The golden light spilling from the massive doorway was warm, but it wasn’t comforting.

  It was too perfect, too still—like a sun frozen in time.

  Sorin stood at the threshold, muscles still tight from the battle with the Keeper. His breath was uneven, his sword still humming faintly with remnants of the Echo’s power. The cavern behind him was eerily silent, the masked figures watching but offering no guidance.

  "The path is open," they had said.

  "The Hollow King may enter."

  Sorin swallowed. His heart was pounding.

  The title still didn’t feel real, didn’t feel like his. But the way the Echo had surged in his veins, the way the ruins seemed to recognize him, whispered otherwise.

  And the door—

  It was calling him.

  "Well," Aeris muttered beside him, arms crossed. "Are we going in, or are we just gonna stand here until whatever the hell that thing was decides to wake up again?"

  She was still tense from the fight, a cut on her cheek where flying debris had grazed her. But her voice was steady. She was trying to keep things light, but Sorin could tell—she was unnerved.

  She hadn’t seen the visions.

  She hadn’t heard the voices.

  Sorin exhaled. His grip tightened around his sword.

  Then, without another word—he stepped forward.

  The moment Sorin passed through the doorway, the warmth swallowed him whole.

  The golden light surged around him, and for an instant, he felt weightless—like he was suspended in a sea of something vast and unknowable. The air shifted. The ground beneath him changed.

  Then—

  He was somewhere else.

  The cavern was gone.

  Instead, Sorin stood on a bridge of white stone, stretching endlessly through an abyss of swirling gold and black.

  He turned sharply, expecting to see Aeris behind him.

  But—

  She wasn’t there.

  "Aeris?"

  His voice barely made a sound, swallowed by the vastness around him.

  Panic twisted in his gut. He whirled back toward the path ahead.

  A city stood before him.

  No—not a city.

  A tomb.

  The bridge led to a city of monoliths, carved from dark stone, stretching toward an impossible sky. Enormous, crumbling spires loomed over an empty landscape, each one adorned with symbols Sorin should not have been able to read—yet somehow, he could.

  The language of the Hollow.

  The city was long abandoned, yet the air hummed with an unseen presence. Shadows flickered at the edges of his vision, shapes shifting just beyond his ability to perceive them.

  Sorin’s heartbeat quickened.

  He took a slow step forward. Then another.

  The air shifted.

  Then—a voice.

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  "You have returned at last."

  Sorin froze.

  The voice was deep, resonant, and carried the weight of something that had existed far longer than he had. It wasn’t a whisper—it was a statement.

  Sorin turned, gripping his sword—

  And found himself face-to-face with a figure of living shadow.

  It was humanoid in shape, but its form was not flesh. It was woven from darkness, wrapped in shifting layers of ancient, blackened cloth. A featureless mask covered where its face should have been, carved with the same glowing symbols that littered the city.

  But the eyes—

  They burned with the same light as Sorin’s Echo.

  "Do you know what this place is?" the figure asked.

  Sorin clenched his jaw. "No."

  The Warden tilted its head. Examining him.

  "You do not lie. That is good. But you will remember, in time."

  Sorin’s grip on his sword tightened. "Who are you?"

  The Warden lifted a hand, fingers flickering like smoke.

  "I am the last Keeper of the Hollow Crown. The final guardian of what was lost."

  It stepped forward. The space around it warped, as if the very world bent beneath its presence.

  "And you, Sorin, are the one who abandoned it."

  Sorin’s grip on his sword tightened.

  "The one who abandoned it?"

  The words struck something deep inside him, but his mind refused to recognize them.

  He had never been here before.

  He had never seen this city.

  And yet—his Echo was stirring, reacting to this place, to the Warden, to the ancient whispers curling through the air.

  Like it knew.

  Like it remembered.

  Sorin exhaled sharply, planting his feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The Warden did not move.

  "You will."

  Then, without warning, it attacked.

  Sorin barely had time to react.

