Light poured from the Heart—not golden, not silver, but a shimmer of all things remembered. It wasn't just brilliance—it was *memory*, woven into light. The air shimmered with scenes, people, voices, all at once.
The first Keeper walking beneath the true sky.
Kael as a child, laughing under a moon unbroken.
The Hollow Queen before her fall—*Elaiah*, her name once was—placing the Heart inside a sanctuary stone.
Elara stood in the stillness, untouched by time, and *saw* them all. The Heart had opened a fold in the world—not a gate, but a remembering.
The Queen remained frozen. But her image in the vision—the woman she had been—was weeping beside a crumbled doorway. Alone. Betrayed.
Then Kael moved.
Not physically—but his *memory* stepped forward within the light, walking beside Elaiah's.
"You weren't abandoned," he said to her echo. "You *left*."
She turned, voice bitter. "Because the Keepers feared what I'd seen in Elsewhere."
"You brought something back," Kael said. "You never told us what."
The memory flickered, and the real-world Hollow Queen *screamed.*
The freeze shattered.
Everything rushed back in motion. Flame roared, trees cracked, the torn sky churned—and the Queen staggered backward, clawing at the air.
"You weren't supposed to see that!" she hissed.
Kael's hands burned blue again. But this time, he didn't raise them to fight.
"I remember now," he said. "You went alone through the Ninth Door. You brought back the first splinter."
Rin, bleeding but upright, shouted, "Then what is she *now*?"
The Queen's face twisted—not rage this time, but *fear.*
"I am what the Door made me."
Elara stepped forward again. The Heart hovered above her palms now, its glow forming shapes—symbols of the old world, the real names of things. Its light touched the Queen.
She screamed again, but softer now—like a wound reopening.
"You were supposed to protect the seal," Elara said. "Instead, you fed it pieces of yourself."
The Queen fell to her knees.
For the first time, her form flickered—once, twice—and for the briefest second, she looked human again. Tired. Burned. *Elaiah.*
Elara stepped into the cracked stone ring, the Heart hovering between her and the broken woman.
"We can end this," Elara said. "Close the tear. But not with hatred. Not with fire."
Kael joined her.
"So how?" he asked.
"The Heart doesn't destroy," Elara said. "It remembers what *should* be."
And then she placed the Heart on the ground.
It pulsed once.
And the *tear in the sky* began to close.
From within, stars screamed and vanished. Cities folded into mist. The false Elsewhere collapsed like a dying thought, as the memory of reality rewrote its bones.
The Queen—Elaiah—screamed once more, but this time… it wasn't fury.
It was *grief.*
"I didn't want this," she whispered. "I just wanted to bring something *back.*"
Kael knelt beside her. "So did I."
The Heart dimmed slowly, now only a warm glow. The forest air cooled. The vines receded.
And then, finally, the silence was real.
---
The Hollow Queen was gone.
The Heart, still pulsing, rested in Elara's hands once more.
"What now?" Sira asked quietly.
Elara turned her gaze to the woods—deep, vast, and waiting.
"We find the other splinters," she said. "And we remember the rest of what was lost."