The altar didn’t glow.
There were no triumphant horns or swirling lights. Just stone—old and bitter with moss and time—etched in a language Vivienne didn’t know but somehow understood. Every curve of the glyphs felt like breath caught in a throat, like grief mid-scream. She knelt before it, not out of reverence, but because her knees had buckled.
She had whispered his name. Rafael. And the Hollow had answered.
Not in words.
In memory.
It came not as vision but sensation—pressure behind her eyes, cold flooding her limbs, like she was drowning backward through time. A heartbeat not her own thudded in her skull. Too fast. Too loud. Her pulse staggered to meet it.
She gasped, and the garden swallowed her whole.
Roots curled from the walls, not menacing but curious. They traced her skin,
