Amaris did not rise.
She floated, suspended in the golden shards of her prison, eyes wide and unblinking. Not with terror—but with memory. Lyra stood motionless, the pulse of the Hollow surging through her bones. The air around them vibrated with a deep resonance, as if the earth itself was groaning under the weight of release.
Elias shielded his eyes as the roots overhead quivered and drew back like breath pulled into lungs. The vines, once rigid, slithered across the ceiling in patterns—ancient, almost organic language forming in the walls.
"She's awakening everything," Velan whispered. "Not just herself."
---
Amaris turned her gaze toward Lyra.
It felt like being seen by the past. Every grief, every secret, every wound that Lyra had locked away—laid bare under that gaze. Yet it wasn't cruel. It wasn't judgment. It was recognition. Lyra didn't flinch.
"Why did you stay?" she asked, voice steady.
The answer came not in words, but in images:
A village in flames. A child sobbing into the earth. A woman standing before a ritual altar, blood staining her palms. The trees whispering, There must be one to carry it.
And then: a promise. Until someone else chooses.
Lyra stepped closer. "Then I choose."
---
The roots writhed at her feet. A circle began to form around the amber basin. The walls darkened, but the air grew warmer.
Velan moved forward, voice grave. "You must speak it aloud. What you choose to do. Or the Hollow will decide for you."
She nodded. Her voice rang through the chamber.
"I release her," she said. "Not to forget her… but to remember without pain. The Hollow doesn't need to hurt to exist."
A wind rose—no source, no scent, but full of echoes. Names. Faces. Fragments of the souls who had been devoured by the Hollow, rising now in strands of mist and color.
Lyra opened her arms.
And let them pass through her.
---
The pain didn't vanish.
It moved.
Shifted.
Reshaped.
She saw the memories now like a river, not a cage. Not something she had to drown in, but something she could cross.
Amaris began to fall—not collapse, not die—but descend. The vines caught her gently, laying her body on the soft soil beneath the amber basin.
She no longer looked like a relic.
She looked like a woman who could finally sleep.
And Lyra cried.
---
Elias came to her side, holding a small crystal that had formed in the air during the ritual. Inside it shimmered a faint image of the sigil.
"She gave it back to you," he said. "The burden. The choice. The Hollow is yours now."
"No," Lyra said softly, placing her hand on the earth. "It's ours. I won't be what she was. This place doesn't need another soul to bind it."
Velan stepped forward, relief written across his face. "Then you've done what no one else could. You've rewritten the pact."
---
The chamber began to change.
Roots uncurled and dissolved. The trees above moaned and shifted. Light poured in from cracks in the ceiling that hadn't been there before. And slowly, impossibly, the Hollow began to feel like a place that could live again.
Outside, the mist receded from the grounds.
The statues that once wept blood now stood still, no longer warped by grief.
The house itself shuddered as though waking from a centuries-long nightmare.
And Lyra—no longer heir, no longer vessel—was simply… Lyra.
---
As they ascended the spiral stairs, Elias took her hand.
"You're free," he said.
She looked back once, just once, at the chamber that had held a thousand years of pain.
"No," she said with a quiet smile. "We all are."