  The Warden moved like a shadow, flickering across the space between them in an instant. Its arm lashed forward—not solid, not flesh, but a shifting blade of darkness.

  Sorin’s instincts screamed.

  He dodged, twisting out of the way as the shadow-blade cut through the air beside him. A cold wind whipped past his skin, sending a violent shudder through his Echo.

  This wasn’t a normal opponent.

  This thing wasn’t bound by the same laws of reality he was.

  Sorin pushed forward, slashing with his sword.

  The runes along the blade blazed, reacting to the strange energy in the air. But the Warden was already gone, flickering away like mist before the strike could land.

  Sorin’s feet barely touched the ground before the next attack came.

  A wave of black fire surged toward him—not real flame, but something deeper, something hungry.

  Sorin had no choice.

  He raised his Echo.

  A burst of power flared from his core, an invisible force colliding with the incoming darkness. The air shook as the two forces clashed, sending shockwaves rippling across the ruined city.

  Sorin gritted his teeth. His Echo was strong, but this thing—this Warden—was something else entirely.

  This wasn’t just an enemy.

  This was a test.

  The realization struck him just as the Warden spoke again.

  "Show me, Hollow King. Have you truly forgotten yourself?"

  The Warden vanished—then reappeared directly behind him.

  Sorin whirled, barely managing to block as the creature’s shadow-blade came down like an executioner’s strike. The impact shook his entire body, the sheer force of it sending cracks through the stone beneath him.

  He stumbled back.

  The Warden didn’t press the attack. It simply watched.

  "Your body still remembers the way of battle," it murmured.

  "But your soul—"

  The Warden’s burning eyes narrowed.

  "Your soul is still asleep."

  Something in Sorin snapped.

  The Echo surged.

  Not on instinct. Not on reflex. But because something inside him was responding.

  A shape. A symbol. A flicker of something he should not have known, yet did.

  Sorin’s hand moved on its own.

  A second blade—not real, not physical, but carved from the same blue fire as his Echo—ignited in his free hand.

  The Warden stilled.

  "Ah," it whispered. "There you are."

  Sorin didn’t understand.

  But his body did.

  He launched forward.

  For the first time in the fight, the Warden was forced to defend.

  Aeris burst through the ruins, heart pounding.

  Sorin had vanished.

  One second, he had stepped through the gate. The next—he was gone.

  The masked figures remained where they were, unmoving, unbothered.

  "Where is he?!" she had demanded.

  "The Hollow King has entered the Gate," one of them had replied simply.

  "Then let me through."

  "You cannot follow."

  Aeris had drawn a knife before she could stop herself. "Try me."

  The figures did not react to the threat. They only gestured toward the stone glowing faintly where the doorway had been.

  "The Gate only allows one. It is his Trial. If he fails, he will not return."

  Aeris’s breath had caught in her throat.

  "And if he succeeds?"

  "Then the world will change."

  She didn’t like that answer.

  And she sure as hell wasn’t going to just sit here and wait.

  If there was a way to break through, she was going to find it.

  She took off deeper into the ruins.

  If there was another way into that Gate, she was going to tear it open.

  Sorin moved faster than he knew he could.

  Twin blades—one steel, one woven from Echo—clashed against the Warden’s shadow weapons, sparks and fire flying between them.

  The Warden fought with grace and precision, but Sorin was matching its speed now, striking, countering, pushing forward.

  Something inside him was unlocking.

  Something old. Something buried.

  Then—an opening.

  Sorin twisted, his Echo-blade slamming into the Warden’s chest.

  The impact sent a ripple through the entire city.

  The Warden staggered.

  For the first time, it looked satisfied.

  "Your soul remembers the way."

  The Warden lifted a hand, placing it against its own mask. The dark surface cracked.

  "The Hollow Crown is waking. The path forward is yours to take."

  Then—

  The Warden dissolved into ash.

  The city trembled.

  The world around him shifted.

  And Sorin was falling.