"Some truths are patient; they wait until you stop running."
They left the outpost as dusk melted slowly into the valley, turning the sky a deep violet streaked with threads of fading gold. The ruined buildings behind them became silhouettes first, then shadows, then the kind of darkness that felt like memory rather than sight. The hollow man lay draped across Amar's back, limp but breathing—his weight shifting with each step, as if his body remembered movement even when his mind could not.
The boy clung to Meera's sleeve, his fingers small but desperate, knuckles pale against the fabric. Meera kept trying to loosen his grip, not to free herself but to ease his trembling. He only held tighter.
Aarav walked in the middle of the group because Arin insisted on it.
"You stay where I can see you," Arin said. "Shards seek patterns. And right now you're the brightest mark on this road."
Aarav didn't argue.
He didn't have the energy to.
The path winded upward through broken hills, stones jutting out like ribs of the earth. Dry grass whispered against their ankles with each step, brushing their boots in brittle strokes. Even the insects were quiet, as if the land itself was holding its breath—knowing something had reached through the world and wasn't finished yet.
For a long while, only the crunch of footsteps filled the silence.
Then Amar broke it.
"How far is this temple?"
"Not far," Arin said. "But distance isn't the problem."
Meera frowned. "Then what is?"
Arin didn't look back. His gaze remained fixed on the horizon, sharp and restless. "The approach."
Aarav felt the hum inside his chest stir in response—as if echoing Arin's unease. It was dull at first, like a dying ember deep in his ribs. But steady. Too steady.
"What's wrong with the approach?" Aarav asked.
Arin hesitated—
and that alone was answer enough.
"The Temple of Hollow Stone sits on a fault," Arin said finally. "A thin place. A crossroads between layers. It was built to anchor resonance when the world cracked the first time."
Meera inhaled sharply. "During the Forerunners' fall."
Arin nodded. "It's the last surviving mental bastion. The only place where identity can be shielded. At least partially."
Aarav swallowed hard. "Shielded from him?"
"From echoes," Arin said. "From shards. From pieces of him. But nothing is absolute."
Aarav looked down at the ground slipping beneath his boots. He didn't trust his voice to stay steady.
The path narrowed as they climbed higher, the soil giving way to long swaths of smoothed stone—worn flat as if something impossibly precise had carved it in a single stroke. The slope grew steeper. The air grew colder.
Then the wind changed.
Meera noticed it first. "Does anyone else feel that?"
Amar scanned the ridgeline. "Cold wind. Wrong direction."
Aarav didn't feel it as wind at all.
He felt it under his skin—
not cold,
not air,
but _pressure_.
Something pulling inward, tightening like a thread winding itself around the world.
Arin stopped abruptly. "Stay close."
The boy whimpered, a small broken sound. Meera knelt instantly, brushing hair from his forehead. "You're safe with us. Just breathe. Slow breaths."
Aarav dropped into a crouch beside them, resting a hand on the boy's shoulder. "We won't let anything happen to you."
The boy looked up, eyes huge with fear. "Will the empty man follow us?"
It took Aarav a moment to realize he meant the shard.
The projection.
The hollowed thing wearing the shape of memory.
"No," Aarav whispered. "We stopped him."
The boy nodded, but fear still clung to him like smoke. Aarav felt it too. But he stood again, forcing himself to follow Arin up the last incline.
When they reached the top, Aarav froze.
The land ahead had changed.
Not in shape—
in feeling.
The valley opened into a flat expanse of pale stone, almost white under the twilight. The air above it shimmered faintly, as though starlight had seeped down from the sky and settled just above the ground.
A narrow spine of broken pillars formed a half-collapsed walkway leading toward a dark silhouette carved into the hillside.
A structure hidden beneath rock and shadow.
Ancient.
Waiting.
The Temple of Hollow Stone.
But before Aarav could take a step, the resonance inside him surged—
sudden, sharp, swallowing the breath from his lungs.
He staggered backward, gripping his chest.
"Aarav?" Meera rushed to his side. "Talk to me—what is it?"
He tried to speak, but the hum swelled louder, vibrating through his ribs, crawling up his spine, coiling around his mind like a memory trying to break through.
Arin grabbed his arm, grounding him. "This is expected. The temple reacts to Anchors. It always has."
Aarav gasped. "It feels… like it's calling."
"It is," Arin said. "But not to harm you."
Amar narrowed his eyes. "Then what does it want?"
Arin's answer came quietly, almost reluctantly.
"It wants him to remember."
The words settled into the air like a stone dropped into still water.
Aarav felt another surge—stronger, insistent, tugging him forward not by force but by familiarity. As though the resonance inside him recognized something ahead.
The temple loomed darker now, the entrance a jagged mouth carved into the mountain. The pillars leading toward it thrummed softly—resonance echoing resonance, calling back and forth across the stone.
"It's reacting to you," Meera whispered. "Like it knew you were coming."
Aarav stared at the stone path. "I think it did."
Arin tightened his grip on his staff. "Everyone stay alert. The temple offers protection, yes—but it is also a trial. Anchors are not welcomed gently."
Amar adjusted the hollow man on his back, tightening the cloth holding him. "Doesn't matter. We're going in."
Arin nodded. "Where we stand now is more dangerous than what lies ahead."
Aarav nodded as well, though every instinct inside him screamed to turn back.
Avoid.
Deny.
Hide.
But the temple pulsed again—
soft, ancient, inevitable—
and he stepped toward it.
The first stone pillar vibrated when he passed, a faint hum rising like a voice awakening from sleep.
The second pillar lit faintly at its base, a blue glow threading upward along cracks worn deeper by time.
By the third pillar, the ground beneath Aarav's feet grew warm, familiar, as if stone itself remembered someone like him walking this path long ago.
Meera caught up to him, her breath uneven. "Whatever happens inside… we stay together."
Amar moved to Aarav's other side, solid as ever. "You're not facing this alone."
Aarav nodded.
But deep down, he already sensed the truth:
The temple wasn't calling to them.
It was calling to him.
The others could walk beside him, but the path ahead—the one carved into stone and memory—would split the moment they reached its heart. It always had. Arin's stories whispered that Anchors entered alone and came out changed.
Or didn't come out at all.
Still, Aarav stepped forward.
The air thickened as they crossed the threshold into the entrance. Stone walls rose around them, etched with ancient symbols half eroded by time, half erased by intent. The light dimmed, narrowing into a corridor of violet-blue luminescence cast by veins of resonance embedded in the rock.
With each step, the hum inside Aarav's chest synced more closely with the temple's pulse.
One heartbeat.
One rhythm.
Aarav stopped walking.
Not from fear—
but because the resonance whispered, clear and undeniable:
Welcome.
His breath hitched.
Something inside the temple recognized him.
Not vaguely.
Not accidentally.
Like a home recognizing its maker.
Or a weapon recognizing its wielder.
And with that—
Aarav stepped deeper into the dark.
"He didn't run this time," the thought whispered inside him, though it wasn't quite his voice, "and the chamber quieted as if relieved."