The Hollowed drew closer, quiet as falling ash.
Their shapes flickered between clarity and blur—sometimes human, sometimes nothing more than silhouettes woven from discarded memories. Each step they took dissolved the world behind them into smudged threads and charred light.
Ahri stood frozen before Emberwake, the burnt thread still hovering at her fingertips.
"Speak the name," Sol urged, his voice low, almost drowned by the rising hum in the air. "Or it will be lost."
Ahri stared into the blue fire. Her heart beat like a war drum.
Yun-Ah Seo.
Her mother's name tasted like smoke in her mouth, fragile and foreign.
As she whispered it, the burnt thread flared gold, then crimson, then faded into her palm—vanishing completely. The flame of Emberwake surged, crackling with sudden life. The pillars around her straightened, if only for a moment, as if recognizing the name's return.
And then—memory.
It struck like lightning.
A vision overtook her—no longer the hazy echoes she'd seen before. This was sharp, piercing, and real.
She stood in a different temple, older than the one she knew, its ceilings webbed with sacred threads. Her mother knelt before a circle of figures in ceremonial robes. The Elder stood among them, younger, eyes harder.
"You ask to unbind your fate," one of the robed figures said. "Do you understand what you will lose?"
Yun-Ah nodded. "Everything. Except her."
She turned, and through her eyes, Ahri saw herself—a child, asleep beneath layers of protective talismans.
"You will be marked," the figure warned. "And hunted."
"I already am."
The circle's threads unraveled, converging on Yun-Ah. She screamed—not in pain, but in release—as her thread severed and scattered.
The vision cracked, shattering like glass.
Ahri gasped, back in Emberwake. She collapsed to her knees, the taste of ashes clinging to her throat.
"She gave up her fate," she whispered. "To protect mine."
Sol nodded solemnly. "And now you've reclaimed what she gave away."
The Hollowed stopped at the edge of the flame. One stepped forward, revealing the face of a boy—no older than Ahri, eyes empty, threads stitched where a mouth should be. He reached out a hand, and the world around them dimmed.
"They smell the thread," Sol warned. "To them, it's warmth they can no longer feel."
Ahri stood, wiping her eyes. "What do they want?"
"To remember," Sol replied. "Or to make you forget."
Ahri clenched her fists. "Then I need to leave."
Sol shook his head. "You can't go back the way you came."
"Then show me another way."
The Lantern Archivist studied her a long moment. Then he lifted his lantern. "There's one path. But it leads deeper. Past Emberwake. Into the Archives Below."
"The Archives?"
"Where forgotten fates and forbidden threads are kept. No living soul has walked there in centuries. But your mother left pieces behind. Clues."
Ahri hesitated. The Hollowed didn't move, but she felt their hunger radiate like static. The golden thread on her wrist pulsed wildly, as if torn between pulling her forward or back.
"Will I survive it?" she asked.
"No," Sol said. "But maybe something greater will."
And with that, he turned toward the cracked earth, and the flame parted, revealing a staircase made of woven light descending into the dark.
Ahri took one final glance at the Hollowed, then stepped into the path.
The stairs unraveled behind her.