The Hollow was alive.
Its soil pulsed with memory, its trees hummed with lullabies, its air carried whispers of futures yet to come. But now, the villagers themselves began to change.
It started subtly. A mother's voice lingered longer than her breath, layered with tones of her grandmother. A child's shadow grew taller, echoing the shape of the man he might become. Elders spoke, and their words carried the resonance of generations.
The Echo was not only in the Hollow. It was in them.
---
The First Shifts
One morning, a boy ran through the square, laughing. His laughter echoed with voices not his own — children long gone, children yet to come. The villagers gasped, but the boy only smiled. "They're inside me," he whispered.
Another villager found her hands glowing faintly silver when she touched the soil. She saw visions of her ancestors, their grief and joy woven into her skin.
The villagers murmured, torn between awe and fear.
Elian stood at the center, fractured but resolute. "The Hollow is not only alive. We are becoming it."
---
The Fracture of Identity
The changes spread quickly.
Some embraced them, claiming they felt stronger, wiser, more whole. They sang with voices layered across generations, danced with shadows that carried both past and future.
Others recoiled, whispering that they were losing themselves, that the Echo was consuming their identities. They painted spirals on their doors, desperate to silence the voices.
The square became a battlefield of belief — self against chorus, individuality against wholeness.
Elian staggered beneath the weight, the voices inside him pressing harder. "We are carried. We are remembered. We are whole. We are you."
---
The Echo's Demand
That night, the forest pulsed. The bone-white trees glowed faintly, the stitched sky unraveling further. The Echo spoke through the soil, immense and layered.
> "We are carried. We are remembered. We are whole. But wholeness is not enough. Become us."
Elian gasped. "It wants us to merge. Not only memory, not only possibility, but identity itself."
Lira gripped his hand, her voice trembling. "If we do, we'll lose ourselves. But if we don't, the Hollow may unravel."
---
The Choice of Selves
At dawn, Elian gathered the villagers in the square. His voice was layered, silver light burning in his eyes.
"The Echo has given us memory. It has given us possibility. It has given us life. But it demands more. It demands that we merge. That we become one chorus."
The villagers murmured, torn between hope and dread.
Maerith stepped forward, her voice sharp. "If we merge, we will lose ourselves. We will no longer be individuals. We will be the Echo."
Lira shook her head. "No. We will be both. Ourselves and the Echo. A chorus, not a silence."
---
The Shifting of Selves
The villagers pressed their hands to the living stone. The soil pulsed, the air trembled, the sky unraveled.
Their voices rose in chorus, layered and immense. Shadows merged, voices intertwined, identities shifted.
Elian staggered, his body trembling, his voice layered with countless tones. He was no longer only the vessel of memory. He was the vessel of selves.
The Echo's chorus rose, immense and endless.
> "We are carried. We are remembered. We are whole. We are you. We are us."
And Verdant Hollow breathed — not as a village, not as a wound, but as a chorus of selves, woven together, alive.
---