They arrived at the Skygrave under cover of twilight.
No map could guide them here—only the bound anchors pulsing in Orin's chest. The Broken Ring loomed ahead, a shattered crescent of floating stone and dead skyfire, circling a void in the heavens where a city had once hung in the air.
The fourth anchor—the Heart of Aetherion—waited at the center.
But so did everything else that wanted it destroyed.
Mira stared upward, her voice tight. "This place is wrong."
It was more than ruins. Gravity bent oddly. The wind carried voices—fragments of the last battle fought here between the Skyborn and the first Hollowfall. Kaelen tightened his grip on his staff. "This is where the first Skyfire failed. Where the last Highborne died. We walk on a tomb."
They stepped onto one of the ring's broken fragments, each one suspended midair. Between them: gaps filled with swirling space and whispers of dead stars.
Orin led the way.
The anchors' marks on his body shimmered, guiding him across the unstable terrain, leaping from fragment to fragment. As they neared the center, the light began to fade. Not dim. Die.
And then they saw it.
Floating in the center of the ring, bound in an ancient prism of skyglass, was the Heart of Aetherion—the final anchor. But surrounding it was a swarm of entities—shards of the Hollow Star, more numerous than before. They clustered like insects, orbiting the Heart and siphoning its strength.
A shape emerged from their midst.
A figure, cloaked in voidfire and memory, wearing a mask of polished glass: the Witness.
Mira drew her blades. "We've seen you before."
The Witness nodded. "And yet you keep coming."
"What are you?" Orin asked.
"A reflection. A scar. A warning."
Kaelen's eyes narrowed. "You're the Hollow Star's voice."
"No," the Witness said, stepping aside. "I am its consequence."
The shadows parted.
Behind the Witness, in the center of the broken ring, the Hollow Star itself began to form—not fully, but enough to be seen. A sphere of perfect darkness, threaded with impossible constellations. Reality cracked just from looking at it.
"Bind the final anchor," the Witness said quietly. "But know this—doing so wakes it fully. And when it wakes, it will burn everything."
Orin stepped forward, eyes locked on the Heart.
"We're not binding it to win," he said. "We're binding it… because someone has to try."