The instant Jonas's hand touched the Hollow King's, the air collapsed inward—not like an explosion, but like an ancient scroll snapping shut.
Time blinked.
Oshael, the crumbling capital, vanished.
Elena's voice fractured into silence.
Elric's blades froze mid-swing.
The blood-soaked Whisperrot stood paralyzed—like statues caught between breaths.
And Jonas…
…was no longer in the world he knew.
Somewhere Else
He was falling.
Not in any direction the body understands—not up or down—but inward, through centuries, through regrets, through a spiritual descent so deep the soul ached to remain.
The sensation was both infinite and intimate.
He fell through whispers of lullabies never sung, through fatherless memories, through cold ashes of lineages burnt by betrayal.
And then—water.
He plunged into a sea as vast as the first grief of the world. It was thick as oil, black as regret, and colder than death.
When Jonas surfaced, gasping, he found himself alone in a place that could not exist—a moonless void floating above an ocean of memory.
The sky above was bleeding slowly.
And the water whispered his name—not aloud, but from beneath the skin.
He crawled onto a shore made of bones.
Hundreds of thousands of them. Human. Wolf. Something else. Fossilized in rows that formed a path toward a distant citadel forged from obsidian, glass, and broken promises.
Above it hovered a twisted moon—bleeding sideways—as if the universe itself was trying to forget its own creation.
Jonas rose slowly. The Hollowbrand on his chest was no longer dormant—it pulsed in sync with the ground beneath his feet. Every beat echoed through the marrow of the world.
> This is the Gate, he thought.
The place they all feared. The place they locked away.
But what terrified him most wasn't the strangeness of the landscape.
It was how familiar it all felt.
The Path of Remembering
As Jonas walked, illusions formed around him—not from the ground or sky, but from within. The Gate was memory, living and hungry, and it peeled the truth from his soul like skin from fruit.
The first vision struck him like lightning:
He was a child in the arms of his mother—her face younger but weary. They stood at the edge of a silver river, moonlight rippling across the water. She was humming a song—one that had no words, only mourning.
She touched his forehead and whispered,
> "You were never meant to carry this alone."
Then the memory twisted.
His mother was before the Council of the Whisperfangs, kneeling, pleading.
> "Let him grow without the mark. Please — he is not like the others."
A robed figure raised a hand. "The Gate chose him. We do not argue with the Gate."
> "Then curse you all," she spat. "When the Gate opens again, it will devour more than him."
The vision cracked like glass.
Jonas staggered.
> "My mother… she tried to stop this."
He walked faster, his heartbeat racing. The path narrowed as shadow figures flanked him, whispering his name in a thousand dialects. Some called him "Savior." Others, "The Hollowspawn."
The next vision was worse.
He saw the birth of the Gate.
Not as a curse.
But as a creation.
The first Whisperfang kings had stood in a circle of stone, offering memory as sacrifice—cutting out the past from their bloodlines so they could build kingdoms without guilt.
They carved the Gate to hold their sins.
They used wolves as vessels.
And they made a pact with the Hollow—a sentient abyss, a thing that lived in the space between time and intention.
> "You were made to end this," a voice echoed inside his skull.
> "Or to begin it anew."
The Citadel of the Hollow
Jonas arrived at the gate of the obsidian fortress.
Its walls were smooth but shimmered with trapped faces—not screaming, not angry—just remembering. Each one was a fragment of someone once bound to the Whisperfang legacy.
He entered the hall.
And at the throne's base stood the Hollow King, draped in robes stitched from the shadows of moons long dead. His crown flickered like a flame starving in the wind.
But his eyes…
They were Jonas's eyes.
Only tired. Heavy. Ancient.
> "You're not my ancestor," Jonas said.
The Hollow King's voice was neither loud nor soft. It simply was.
> "I'm your outcome."
Jonas approached the throne.
"Why did they fear you?" he asked.
"Because I remembered what they wanted to forget."
He stepped down from the dais and pointed toward the walls. "The Whisperfangs were not cursed. They were cowards. They locked away the parts of themselves that hurt… and it grew into me."
Jonas narrowed his gaze. "And now you want me to join you?"
The Hollow King tilted his head.
"I want you to choose. I never had that luxury."
He lifted his palm.
The Gate responded.
It opened another memory.
But not Jonas's this time.
It was the Hollow King's.
A young man.
Laughing.
Running through the highland temples with a girl with green eyes.
Moonbinders.
Innocent. In love. Whole.
Until the Council ordered the girl's memory sacrificed—she knew too much about the true history of the Gate.
The young man resisted.
They branded him.
Locked him inside the Gate.
Gave him a title—King of the Hollow.
But he was no king.
He was their scapegoat.
Jonas fell to his knees.
> "You were me," he whispered.
> "I was everyone," the Hollow King replied.
He placed a hand on Jonas's shoulder.
"You can walk back. Close the gate. Pretend none of this was true. Or…"
The shadows deepened.
"…you can open it wider—let the truth reshape the world."
Jonas looked up.
"I don't want vengeance."
"No," the Hollow King said, eyes burning. "You want freedom. But freedom without truth is just a prettier prison."
Suddenly, the walls shattered—and from beyond the citadel, a storm of howls pierced the sky.
Jonas turned.
Outside, in Oshael, the world was screaming.
Elena was fighting alone. Elric's blood was on the stone. Elias stood in a protective circle, chanting desperately.
The Whisperrot had begun to merge—forming something bigger.
Something ancient.
Jonas stood.
"I'm not like you."
The Hollow King smiled.
"You were never meant to be."
Jonas extended his arms.
The Hollowbrand ignited.
He screamed.
And the Gate obeyed.
The ocean of memory began to boil.
All of history—the blood, the betrayal, the silence—rushed into Jonas like a tidal wave.
He remembered everything.
Every king.
Every lie.
Every wolf who died believing they were cursed.
And when he opened his mouth again, he didn't howl.
He commanded.
> "Let me back."
The Gate split.
And Jonas rose like judgment reborn.
Above Oshael, the moon cracked.
A blinding beam of ancestral flame tore through the city, and for a single breath, all the Whisperrot stopped.
Then, from the broken sky...
Jonas returned.