Only to understand it."
She nodded. "Then you're ready."
"For what?"
She motioned to the forest path behind her.
"To learn the origin of the Hollow—and the fate of the Wells who came before you."
They traveled in silence through the dying woods. Here, the trees bore blackened leaves, and the streams shimmered unnaturally, mana corrupted by absence. David felt the Well inside him resisting the place, like a body rejecting poison.
"Who are you?" he asked as they crossed a broken bridge.
"I was once like you," the woman said. "A vessel. I was called Maelin."
David stopped. "You're—"
"A failed Well, yes." She did not flinch. "I burned too brightly. I consumed more than I was meant to guide. I reached the edge of strength and forgot the path of soul."
He lowered his gaze.
"I don't feel that in you."
Maelin smiled faintly. "Because I severed myself from it before it devoured everything I loved."
They reached a clearing where stone markers jutted from the earth like bones.
"These are the names of the ones who fell."
David read them silently—each one once like him, each one failed not by weakness, but imbalance.
Maelin knelt. "The Hollow was not born. It was left behind."
She told him the story.
Once, long ago, the Well was not rare. It flowed through many. But the world feared such endless strength. Kings turned on vessels. Temples weaponized them. The Wells grew in secret, hidden, hunted.
Some tried to reach perfection through dominance.
They lost themselves.
The Hollow was born from one such soul. A man named Arkan. The first to fully become the Well.
But instead of being a source, he became a sink—feeding endlessly, erasing everything in his path.
The world struck him down. But the scar he left behind—the will of hunger—remained.
That will became the Hollow.
And now, it stirs again.
David stood long after Maelin finished speaking. The wind carried no leaves here, only silence.
"How do I stop it?"
"You don't," she said. "You surpass it."
He turned to her.
"You don't fight hunger. You nourish. You don't destroy the dark. You shine. If you try to crush the Hollow, it will swallow you. But if you rise so high it cannot reach…"
He understood.
The only way forward was upward. Not in power alone—but in wisdom, clarity, restraint, and truth.
That night, he meditated under stars that barely pierced the blighted mist. He reached inward, not to feed, but to understand. He no longer saw mana as fuel. It was a language. A way the world communicated with those willing to listen.
And in that stillness, the Well stirred differently.
Not faster.
Deeper.
He was beginning to become something else. Not just a warrior. Not a weapon.
A Way.
In the distance, across the scorched lands, deep beneath the old empire's ruins, the Hollow pulsed.
It had felt his understanding.
And it feared.
For the first time in an age, it remembered pain.