Ashes Beneath Hollowspire - Part 5

The mask was heavier than it looked.

Tovik turned it over in his hands, feeling the obsidian glass flex faintly at his touch, an impossible pliability, like it breathed with him. Its surface shimmered faintly beneath the temple’s flickering glyphlight, catching motes of golden dust in its curves. The DuMonte crest etched in gold was no longer dormant. It glowed as if lit from within, pulsing gently with every beat of his heart, as though answering some ancient rhythm.

“This thing’s humming,” he muttered. “Feels like it knows I’m here.”

Elira stood nearby, arms crossed, the afterglow of her spellwaltz still shimmering faintly on her skin like the remnants of a vanished sun. Her gaze never left the mask. “It doesn’t just know you, Tovik. It’s written for you. Etched into the echo of your blood.”

Vaelin circled the dais slowly, watching the glyph-wheel overhead continue its slow revolution. The hall’s silence was taut, unnatural, as though the temple itself held its breath, waiting for the next note in a symphony only it could hear. Each rotation of the wheel seemed slower now, as though time hesitated with them.

“This place tried to forget everything,” he said. “But the mask... it remembers.”

Tovik snorted softly, masking his unease. “Perfect. A haunted heirloom with my cheekbones.” He tried for levity, but the edge in his voice cracked through.

And then he placed it against his face.

The moment it touched skin, light flared, red and gold, spiraling like fire caught in a windstorm. A sound rang out, not in the air but within their bones, a sustained chime that vibrated reality. Tovik stumbled, knees buckling as the world spun around him. Voices flooded his mind, not whispering, but singing, an endless aria of history, betrayal, blood, and binding.

He saw visions not as memory, but as performance. A stage set in fire:

—A noble court beneath Hollowspire, masked lords standing in perfect formation, conducting magic through music that bled color from the air.

—The original DuMonte heir, a figure nearly identical to Tovik, stepping forward with dignity and dread to offer his voice to the glyphwheel’s spell—his silence becoming the keystone of the choir.

—A final pact, a forgotten choir collapsing to ash around a still-beating heart, and a promise that the line would continue—through mask, through name, through story.

Tovik ripped the mask away, gasping, smoke trailing from the glass as though it had seared part of him. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated, sweat cold on his brow.

“They weren’t just singers,” he breathed. “They were wardens. That choir upstairs? They weren’t just casting. They were binding something. Keeping it asleep beneath their song.”

Elira’s expression tightened. Her sigils flickered in her palm, a reflex now to danger. “And now the wheel spins again.”

A deep groan echoed through the temple, stone shifting, old locks grinding open. The glyphwheel overhead flared with sudden brightness. From beneath the dais, the floor cracked, ancient seams splitting apart. A spiral descent bathed in molten orange light unfurled with a hiss of heat. The scent that rushed up was thick, smoke, blood, and burned oaths.

Vaelin stepped to the edge without hesitation, his cloak lifting in the rising heat. “We go together.”

The descent was short but harrowing. The stone stairs were jagged, half-melted from forgotten rituals. The passage narrowed, walls lined with searing glyphs that pulsed with old commands: restraint, decay, memory, silence. The magic burned quietly, like the breath of a sleeping beast.

At the bottom lay a cavern of raw obsidian, shaped like an inverted bell, wide, reverberating, hollow. The stone itself hummed like a struck drum. At its center stood an altar of fireglass, layered with ash and cracked with old heat. And above it, suspended by strands of pure harmonic magic, sung into being, floated a heart.

Not a metaphor.

A literal heart, blackened, cracked, yet still beating. Each pulse sent shockwaves through the air, distortions in the Remnant field that made Elira flinch. The walls pulsed in time with its rhythm. Around it, skeletal remains of the original choir lay collapsed in a perfect circle, their bones calcified into the floor, fused by the sheer pressure of ages.

“It’s a god’s remnant,” Elira whispered. “Or what’s left of one. A divine spark, stripped of form, left to throb alone.”

Tovik stared at the heart, eyes wide. “That’s what they bound. That’s what they sang to sleep.”

Vaelin’s hand hovered over his blade. The air shifted, tightening. “And the song’s ending.”

As if in answer, the glyph-wheel above, miles of stone above, shuddered and cracked. The distant sound of stone giving way echoed like a falling bell. The harmonic threads holding the heart began to unravel, delicately, like silk undone by fire.

Elira stepped forward, fingers aglow with sigils already forming. “I can delay it. I can retune the resonance field. But I need something to anchor it to, something of legacy. Something that belongs here.”

Tovik didn’t hesitate. He donned the mask again.

Power surged.

The heart reacted like a beast awakened, its beat grew faster, louder. The glyphs trembled. The cavern shook. The magic in his blood harmonized with the resonance field. The mask glowed, not with firelight, but with ancestral memory.

Tovik knelt before the altar, voice shaking with fatigue and purpose. “Then let the story end with me. Let it rest.”

The heart throbbed once, twice, then fractured with a sound like glass breaking inside a cathedral. Fire poured upward, a fountain of brilliance that rushed toward the ceiling like a reversed inferno. The old gods screamed in silence.

Elira’s spell struck like a conductor’s final gesture, every sigil snapping into place. She redirected the force through the mask, through the name, through the lie made true by sacrifice.

And the Remnant flame went still.

The cavern fell into silence.

Only breathing remained.

Vaelin helped Tovik stand. The mask had burned itself into his palm, seared there like a brand, but he did not cry out.

Elira reached out, placing her hand gently over his. “You’re not a lie, Tovik. You’re a story that mattered. One they’ll remember.”

Tovik blinked hard, then smiled, thin, tired, but real. “Then let’s get out before the temple starts clapping.”

As they rose back toward the surface, the glyphs dimmed behind them. Their light softened, quieted.

And Hollowspire, at last, forgot the song.