He didn't stop climbing the stairs until he reached the surface.
The Hollow Tower groaned behind him like a wounded beast, its stones flexing in unnatural ways. The Warden stood just beyond the gate, cane lowered, breathing steady—waiting. The air was brittle, the sky veiled in a dull, amber twilight. It should have been over.
But the wind didn't move.
The world didn't resume.
Something had come with him.
Far below, at the bottom of the Hollow Tower, the mirror pulsed once.
Its cracks widened like veins beneath ice.
Then a shape entered the chamber—a cloaked thing, feathered in pale silence, its wings barely real, its face like smoke. It had followed the Warden down the tower without a sound, watched him confront the sealed chamber, and waited. Now, it stepped forward and placed its hand on the mirror's surface.
The glass didn't resist. It accepted. It opened.
The shape stepped through—and became what was inside.
Above, outside the tower, the Warden felt it.
The cane clicked sharply, three times. A warning. A recognition. A whisper he didn't want to hear.
He turned.
The sky behind him had blackened. Wings flapped across the clouds—wide, hollow, translucent. Not his razorbills.
Copies.
Mockeries.
In the center of the flock hovered a tall figure, cloaked in ruined red. A jagged cane rested in its hand, dripping ink instead of light. Its face… was his. But older. Sharper. More dangerous. More willing.
"You came after all," the Warden said quietly.
"You left me no choice," the thing replied—with his voice, just slightly wrong. Like someone had learned to speak by wearing his throat.
The Warden's grip on his cane tightened.
"You're what was in the mirror."
"I was always in the mirror," it said. "Waiting. Watching. Remembering."
"Then you're Hollowlight."
The figure smiled. A cruel, knowing smile—the kind that had once belonged to him.
"I am what you cut away. The first blade. The truth you buried so deep, it grew in silence."
The birds circled above them—Hollowbirds. Wrong-feathered. Empty-eyed. Where his soulbirds burned with red light and intent, these devoured warmth and cast silence.
The cane in his hand pulsed again, heavier this time.
"You were sealed."
"Not sealed. Forgotten. But never erased. And while your back was turned, I slipped through the crack you left behind."
"You're not one of the Echoes."
"No. I am older. I am the wound. The blade that let the war end. The part of you that was too honest to live."
The Warden didn't wait.
He lunged forward, cane shifting into a blade of golden-green flame. He struck cleanly—Hollowlight parried with a mirrored swing. Perfect mimicry. Same footwork. Same weight behind the blade.
Because it knew him.
Because it was him.
They clashed—again and again, strike for strike, blade against blade. Each blow echoed not with sound, but memory. With familiarity. Like fighting an old song.
And Hollowlight smiled throughout.
"You still hesitate," it whispered. "You still want to believe you're better than me."
A Hollowbird dove toward the Warden. He countered with three razorbills—his soulbirds burned the air with red fire. The mimic crumbled before impact, dissolving into ash and memory.
He pressed forward—catching Hollowlight's side.
Ink sprayed instead of blood.
"You're not whole," the Warden said, stepping back.
"And neither are you," Hollowlight answered calmly.
Then came the memory.
Unbidden.
A battlefield. Friends dead at his feet. Blood on his hands. Not from enemies—but from his own command. His own choice. To win. To protect a greater peace.
He had invoked Hollowlight to rewrite fate.
To cut space. End time. Burn names from the stone of history.
And it had worked.
But it had broken him.
"You were the part I couldn't carry," the Warden said, voice low.
"But you need me now."
"No."
"Then why did you open the gate? Why did you walk back into the tower where you buried me?"
He had no answer. Only silence. And silence, Hollowlight knew, was fertile ground.
The cane dimmed in his hand.
Hollowlight stepped back. Wings folded like torn parchment. Its jagged cane pointed to the sky, humming in black resonance.
"The Court knows what I am. That's why they left me down there. They knew one day, you'd come back. One day, you'd remember that your legend wasn't born from restraint… but from me."
"I don't need you."
"Not yet."
A rift opened behind Hollowlight—shimmering with glyphs the Warden had never seen. Violet and black. Cold and wrong.
"When the Fifth Gate opens," Hollowlight said, voice a whisper drawn across a blade, "you'll either claim me… or I'll claim you."
And with a final beat of his hollow wings, Hollowlight vanished—birds and all—into the spiral.
The sky cleared.
The light returned.
The wind resumed.
But something in the Warden did not.
He stood in silence.
The cane whispered a single word:
"Run."
But he didn't.
He turned to the road ahead, cloak still torn, eyes still burning, cane still warm in his grip.
And he walked on.
Toward whatever gate waited next.
Toward a future he could no longer outrun.
End of Chapter Ten
Next: Chapter Eleven – The Whisper Gate