The wind carried a bitter chill as David approached the hills that once cradled Orinel, his childhood village. But this chill wasn't born of season or storm.
It was wrong.
The mana beneath his feet trembled like bruised roots. The birds did not sing. The earth—once a soft whisper to his senses—groaned in silence.
He crested the final rise and looked down.
Where Orinel once stood, there was now only ash.
The fields were blackened. The homes were splinters. The well in the town square had been shattered, its stones scattered like discarded bones.
There was no flame.
No smoke.
Just ruin.
David stood at the edge for a long time.
His fists did not clench. His breath did not catch.
The Well within him churned, not in rage—but in restraint. It hummed like a blade drawn, waiting for command.
Then he stepped forward.
The ruins offered no comfort. The trees where he once trained as a boy were gone. The stream he drank from no longer sang. He moved through the village like a ghost through his own past.
And then he found the bodies.
Not many. Just five.
They lay in a circle at the heart of the village, all with eyes open, unburned, untouched… yet utterly drained. Their skin was pale. Their flesh hollowed. Their veins dark.
David knelt beside one—a boy no older than ten.
He pressed his palm to the child's forehead.
Mana did not return.
There was none left to restore.
The Hollow had fed here.
Then, a sound—soft, dry, like breath caught in a failing chest.
He turned.
A woman staggered from the remains of the chapel. Her clothes were torn, but her spirit still clung to her body. Her eyes widened when she saw him.
"…David?"
His heart stilled.
"Leira?"
She collapsed before she reached him.
He caught her gently and lowered her to the ground. She trembled in his arms.
"I thought you were gone… I thought you left us to die…"
He touched her cheek. "I never left you. I was walking toward something that could protect you all."
She coughed—dry, painful. "Too late…"
He focused, calling the Well to lend warmth—not to overpower her, but to sustain.
She breathed easier.
Just enough.
"There were… shadows," she said weakly. "No sound. No fire. Just… stillness. And then screaming."
David's jaw tightened. "The Hollow."
She nodded. "They didn't even resist. It was like… like it showed them something. And they gave in."
David looked toward the shattered remains of the square.
"There were five," he murmured. "The others?"
She closed her eyes.
"Taken."
He buried the dead with care, using stone and hand. His mana shaped the soil softly, like waves smoothing sand. He remembered each name. Each face. Each voice that once called his in laughter or curiosity.
By nightfall, only he and Leira remained at the edge of the ruins.
"You can't stay here," he said.
"I have nowhere else."
"You will. I promise."
He lifted her gently. She was too weak to protest.
With every step away from Orinel, the Well grew louder.
Not with power.
With memory.
It remembered this place. It remembered why he first walked.
And it would never forget.
They traveled for two days. He gave her half of all he found—berries, water, dried meat. His mana gave her strength when her own body failed.
She watched him quietly as he tended the fire each night, the glow of his veins soft in the dark.
"You've changed," she whispered one evening.
"I had to."
"Is it true? What they say about you now? That your power never stops?"
He nodded. "It grows with me. As long as I keep walking forward."
She reached out and touched his wrist, where flame-etched sigils from the Trial still pulsed faintly.
"Then don't stop walking."
On the third morning, they were ambushed.
Three men cloaked in black, faces masked, blades glowing with unnatural red. They struck without warning—arcing from trees, blades aimed not at David…
…but at Leira.
He moved on instinct.
The Well surged.
One arm blocked the first blade—shattering it on impact.
A kick launched the second attacker into the air, slamming him into a tree with a crack like thunder.
The third man held a talisman—a Hollow-brand.
David's eyes narrowed.
"You carry that mark? And you dare approach her?"
The man didn't answer.
David stepped forward.
The air around him warped.
Every moment he walked, the Well refined itself.
His fists moved like light.
In five seconds, it was done.
The last attacker gasped on the ground, eyes wide.
"You… you don't know what you carry," he wheezed. "It calls to the Hollow now. Every moment you live… it wakes."
David leaned closer, his voice low.
"Then I'll give it a reason to stay asleep."
He struck once.
The man was still.
That night, Leira didn't sleep.
David sat beside the fire, sharpening the iron blade Caeda had gifted him. It did not glow. It did not sing. But it was real.
"I saw your strength today," she said.
"It wasn't enough to save Orinel."
"It was enough to save me."
He paused.
That truth sat deeper than the edge of any blade.
The next day, they reached the edge of a village untouched by the Hollow — a small farming town on the banks of a wide lake. David left Leira in the care of a kind elder, whose aura was untouched by darkness.
"I'll return," he promised her.
"I know," she said, touching his hand. "You always do."
He turned and walked toward the rising hills.
Toward the storm.
Toward the next trial.
And behind him, the lake shimmered once — not with water, but with light.
The Well responded.
For the first time, it was not just flowing within him.
It was echoing through the world.