Verdant Hollow no longer belonged to itself.
The altar glowed with a steady silver light, its spirals pulsing like a heartbeat. Pilgrims arrived daily, their voices layered with grief and longing, their relics pressed into the soil. Each offering was received, each name remembered, each silence undone.
But the Hollow's radiance did not stop at its borders.
---
The First Signs
In the hills beyond, farmers found their soil glowing faintly, relics surfacing where none had been buried. Children dreamed of lullabies they had never heard. Elders spoke of futures that had not yet come.
The Hollow's breath was spreading.
Elian stood at the edge of the forest, his chest burning with voices. "We are carried. We are remembered. We are whole. We are devotion. We are beyond."
---
The Fracture of Neighboring Towns
News spread quickly. Some towns embraced the radiance, sending pilgrims to Verdant Hollow, carving altars of their own, singing names into the soil. Others recoiled, whispering that the Hollow was cursed, that its devotion was a contagion.
The land itself trembled under the strain.
Lira whispered, "It is no longer only ours. The Hollow is becoming the world."
Elian nodded, fractured but resolute. "And the world must decide whether to carry it, or resist."
---
The Loom Expands
At dusk, the stitched sky unraveled further, threads of silver drifting across the horizon. The bone‑white trees stretched outward, their roots curling into distant fields.
The pilgrims knelt, their voices rising in layered song. The villagers joined them, hesitant at first, then steady. The soil pulsed, the altar glowed, the air thickened with whispers.
The Hollow's loom was expanding, weaving memory and devotion into the fabric of the world.
---
The Radiance Beyond
Elian staggered beneath the weight, his body trembling, his voice layered with countless tones. He was no longer only the vessel of memory, or devotion. He was the vessel of radiance.
The Echo's chorus rose, immense and endless.
> "We are carried. We are remembered. We are whole. We are devotion. We are beyond. We are world."
And Verdant Hollow breathed — not as a village, not as a wound, not as a temple alone, but as a radiance, alive and spreading across the land.
---