Ashes Beneath Hollowspire - Part 6

Even as the glyphs of the temple dimmed, the hush they left behind was not peace, it was a silence waiting to be broken.

The trio climbed the winding stairs back to the surface, each step echoing with ash-soaked finality. The stone underfoot still radiated warmth, the heat of forgotten power bleeding upward through the marrow of Hollowspire. Elira’s hands glowed faintly with residual spellwaltz rhythm, the sigils trailing off her fingertips like fading notes written in flame. Tovik’s palm still bore the shape of the seared mask, a blackened imprint over trembling skin that pulsed faintly like a living wound.

When they emerged into daylight or what passed for it beneath Hollowspire’s smoke-veiled sky, they found the town transformed.

Smoke hung in the air, not from fire, but from the dispersal of centuries-old wards unraveling like spider silk in the sun. The scent was sharp and bitter: old sulfur, burnt resin, ozone. Townsfolk staggered out of their homes, drawn not by sound, but by the eerie absence of it. Birds no longer sang, winds no longer stirred. The ever-present hum of the Remnant, so constant it had become a forgotten melody, was gone.

But something else remained.

A child’s voice cut through the stillness. “It’s whispering again.”

The group turned to find a young boy standing near the broken fountain in Hollowspire’s square, barefoot and dust-covered, holding something in his hand, a shard of obsidian glass, black and pulsing faintly with inner fire like a coal that refused to die.

Elira’s eyes narrowed, her expression sharp with recognition. “That’s not from aboveground.”

Vaelin moved to intercept, cloak trailing like a shadow cut free. “Where did you find this?”

The boy pointed toward the northern bluff, where crooked mining carts and rusted tracks led to the oldest shaft, the one sealed since the first great collapse generations ago. Bramble and rusted chains still clung to its entrance like a wound the earth refused to let heal.

“Deep in the dust,” the boy whispered. “It called me by name.”

Tovik stepped back, eyes wide. “Nope. Nope, we’re not doing possessed children today.”

Elira was already moving. She extended her palm over the shard, sigils lighting up in a slow orbit of blue and gold. Arcane pressure folded the air around them as she scanned it through frequency, her expression shifting from analytical to grim.

“It’s part of the heart,” she said slowly. “Fractured during the unbinding. But it’s not inert. It’s... learning.”

The shard trembled in the boy’s palm. Then, with a high-pitched ping like a cracked bell underwater, it projected an echo, a flickering illusion of light and sound, edged in flame.

A woman’s voice sang out. Melodic. Beautiful. Hollow.

“Choir incomplete. Bindings broken. Find the last voice.”

The illusion that followed wove itself into the sky, a burning forest with trees like torches, a lone figure sprinting across embers, cradling a torch carved of bone. A tower of black glass loomed on a cliff’s edge in the distance, sharp as a spear and wreathed in falling ash.

Elira’s jaw set, shoulders rising. “That’s not just an echo. That’s a call.”

Vaelin stepped beside her, his shadow merging with hers. “If part of the remnant escaped, we’re not done. We didn’t bury a god. We cracked it open.”

The words landed heavily.

Tovik, for once, didn’t joke. He stared at the boy, then at the burning image fading in the air. “So… next act?”

Elira crouched to meet the boy’s wide eyes. Her voice was gentle but unwavering. “Stay here. Guard that shard with silence. Do not let anyone hear it, not even yourself. Understand?”

The boy nodded, solemn as stone, his hands tightening over the shard as though it might fly away.

The trio set out that evening.

As the sun dipped low behind Hollowspire’s jagged silhouette, they followed the northern path, past scorched fields and abandoned wards. The earth grew blacker the farther they walked, charcoal and glass, melted stone veins beneath their boots.

Night fell. The ashwood wilds loomed ahead.

These woods had not grown since the fire centuries past. Twisted black trunks leaned like charred bones, and beneath the soil, hot breath still pulsed through the roots. Elira cast low sigil-lanterns to light the path, the glow reflecting in Tovik’s eyes as he walked in silence for once.

Midway through the forest, the air grew strange, thicker. They heard a whispering in the distance. Not voices, but memory.

The ash around them began to move.

From beneath the forest floor rose figures of soot and bone, Remnant echoes warped by grief and flame. Eyes like coals, limbs like cinders. Forgotten choirlings who had perished mid-hymn and now lingered, unfinished.

Vaelin’s sword was already in hand, the metal humming as it caught the pulse of their approach. Elira’s arms drew a circle of sigils midair, weaving a lattice of flame.

“Don’t let them sing,” she warned.

They clashed.

The battle was chaos and rhythm, Vaelin moving like a dancer through the firelight, each strike punctuated by silence. Elira redirected ash-bolts with flaming arcs of spellwaltz, retuning discord into harmony. Tovik moved at the edges, daggers singing against bone, his Maskbind aura flickering as he called out false names and old titles to confuse the lingering echoes.

As the last of the ashlings fell to cinders, the silence returned—deeper than before.

They didn’t speak as they pressed onward.

Beyond the next ridge, the forest broke away to a vista of black cliffs, and in the distance, exactly as in the vision, rose the tower of black glass.

It was not ruined. It was waiting.

Behind them, deep beneath Hollowspire, something began to hum once more.

A forgotten voice was no longer whispering.

It was learning to sing.