Orion woke with a jolt, lungs dragging in air like he'd been drowning. Pale light filtered through the cracks in the observatory's dome, fractured and hesitant. The stone beneath him felt too cold. Too real.
His lip ached. The crack from the dream—if it had only been a dream—still throbbed faintly, pulsing with something like memory. But what haunted him more than pain was the silence.
Selene was gone.
Her voice, once a constant presence in the back of his thoughts, had vanished. No gentle whispers. No guiding hum. Just stillness.
But not complete.
Somewhere inside the silence, there was a flicker. A warmth he didn't recognize—subtle, unfamiliar. Like sunlight behind a curtain. Not blazing or commanding, but steady. Watching. Waiting.
It didn't speak. It didn't demand. It simply was.
He couldn't name it. Couldn't reach it. But it was there.
He made his way back to the dorms where he found everyone asleep.
The door creaked open in front of him, breaking the stillness. Serah stepped through first, her hair tousled and eyes sharp. Iris followed, worry written across her face.
"You're up," Serah said, folding her arms. "Barely."
Orion ran a hand through his hair, trying to shake off the weight that clung to his skin like dew. "Didn't sleep much."
Iris moved closer. "You're pale. Pale even for you. Something happened last night."
He hesitated. The dream lingered like smoke in his lungs, and beneath it, the quiet pulse of that strange warmth. But how could he explain it? He didn't understand it himself.
"I'm fine," he said, breathing hard.
Serah raised a brow but didn't push. "Fine," she muttered. "But don't think we're letting it go."
Later that morning, Azrael gathered them in the shaded courtyard at the edge of the mid-tier rings. Behind him, students passed like shadows—more cautious than before, rumors of "something wrong" in the heart of the Academy beginning to take shape.
"We're descending deeper," Azrael said, voice calm and precise. "The inner vaults hold what's left of the Star Sepulchre. That's where the distortions are strongest. Whatever caused the Veil rupture started there."
Orion stood beside Iris and Serah, arms crossed. He didn't trust his voice yet. Not with the aftertaste of the Hollow still curling in his mouth.
Serah tapped her boot against the stone. "Good. About time we stopped poking around the edges."
Azrael offered her a glance. "Recklessness will get us killed."
"And delay will do what? Save us?" she shot back.
The tension was mounting. Each of them fraying at the edges.
Azrael turned to Orion. "You've been quiet. More than usual."
Orion looked away. The warmth inside him pulsed again—distant but calm. "I'm listening."
That was all he could offer.
The path into the deeper chambers was steeped in ancient dust and something darker. Faint vibrations echoed through the stones, like echoes of something that had never been alive.
Orion moved with the group but felt separate from them. The warmth within him had not faded—but it hadn't grown either. It felt like… potential. A waiting flame.
In contrast, the Hollow had grown louder.
The moment they stepped into the Sepulchre's outer chambers, the feeling intensified. The air buzzed with distorted energy, and at the chamber's center lay a broken astrolabe, etched with old constellations now cracked down the middle.
Azrael bent to examine it. "Something's wrong. These lines—this was meant to measure bonds between stars and bearers. But it's corrupted."
"By what?" Iris asked.
"Something that doesn't belong," Azrael replied.
Orion stepped closer. His chest tightened. The Hollow Star surged faintly behind his ribs.
He touched the edge of the device—and felt both forces within him respond. One reached for the fracture eagerly, the Hollow feeding on it like a wound.
The other—quieter, but firmer—pulled him back.
He yanked his hand away, staggering a step.
"Orion?" Iris moved to steady him.
"I'm fine," he lied, breathing hard.
He wasn't.
The Sepulchre's heart was a wide, sunken chamber. Black stone ringed the room, etched with runes too ancient for even Azrael to translate.
And at the center, where the stars once communed with their chosen, the Hollow waited.
It manifested slowly—first as mist, then as a shape. Not a being, but an absence, its form shifting like smoke caught in oil.
"Orion…"
The voice reached into his bones, intimate and cold.
"You are the broken thread. The gap between stars. Let me make you whole".
