Chapter 1619: Story 1619: The Hollow Sun
They fell for what felt like forever.
No wind. No up. No down. Only the echo of a world that no longer existed. Around them drifted fragments of what had been—shards of memory suspended in black light. A city folding into itself. A child laughing without sound. The Keeper’s staff dissolving mid-air, its runes bleeding into smoke.
Zara’s hand clutched Damien’s as they tumbled through the void. Her body flickered between solid and spectral, her heartbeat syncing with the distant pulse beneath all creation. “Where are we?” she whispered.
Damien’s answer came as a sigh that shook the emptiness. “Inside what’s left.”
The abyss wasn’t empty—it was awake. Every heartbeat was answered by another, deeper one. Shapes moved within the dark, vast and formless, brushing the edges of perception like thoughts not yet born. Each time they passed, Zara’s mind fractured with flashes of impossible things: oceans that remembered names, suns screaming as they burned, a god digging its own grave.
Her voice quivered. “You said it couldn’t eat me... why?”
Damien turned to her, his form still bleeding light. “Because you never believed in it. The abyss feeds on faith—on the belief that it owns you. You’ve never given it that.”
She reached toward his face, but her hand went through him like mist. “Then let me save you.”
He smiled faintly, and the gesture hurt to see. “You already did. You reminded me what I was. That’s why it hates you.”
The void shuddered, as if the words themselves had angered it. Far below—or perhaps above—a new glow appeared: not black, not red, but white, pure and blinding. It grew fast, a star being born backward. Its light was wrong—too still, too knowing.
Zara shielded her eyes. “What is that?”
Damien’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The Hollow Sun. The last thing the abyss creates before it devours itself.”
The glow expanded until it filled everything, drowning shadow and thought alike. From within it, figures began to rise—echoes of every soul the abyss had taken, faceless and radiant, all whispering in unison:
“Join. Return. Feed.”
Zara screamed as one of them reached for her, its touch burning with a light colder than death. Damien lunged between them, his hand striking the light—and where he touched, it recoiled, hissing like steam.
The Hollow Sun trembled. Cracks of darkness spread across its surface, spilling tendrils of pure void.
Damien turned to her, voice echoing like thunder underwater. “I can hold it. But you have to leave.”
“Leave where? There’s nothing left!”
He smiled again, softer this time. “There’s you. That’s enough.”
Before she could speak, he pushed her away—into the tearing light.
Zara’s scream vanished into the blinding glow as Damien spread his arms, pulling the shadows and the light into himself. The Hollow Sun screamed once, then collapsed inward, dragging everything with it.
And for one heartbeat, before the silence returned, a voice whispered across eternity:
“Even hunger can die.”