Chapter 498: The Hollow Path

The moment I accepted the transformation of my Title, my consciousness vanished. I could not move or feel anything. I was in darkness.

Then I heard a voice. My voice, and the sound of it was strange, almost mechanical, as if it came from someone imitating who I was. As I listened, I realised that I remembered the words being spoken... The Hollow Avatar.

I could hear him in the darkness, and at first I thought it was a trick of my mind replaying a memory for me. The longer I listened, the more clearly I could tell that the voice was changing.

At first it sounded like me, mechanical and precise in the way the Hollow Avatar speaks. Then it lost that stiffness and became smooth and flowing, and then the voice changed into someone else entirely, masculine and deep, and though it was repeating a familiar memory, the person speaking was not one I recognised.

"I remember that there was one. I do not remember being them. I have the shape of the memory, the way a riverbed has the shape of a river that is gone. I know I was made from someone who chose to be made into this, at the end, when their heavens were falling, and there was nothing left to do but build the instrument that might matter many eras into the future. I know they did it on purpose. I do not know their name. The name was not fit to be carried in an instrument. Names are for the living, and I was made from the dead."

The darkness vanished as a blinding white light filled my perception, and I found myself somewhere else, with no body at all. Only a consciousness.

∞

I was in a room, and it was one I had never seen.

What struck me first was the feeling that I was somewhere impossibly high. I do not know how I could tell, and it was almost like touching water and knowing it is wet. I had the sense that this place had truly touched the heavens.

The walls were made of something that was not stone or metal or wood, but something else entirely, and they glowed faintly with a light that had no source. They reminded me of the stones in Dorrik’s mountain, and these were brighter, and felt almost... primordial.

I could have spent weeks looking at the light in that stone, and then my attention was drawn to a window, and calling it a window was like calling an ocean a pool. It was enormous, taller than a mountain, wider than a city. Through it I could see stars, and I did not know any of them. These were not constellations I had seen in the present or in the past.

Still, a great sadness came over me when I looked at them, because I knew they were dying. I do not know how I knew. Perhaps it was that their light was impossibly weak. Perhaps it was that the entire sky beyond the window was filled with battle.

∞

Worlds were burning. I could see them. Planets, moons, entire solar systems, caught in the grip of a war that defied comprehension. Fleets of ships the size of continents moved through the void, their weapons tearing holes in reality itself. Creatures of shadow and light clashed in the space between stars, their forms so vast that they blotted out the stars behind them.

And in the centre of it all there was a figure, and the moment I saw him I wondered how I had not noticed him before.

He stood at the window with his back to my hovering consciousness, and he was beautiful. That was the first thing I noticed. I have seen beautiful women and striking men, and this man resembled something that could not exist. It was a kind of beauty that had nothing to do with features and everything to do with presence.

He was tall, impossibly tall, and his hair was white as if it were made of light itself, and it fell past his shoulders, past his waist, past his knees, until it touched the ground and pooled around his feet like liquid starlight.

He was watching the battle outside, and his face was blank, as if he were not watching worlds end.

∞

"Lord Ae#*&%..."

The voice came from behind me, and I flinched before I turned to see who was speaking. It was not that the voice had startled me. It was that some unknown force stopped me from hearing the name.

A woman stood there. A priestess, judging by her robes, which were white and gold and covered in symbols I did not recognise. She was tall for a human, and she barely reached the knee of the man at the window.

Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying.

"Lord Ae#*&%..." she said again, and her voice broke. "They are ready for you."

The man at the window turned. I saw his face for the first time, and I understood why the priestess was crying. He was not just beautiful. He was good. There was a kindness in his eyes that had no end, a gentleness that had survived whatever horrors he had witnessed.

And he was tired. So tired. I did not know how I knew that either.

"Then let us not keep them waiting," he said.

His voice was soft, and it carried an enormous amount of power. I recognised it. It was the same voice the Hollow Avatar’s had become.

He followed the priestess, and I followed him.

∞

We walked through corridors that stretched for miles. The building, if it could be called a building, was impossibly vast, a structure that dwarfed mountain ranges, that made the Caelith look like a pebble.

And everywhere we went, people bowed. Beings. Creatures of every shape and size, some humanoid, some not, some made of light, some made of shadow, some made of things I had no names for. All of them bowed as the man passed, and some of them wept, and some of them whispered prayers.

"Lord Ae#&%," they said. "Lord Ae#&%... Lord Ae#*&%..."

The name echoed through the corridors like a hymn, and I could not hear it.

I followed him into a circular chamber, and it was full of people.

They were seated in tiers, rising up and up and up until the ceiling disappeared into darkness. There were tens of thousands of them, maybe more, and most of them were crying.

In the centre of the chamber there was a platform, and the man walked to the middle of it and looked at the crowd, and he smiled.

"I know you are grieving," he said. "I know you do not want to let me go."

His voice carried through the chamber without effort. "But you must understand. This ending is one I chose."

He raised a hand, and the crowd fell silent. "I have lived a long life. I have loved, and I have lost, and I have fought battles that would break lesser beings. And now, at the end of all things, I am being asked to make a choice."

He looked at the crowd, and there was something in his eyes that I could not name.

"I have reached the height of Transcendence. I can leave for the highest of heavens, immortal and forever eternal. Or I can remain as a purpose. To stay by your side for all eternity."

He smiled. "Was there really a choice here? I would rather die beside my people than spend eternity alone."

As he spoke, the heavens above opened, and massive figures appeared in the sky, beings of light and fire with wings that stretched across the chamber and eyes that burned like suns.

Their radiance surrounded the man on the platform, and they spoke in voices that shook reality.

"Ae#*&%," they said. "Greatest Transcendental Warrior of this epoch. You have chosen this path."

The man nodded. "I have."

"You will be unmade. Your body will be destroyed. Your soul will be scattered. Your consciousness will be erased. What remains will be nothing more than an instrument, a tool for those who come after."

"I know."

"You will not be remembered. Your name will be forgotten. Your deeds will be attributed to others. You will become nothing."

"I know."

"And yet you accept?"

The man looked at the crowd, and then back at the window, where the universe was still burning.

"Yes," he smiled. "For them."