He staggered back, the mark over his eye pulsing with pain. Selene's bond resisted, but weakly. She was slipping. Drifting farther from him with every breath.
And the warmth—that warmth—it flared again. Not in fear. Not in dominance.
In quiet resistance.
Steady. Grounded.
The Hollow reeled back, as if burned.
Serah's blade ignited beside him, her presence blazing. "We need to kill this thing," she hissed.
"You can't kill something that isn't alive," Azrael muttered. "This is a fracture given form."
But it wanted him.
The Hollow surged toward Orion, whispering promises:
"No more doubt. No more silence. Let me show you what the stars kept from you."
His knees buckled. Cold wrapped around his lungs. He couldn't breathe—
Then the warmth bloomed.
Like a hand, resting lightly over his chest. No voice. No commands. Just a presence.
'You are not hollow.'
He didn't speak the words—but he thought them. Felt them. And it was enough.
The Hollow shrieked, recoiling violently. Its form splintered, shadows tearing against the air before vanishing into the cracks.
Then they were gone.
They didn't speak as they returned to the surface. Not right away.
Serah's flames had dimmed. She walked stiffly, like she didn't trust herself not to explode.
Azrael was deep in thought, lips tight.
Iris moved closest to Orion, watching him carefully. "That wasn't the first time it's come for you, was it?"
"No," he admitted.
"Is it Selene?" she asked softly. "Is she the one weakening?"
He didn't answer. He didn't know.
"I felt something else," Iris said, almost hesitant. "When the Hollow reached for you, something pushed back. It wasn't Selene."
Orion looked up at the sky, where dawn was breaking over the highest spires. "I know."
"Do you know what it was?"
He shook his head. "Only that it's… warm."
Serah scoffed. "You sound like a mystic."
But her voice lacked its usual bite.
"I don't care what it is," she added. "If it keeps that thing off you, you should embrace it."
Iris frowned. "That's not how it works, Serah."
Azrael remained silent.
—-
That night, Orion stood alone beneath the shattered dome of the observatory. Moonlight spilled through the broken glass, painting pale veins across the stones. Water pooled in the basin near his feet, catching the stars overhead and warping them in the ripples.
He stared at his reflection. One eye silver, ringed with a crescent mark that no longer glowed the way it used to. The other was darkened, shadows curling faintly around the edges of his iris—like smoke that refused to rise.
He exhaled, long and low.
The warmth within him remained. Quiet. Steady. Like embers that had never cooled.
But it wasn't alone.
The Hollow still lingered too. He could feel it, just beyond the veil of thought—circling. Waiting for cracks.
He closed his eyes.
And then—
"Orion."
A whisper.
Soft. Familiar. The kind of voice that wrapped around his bones like silk, threading through the marrow.
"Selene…" he breathed, the name trembling out of him like a prayer.
She didn't answer immediately. But he felt her—like light returning to the edges of a storm. Her presence was weaker than before, dimmer, like a moon slipping behind clouds—but unmistakable.
Don't trust the Hollow, she said. It is not a star. It is hunger shaped into a voice. A lie given purpose.
He gritted his teeth. "You've been gone. I thought—"
"I was not gone," she whispered. "Only… far. Pulled thin. Something has shifted, Orion. There is another presence in you now. I feel it."
He hesitated.
"I don't know what it is," he admitted. "But it hasn't hurt me."
Not yet.
He looked down at his hands. "It feels… right. Like it's holding me up when everything else is falling."
"Then it is not Hollow," Selene said softly. "But still… be careful. Stars do not come uncalled."
He frowned. "Do you trust me?"
A pause.
"Yes. But I do not know if I trust what is coming."
The breeze stirred, and with it, her voice faded again—like wind across still water. Faint. Fading.
"Wait—" he stepped forward, as if he could follow her into the night.
But she was gone.
And he was left with the echo of warmth, and the slow pulse of something vast beneath his ribs.
The Hollow would come again. He knew that now.
But so would Selene.
And maybe… maybe whatever else lived inside him wasn't the enemy either.
His reflection shimmered in the water below, fractured down the center.
He didn't understand it yet.
But he was no longer empty.
He was the space where stars converged.