Cold air stabbed Liraeth’s lungs as she landed—not on stone, not on earth, but on nothing.

  She was kneeling on empty blackness, a void stretching infinitely in every direction. Above her, the sky was a fractured mirror, jagged shards of glass reflecting moments that didn’t belong to her:

  —A younger Sorin, barefoot and bleeding, dragging a sword too heavy for him.

  —A woman in silver armor (her? Not her?) plunging a spear into a beast with too many eyes.

  —Kael, laughing, whole, alive, before his hands turned to smoke.

  And then—

  A voice.

  "You weren’t supposed to see this."

  Liraeth turned.

  The Hollow King stood behind her.

  Not the echo. Not Sorin wearing the crown’s shadow.

  Him.

  The true Hollow King—taller than Sorin, his face sharper, his scars not gold but black, bleeding into the air like ink in water. The crown sat heavy on his brow, its silver spikes digging into his skin as if it had grown roots.

  Liraeth’s staff was gone. Her hands were empty.

  The Hollow King studied her, his golden eyes flickering with something almost like regret. "You always find your way here," he murmured. "No matter how many times I rewrite the world."

  Liraeth’s throat tightened. "Where is Sorin?"

  "Where he belongs." The Hollow King lifted a hand, and the void shuddered. A throne of bone and shadow materialized behind him. "Inside the fracture. Inside me."

  The sky’s glass shards trembled. In their reflection, Liraeth saw Sorin—her Sorin—kneeling in the ruins of Sunspire, his hands pressed to Kael’s chest as blood seeped between his fingers.

  "I can fix this," he whispered. "I can fix all of it."

  The Hollow King sighed. "He always says that."

  The Hollow King's throne pulsed like a living thing, veins of silver threading through its jagged bones. Liraeth forced herself to stand, her boots finding purchase on the impossible black surface beneath her.

  "You're not him," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. "Sorin is more than your echo."

  The Hollow King's mouth curved - not a smile, but the mockery of one. "Is he?" With a flick of his wrist, the void rippled.

  New images flooded the space between them:

  A child's hands (Sorin's hands) shaking as they gripped a stolen dagger

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  A library burning, its books screaming as they turned to ash

  A door - not of fire now, but of fractured time - splintering open

  "You see," the Hollow King murmured, "he was always going to become me. Every choice he makes, every life he lives - they all lead here." His shadowed gaze pinned her. "Even you can't change that."

  A sound like shattering glass echoed through the void. Liraeth's vision doubled - she was both here and elsewhere, watching as her own hands (Aeris's hands?) wrapped around a spear dripping with golden blood.

  The Hollow King didn't flinch. "That's the first time you killed me," he said conversationally. "It won't be the last."

  Beyond the void, in the real world she'd fallen from, Sorin's body arched off the ground, a silent scream tearing from his throat as the crown's power flooded his veins. Kael lunged for him, his broken sword flashing -

  only to be thrown back as black fire erupted from Sorin's scars.

  The Hollow King tilted his head, watching the scene with detached interest. "He's fighting it. That's new."

  Liraeth's hands curled into fists. "Let him go."

  "I can't." For the first time, something like exhaustion bled into the Hollow King's voice. "Don't you understand? I'm not keeping him here. He's keeping me here."

  The void trembled. The images shifted again, showing a truth that made Liraeth's breath catch:

  Sorin (not the Hollow King, just Sorin) kneeling before the First Flame

  His hands reaching not for power, but for the burning figure within it

  His voice raw with a plea: "Take me instead."

  The Hollow King looked away. "Every king needs his sacrifice."

  Outside the void, Kael dragged himself upright, blood dripping from his temple. His lips moved, forming words Liraeth couldn't hear - but she saw the moment they struck true.

  Sorin's body went rigid.

  The Hollow King's head snapped up. "No."

  The void cracked.

  Liraeth fell -

  not into memory this time, but into fire.

  The Hollow King's Truth

  The fire didn’t burn—it remembered.

  Liraeth gasped as the flames wrapped around her, not scorching her skin but searing through her mind, peeling back layers of forgotten oaths.

  The Hollow King’s voice followed her into the inferno:

  "You want to save him? Then see what he saved you from."

  The fire showed her:

  —A younger Sorin (not yet the Hollow King) standing before the First Flame, his hands shaking.

  —A woman (her, but older, fiercer) lying broken at his feet, her spear shattered.

  —Kael screaming as shadows consumed him.

  And then—the choice.

  Sorin reaching into the Flame.

  Sorin taking its power.

  Sorin whispering the words that would damn him:

  "Let me be the one who forgets."

  The vision shattered.

  Liraeth stumbled forward—not into the void, but into the ruins of Sunspire, back in the present. The air reeked of blood and lightning.

  Before her, Sorin convulsed on the ground, the Hollow Crown’s power tearing him apart.

  Kael knelt beside him, his hands pressed to Sorin’s chest, his voice raw:

  "You promised, you bastard! You promised you’d stop this!"

  The Exiled One's Gambit

  Liraeth lunged for them, but the air itself resisted, thick as tar. She saw it now—the truth Kael had tried to burn, the truth the Hollow King had hidden:

  Sorin had never been the thief.

  He had been the sacrifice.

  The Hollow Crown wasn’t his—it was his prison.

  And Kael—

  Kael wasn’t trying to stop Sorin from remembering.

  He was trying to stop him from breaking.

  "Liraeth!" Kael’s voice cracked as he fought to hold Sorin down. "The staff—now!"

  Her fingers closed around cold metal. The staff flared to life, its light cutting through the storm of power.

  Sorin’s eyes snapped open.

  Gold.

  Black.

  Hollow.

  The Hollow King’s voice poured from his lips:

  "You were never meant to survive."

  The Choice at the Flame

  Liraeth didn’t hesitate.

  She drove the staff into the ground, and the world screamed.

  Light erupted—not gold, not red, but white. The First Flame’s true color.

  The crown’s hold fractured.

  For one heartbeat, Sorin was himself again—his eyes clear, his hand reaching for her.

  "Aeris—"

  Then the ground split.

  The throne room collapsed.

  And the last thing Liraeth saw before the darkness took her was Kael throwing himself over Sorin’s body as the world came undone.