The silence that followed their crossing through the Veil of Glass was not merely quiet—it was the absence of sound itself, a vacuum where even thought seemed reluctant to stir. Aelric stepped first, the ethereal shimmer of the archway fading behind him like a dream already half-forgotten. He was in a vast, domed chamber, the walls shaped from seamless black stone that gleamed faintly with embedded starlight. It felt neither underground nor within the sky, but suspended—adrift somewhere between realities.
Thalin stepped in behind him, his usually composed demeanor faltering for a breath. "This place is not in Eldoria," he murmured, eyes darting to the high curvature of the ceiling above. "Nor beyond it."
Liora emerged last, hand on her blade, instincts sharp. Her breath formed no mist, though the air was bitterly cold.
Aelric turned, but the archway was gone—no exit, no path. Just them and the hush of this strange sanctum.
At the center of the chamber rose a dais of dark crystal, cracked through the middle, bleeding silver motes into the air like a slow exhale. Upon it floated an object—round, polished like obsidian, with a single hollow point at its center that seemed to drink in light.
"The Hollow Star," Nyara whispered, her voice more sensation than sound, as she stepped out of shadow beside Aelric. Her starlit fur shimmered with cautious awe.
Aelric approached slowly. "This is the trial?" he asked.
"No," Nyara replied. "This... is what the trial revolves around."
Echoes of Buried Fates
As they explored the sanctum, shifting glyphs lit the floor in soft arcs of silver as they walked, revealing memories not their own. In one vision, a city of crystal burned beneath a broken sky. In another, a lone figure stood atop a tower of starlight, surrounded by endless void.
Thalin lingered at a glyph that depicted twelve figures circling the Hollow Star, cloaked in symbols of sun and storm and flame. He frowned. "This was a covenant. Old magic. The Hollow Star wasn't created—it was bound."
"Bound?" Liora echoed. "Then what is it now?"
"Unbound," Nyara replied grimly. "And watching."
Aelric stared into the orb again. His reflection did not meet his gaze—it turned away, as if ashamed.
Aelric's Vision
When his hand brushed the edge of the dais, a jolt coursed through Aelric's bones—not pain, but memory not his own.
He stood on a scorched plain, stars falling from the sky like broken glass. A woman stood across from him in a cloak of dying flame. Her eyes were his.
"You bear our weight now," she said, and her voice was filled with mourning. "But you are not ready."
"Who are you?" he asked, heart thundering.
"We are the one who failed. You are the one who must choose to end us."
The vision shattered.
Focusing on the Others
The weight of destiny often made Aelric the center, but this place revealed fractures within all of them.
Liora wandered to a secondary chamber, where walls glowed with amber light and flickered with scenes of a battlefield—not one of swords, but words. She saw herself kneeling at a grave, the names on it shifting between dozens. She clenched her fists.
"I never forget the ones I couldn't save," she whispered.
From the dark, a voice answered. "Then let them go."
She turned—no one was there.
In another corridor, Thalin faced a spiral of glowing runes that looped endlessly around a central void. A door stood in the middle, shut tight.
"What is this?" he asked Nyara, who had followed him silently.
"Your mind," she replied. "The part you locked away."
Thalin touched the handle, but the door would not move. "There are things I have done," he whispered. "Things I fear to remember."
"Not everything forgotten is meant to be lost," Nyara said gently.
The Voice in the Hollow
Back at the dais, Aelric sat cross-legged before the Hollow Star. The others returned, quieted by what they had seen.
The Hollow Star pulsed once.
Aelric stood. "It wants something," he said. "It's not a test. It's a request."
"What kind of request?" Liora asked.
Aelric's eyes flared faintly with silver. "A promise. It's asking if I'll carry its burden."
Thalin stepped forward. "And if you say no?"
"Then the power it holds dies here," Nyara said. "The last remnant of the Starborn is erased. But..."
"But if I say yes," Aelric said, "I become something more than I understand."
Nyara said nothing.
The Binding
Aelric placed both hands on the Hollow Star.
Light surged, but not outward—inward. It raced into his veins, into the marrow of his bones, into the thoughts he hadn't dared think. He saw the world unraveling—not in fire, but in silence. He saw a million futures where he failed. He saw one where he succeeded—and stood utterly alone.
"I accept," he whispered.
The light dimmed.
When he opened his eyes, the Hollow Star was gone. A mark, faint and silver, shimmered at the center of his chest beneath his tunic.
"You did not just pass the trial," Nyara said. "You became it."
The Return
The dome dissolved like fog lifting, revealing a quiet desert beyond. Aelric and the others stepped out onto shifting white sand beneath a starless sky. The Temple of the Hollow Star faded behind them like smoke.
They were not where they began. The world felt changed—less real, or perhaps more true.
"We go back to the Spire," Aelric said. "We prepare."
"For what?" Thalin asked.
"For what's coming."
The Endless Path
Nyara stared into the distance. "The Hollow Star was only one of the twelve. The echoes of the other Trials have awakened. Across the lands—some in flame, some buried in ice, others in the minds of those yet unborn."
Aelric looked up at the empty sky.
"One trial ends," he said. "And twelve more begin."
A wind rose, carrying the scent of ash and something older.
They began walking.
Toward whatever waited beyond the stars.
~to be continued