Section I:A Trail of Broken Prayers
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Wushan's dawn was a silent one.
Elwin stood by the outskirts of the crumbling town, the scent of ash still lingering in the air. The night before, a small shrine had collapsed — not by natural decay, but by something far darker. The town's remaining priestess, an old woman with hollow eyes, had spoken of "the gods turning their faces away."
He had heard that line before. The same words whispered in the ruins of Redhold, the border outpost now buried under weeping earth.
The deeper he followed Aymelle's trail, the more he sensed it — the presence of "the Crying Remains" was growing louder, no longer content to linger in shadows.
A cracked pendant lay in his hand. He'd found it beneath the altar rubble, half-buried in candle wax and dried blood. Its center was engraved with the symbol of the Weeping Moon, the same as the one Aymelle wore when they were still in the monastery.
"She was here," he murmured.
Behind him, the breeze carried the scent of damp earth and rot. The curse was spreading faster.
"Elwin Sallet?"
He turned sharply.
Standing a few paces behind was a figure cloaked in muted grey, face half-shadowed beneath a hood. The stranger's voice was soft, neither hostile nor friendly, but it held an edge of uncanny calm — as if he had been expecting Elwin.
"Who are you?" Elwin asked.
The figure did not answer at first. He took a step forward, hands hidden in his sleeves, head slightly tilted.
"You chase the one touched by the tears of the forsaken, yes? The girl who weeps with power not meant for the living?"
Elwin's eyes narrowed. "You know Aymelle?"
"I know of her. Just as I know that you are already too late."
Silence fell, cold and sharp.
"But," the man continued, "there is one path still open — a cursed road beneath the ruins of Hollowreach. There, the cries grow deafening. She passed through it, and if you follow, perhaps... you will hear her scream."
"What's your name?"
The man paused, then whispered, "Names are burdens, and I carry too many."
With that, he turned, melting into the early fog.
Elwin stood frozen, heart hammering in his chest. He knew lies when he heard them. That wasn't a warning — it was an invitation.
He gripped the pendant tighter.
And walked toward Hollowreach.
Section II: "The Shattered Mercy"
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The Source of the Crying Remains had no horizon. Only layers upon layers of weeping mist, spiraling like ghostly threads through jagged chasms.
Aymelle walked barefoot now. Her shoes had long since dissolved in the cursed water, and her skin bore the silver lines of the tear-marked. Every step echoed with the sound of sorrow — not hers, but the thousands who had once wept here, buried beneath the stone and time.
She did not cry anymore.
That was the first sign of change.
Her heart beat slower. Her breaths no longer steamed with warmth. Ever since she passed the threshold marked by the shattered idol of the Moon Priestess, something inside her had begun to twist — not with pain, but with acceptance.
She had started hearing them more clearly.
"He is coming."
"He still remembers your name."
"Will you remember his, when your tears run dry?"
The voices slithered, not with malice, but pity. They had no shape, only echoes. Yet Aymelle could sense them — remnants of souls swallowed by grief, bound in this place by the ancient sin of weeping too deeply.
She reached the hollow basin — a crater within the cavern, where stone statues knelt in poses of despair. Dozens of them, carved in different forms — priests, maidens, children — all weeping. Their eyes bled with crystal tears.
Aymelle stepped among them.
Suddenly, one of the statues cracked.
Not from her touch — from within.
She turned sharply.
Cracks ran down the statue's face. Its arms trembled. A pulse of deep violet surged through its body — and then it moved.
The statue screamed.
Not with sound — but through memory. Aymelle staggered back as the scream poured into her mind — images of a little boy dragged from his mother, chains dragging her away, the mother weeping until her eyes turned black—
"No—stop—!"
She clutched her head, falling to her knees.
More statues trembled. The shrine was waking.
"Aymelle."
Her breath caught.
The voice was different. Singular. Male. And... close.
A figure stood across the basin, beyond the cracked statues. Cloaked in white, wrapped in ribbons of shadow, barefoot like her. His hair was silver-grey, his skin faintly translucent like it was painted from the same substance as the tears themselves.
"I felt your sorrow."
He stepped forward, each footfall soundless.
"I am Meyr. I was once like them. Once like you."
She stood, staggering. "You're... one of the Crying Remains?"
Meyr's eyes gleamed. "No. I am the one who remembered what they forgot — that sorrow does not have to break us. It can free us."
He raised his hand.
Around them, the statues stopped shaking. The screaming halted.
And the silence was overwhelming.
"You walk a path where most are lost. But not all must end as Remains."
He lowered his hand and pointed to her heart.
"You still have time, Tear-Bearer."
Aymelle stared at him.
Her tears, long dormant, began to well again.
But this time... not from despair.
From recognition.
Section III: "The Door That Weeps"
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Elwin stood before it — a door without frame, without hinges, suspended in midair, carved from obsidian glass veined with lines of silver.
The townsfolk of Wushan called it "The Weeping Gate", but most refused to come near. It was said to echo with voices of the damned — not in screams, but in whispers of regret, spoken by those who were never given a chance to say goodbye.
He had followed the trail left by the woman in grey — the one who had hinted at Aymelle's descent. She had told him this gate marked the boundary between the known world and the Echoing Hollow, a realm where sorrow had physical weight, where memories bled into stone, and the dead sometimes remembered they were dead.
Elwin pressed his palm against the gate.
It was warm.
And then it cried.
A single drop of water slid from its center, trailing down like a tear.
Then another.
Then dozens.
He heard it — not a scream, not even a voice, but the soft sound of a girl's weeping.
"Aymelle..."
