The hollow did not surge again.
It did not roar, quake, or bare its power the way the Eidolon had above.
It simply…continued.
Breathing. Thinking. Waiting.
That was what unsettled Severin most.
He had faced sieges where the air screamed with fire and steel. He had stood before crowds whose silence hid knives behind smiles. He knew how to measure threat by noise, by motion, by intent made obvious.
This place offered none of that.
The passage ahead sloped downward in a slow, spiraling descent, its walls smoothing from fractured stone into something almost deliberate. The faintly luminous veins embedded in the rock pulsed more evenly now, their glow syncing, not to Severin's breath, nor to the Crownfire's restless heat, but to Aelindra's steps.
He noticed it without wanting to.
Every time she moved forward, the light responded a heartbeat later.
Not summoning.
Acknowledging.
Severin tightened his jaw and forced his attention outward.
Caelan walked a pace behind Aelindra's left shoulder, daggers loose in his hands, posture deceptively casual. Mira hovered closer to the center, one hand hovering near her charm, the other brushing the wall when the slope grew uneven, as if she needed reassurance that the stone was still solid. Marienne brought up the rear with Arveth, her eyes never still, her bow unstrung but ready.
They were alert.
They were alive.
And none of that meant much to the hollow.
The Crownfire stirred again, low, uneasy, like an ember disturbed in ash. Severin resisted the reflex to press a hand to his chest. That habit had been earned too publicly in the past. He would not give the mountain that satisfaction.
It did not want him.
Not yet.
Or not the way it once had.
That distinction mattered.
Aelindra slowed abruptly.
Not stopped, slowed, the way one does when something ahead feels wrong without being immediately dangerous.
Severin felt it too, a pressure shift that brushed the back of his skull, a subtle tug at his awareness, like fingers testing the edge of a blade.
The passage opened into a vast interior chamber.
Calling it a cavern felt inadequate. This was not an absence carved by water or time, it was a space held, shaped with purpose. The floor descended in wide, shallow terraces, each ring etched with faded sigils half-consumed by erosion. At the center yawned a circular depression, smooth and deep, its edges worn as though countless somethings had once gathered there.
Or been gathered.
The air was warmer here.
Not comforting.
Alive.
Severin exhaled slowly through his nose.
"This was a place of assembly," Arveth murmured behind them, awe threading reluctantly through his voice. "Before it was sealed."
Caelan glanced back. "Assembly of what, exactly?"
Arveth did not answer immediately.
Aelindra stepped forward.
The instant her boot crossed the threshold of the innermost ring, the sigils flared.
Not violently.
Not brightly.
They answered her.
Golden filaments, thinner, subtler than the glow in her palms, lit beneath the stone, threading outward in branching paths that mirrored the faint patterns beneath her skin.
Severin felt the Crownfire react sharply, heat flashing through his veins like a warning spark.
Not jealousy.
Recognition.
His breath caught.
The chamber hummed, not audibly, but with a pressure that settled behind his eyes. Mira gasped softly. Marienne swore under her breath. Even Caelan's irreverence faltered, his posture stiffening as instinct finally overrode bravado.
Arveth went still.
Completely still.
"Impossible," he whispered.
Aelindra looked down at her hands. The glow there had intensified, but it no longer flickered. It was steady now. Controlled. As if the hollow had decided she was not a threat.
Or had always known she wouldn't be.
"What is this place?" she asked quietly.
The question echoed.
Not outward.
Down.
Severin felt the response before he understood it, an answering presence unfurling beneath the chamber like a slow, ancient thought stretching after long dormancy.
Not hostile.
Assessing.
He stepped closer to Aelindra without thinking, positioning himself just behind her shoulder.
"If this thing decides that you matter," he murmured under his breath, "I want to be close enough to interfere."
She glanced back at him, something like surprise flickering across her expression, then something warmer. Steadier.
"Still planning to argue with a mountain?" she asked softly.
"Always," he replied. "It's a bad habit."
The presence below shifted.
The central depression darkened, not with shadow, but with depth, the air above it warping faintly as if gravity itself bent inward. The sigils flared brighter, their gold warming toward amber.
Arveth found his voice again.
"This hollow predates Solis," he said. "Predates the Crownfire as a codified force. These were…junctions. Places where the Range anchored what it could not let roam free."
Mira swallowed. "You mean gods."
"No," Arveth said grimly. "Gods leave. This stayed."
The word settled heavily.
Stayed.
Severin's thoughts raced, not in panic, but in grim calculation. If the hollow recognized Aelindra, if the Eidolon above had reacted to Severin but the depths below did not, then the danger they faced was not symmetrical.
He was bait.
She was…something else.
A key? No.
Keys were used.
This felt closer to lineage. To resonance.
To memory.
The depression stirred.
Not opening.
Listening.
Aelindra inhaled slowly, grounding herself the way she had done for him more times than he could count. Severin watched her shoulders settle, watched her fear flicker and recede, not vanish, never vanish, but align.
She was cautious.
Not afraid.
Her hands lifted slightly at her sides, palms open, not in surrender, but in acknowledgment.
"I don't know why you know me," she said, voice steady and carrying. "But I won't pretend I didn't feel it. I won't fight what I don't understand."
The air thickened.
Severin felt the Crownfire surge sharply, reacting to her words with a heat that made his vision blur for a fraction of a second.
The hollow did not respond to him.
It responded to her restraint.
A pressure rolled outward, not violent, not forceful, an invitation weighted with consequence.
Arveth sucked in a breath. "Aelindra..."
"I know," she said softly. "I won't step forward alone."
She glanced back.
Not at Arveth.
At Severin.
The look held no demand.
Just trust.
The vow he had made moments ago settled deeper into his bones.
He stepped beside her.
"If this thing wants a conversation," he said, voice low and even, "it can have it with both of us standing."
The Crownfire steadied, not flaring, not pulling.
Choosing.
Below them, something ancient shifted its attention fully.
Not to the prince.
Not to the power.
But to the pair.
And for the first time since the fall, Severin understood the truth the hollow was circling:
The fate it reconsidered was not whether Aelindra belonged here.
It was whether they did.