Chapter 26 Chapter 26
I wake to darkness.
Not the comforting darkness of night.
An absolute void.
The air is cold, thin, wrong. My breath echoes softly, as if the world around me is empty, unfinished.
“Dante?” I call out.
My voice returns to me distorted, as if spoken in a cavern carved from shadows.
No answer.
I try to stand, but the ground isn’t solid. It ripples like black water beneath my feet.
Where am I?
A whisper drifts through the dark.
“You should not have returned to flesh, Aria.”
My pulse pounds in my throat. “Show yourself!”
The shadows shift. Coil. Rise.
A shape slowly forms—a woman. Or something mimicking one. Her limbs are too long, her silhouette too thin. Her eyes glow silver-white, too bright in the dark.
“You left your post. After millennia, you abandoned your duty.”
“I fulfilled my duty,” I say sharply. “The barriers healed. Our purpose ended.”
Her smile widens. “No. The barriers healed on your side. Not all realities were repaired. You misunderstood the Architect’s words.”
A chill slides down my spine.
“What… do you mean?”
She steps closer, moving like drifting smoke.
“Your reality stabilized. But the Lower Realms remained fractured. The Void Lords infected them long ago. And when you descended into mortal flesh—when your cosmic presence withdrew—your protection vanished.”
She leans in.
“And so we rose.”
I stagger back. “Void Lords were destroyed. We ended them ages ago.”
“Destroyed here,” she whispers. “But their echoes lived on… starving, trapped beneath dimensional collapse. Until you abandoned your throne.”
No.
No, this cannot be true.
“You’re lying,” I hiss. “Trying to break me.”
She laughs—a hollow, echoing sound. “If I were lying, would THIS exist?”
The darkness peels away.
I gasp.
A massive landscape of ruins stretches before me—entire worlds shattered and piled on top of each other. Broken mountains floating. Oceans hanging in the air. Cities twisted into spirals. The sky is cracked like glass.
Realities crushed together by void.
“This is the Hollow Realm,” she says. “Where all broken dimensions fell after the collapse. A graveyard of worlds.”
I stare in horror.
“Why show me this?”
“Because you, Eternal One, built the original barriers.” Her voice sharpens. “And when you left… the cracks reopened.”
My knees threaten to buckle.
“Take me back,” I demand. “Now.”
Her body shudders, glitching like a corrupted image. “I cannot. You are here because my master wants you here.”
“Your master?”
The darkness behind her trembles, as if something enormous is breathing just out of sight.
“He wants to make a deal.”
“I refuse.”
She tilts her head. “You haven’t heard the price yet.”
“I don’t care—”
“Oh, you will.” Her grin widens unnaturally. “Because your mate…”
My heart stops.
“…has been taken to a different void realm. A deeper one. One that feeds on mortal life.”
No.
“DANTE!” I scream—
But only echoes answer.
The shadow-woman steps back, dissolving into smoke.
“You want him back? Then you will come to the center of the Hollow Realm. He waits where worlds collapse.”
The darkness begins to collapse around me, spiraling downward.
“And Eternal One…?”
Her voice slithers through the void.
“You must hurry. Mortals do not last long in the Deep Void.”
The ground vanishes.
I fall.
Faster. Faster.
Into a drop with no end.
Into a darkness that hungers.