He didn't hesitate.
He stepped forward, and the gate shattered like glass beneath his touch, spiraling into mist that clung to his skin like silk threads.
Darkness swallowed him — not black, but colorless. In this place, time seemed to dissolve. His own thoughts echoed too loud in his skull. He took one step, then another, boots crunching on gravel that wasn't really there.
A faint light pulsed in the distance.
Then — something moved.
A figure emerged from the grey.
Not Aymelle.
A woman, tall, wrapped in bone-colored robes, her face veiled by tears — literal tears, suspended like crystal beads, forming a shimmering mask.
She raised her hand.
"Elwin Sallet," she whispered, though her lips did not move.
He instinctively drew his sword. "Who are you?"
"I am the Gatekeeper. You seek the Tear-Bearer."
His eyes narrowed. "You mean Aymelle."
"Yes. She walks the path of the Awakened. But that path is not for the living."
Elwin took a step forward. "I don't care what path she walks. I will follow her."
The Gatekeeper tilted her head. "Would you bleed for her?"
"I already have."
"Would you forget yourself for her?"
"I remember because of her."
The Gatekeeper's veil shimmered. "Then prove it."
She stepped aside.
Behind her, a stone staircase descended into nothing — not downward, not upward, but inward.
At the edge of the first step, a single white rose lay on the ground. Elwin bent down and picked it up.
Its petals were soft — but the thorns were made of glass.
They cut into his fingers.
He didn't let go.
He stepped onto the stairs.
And the sorrow welcomed him
Section IV: "The Song Beneath the Bones"
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The silence within the Hollow was not empty—it was expectant. Like a breath held just before a scream, or the hush before a name is whispered into the void.
Aymelle walked alone now.
The ground beneath her was no longer stone, but an endless stretch of pale marrow-like substance, as though she were walking atop the spine of some ancient beast long dead. The sky—if it could be called that—was a swirling tapestry of dim lights, each flickering like a dying star. The air shimmered with residual cries, faint and fragmented.
She heard them all.
Mother…
Forgive me…
Don't forget me…
I still remember your hands…
They weren't voices aimed at her, but echoes of loss trapped in the walls of this realm.
Still, she pressed on, clutching the remnants of her cracked pendant—Elwin's parting gift—close to her chest.
Then she heard the sound.
A low hum. Not threatening. Not human. But… familiar.
She turned.
There, standing by a spiraling pillar of bone and mist, was a figure cloaked in deep azure. His back was to her, long silver hair flowing like ribbons of moonlight. He seemed to be singing—but the melody was silent.
She approached, cautious. "Are you… lost?"
The figure turned.
His eyes were unlike anything she had seen. They weren't eyes at all, but fragments of glass tears, suspended in black voids.
"No," he said, voice gentle, layered with a thousand timbres. "But perhaps… I was waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"For you."
Aymelle tensed. "Who are you?"
He bowed slightly. "You may call me Meyr. I am what remains when sorrow chooses not to die."
Her grip on the pendant tightened. "Are you… one of the Crying Remains?"
Meyr smiled faintly. "Not quite. I was once… close. I stood on the edge. I listened too long. We all have our thresholds, Aymelle."
He said her name like he had always known it.
She stepped back. "How do you know me?"
"Because you are the first in centuries to cry and be heard."
His words hit her chest like thunder, yet felt warm—as if her pain was not just acknowledged, but understood.
"You walk a dangerous path," Meyr continued. "To weep here is to shape reality. Your sorrow… it is becoming power. But power, unshaped by purpose, is a flood."
Aymelle swallowed. "Then teach me how to control it."
Meyr studied her, then raised his hand. From the pillar beside him, a shard of transparent crystal floated toward her. Inside it, Aymelle saw her younger self—laughing with Elwin under the monastery's tree, before everything was lost.
"Pain becomes strength," Meyr said. "But only when embraced, not feared."
Aymelle reached for the shard.
It shattered the moment her fingers brushed it—and in its place, a blade formed in her hand.
It was translucent, like a frozen tear, but hummed with her heartbeat.
Meyr nodded. "Your first weapon. Born not of metal, but of memory."
Aymelle held the blade, her hands trembling—not from fear, but from something deeper. Resolve.
"I will find him," she said. "No matter what lies ahead."
Meyr's expression shifted, something sad behind his many eyes.
"Then be warned, Tear-Bearer—what lies ahead… may also seek to find you."
Section V: "Two Echoes, One Thread"
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Somewhere beyond the Hollow—across crumbling mountain ridges, dead forests, and blackened skies—Elwin stood still, surrounded by whispers of wind and shadow. The cursed borderlands had grown restless, but he was calmer now, centered in the ache within his chest.
He felt her.
Not in a vision. Not in a dream.
But in that fragile sliver of his soul where silence once nested.
Aymelle.
He placed a hand over his heart, where the old pendant used to rest. It was gone now, but its weight—her weight—lingered. Every heartbeat felt like a knock on a locked door. And tonight, that door trembled on its hinges.
He knelt near an abandoned shrine, overgrown and forgotten, but strangely… familiar.
The earth here was cracked with ancient runes. When he brushed the dust away, one rune glowed faintly—
泪. Tear.
Suddenly, a wind swept through the shrine. Soft. Sad. Like a lullaby sung by someone who no longer remembered the words.
Then he saw her—not in body, but in a flare of emotion that struck his soul:
Resolve. Pain. Hope. A blade born from sorrow.
He gasped.
"Aymelle… you're alive."
A vision flickered before his eyes—
Her standing tall, pale light wrapped around her shoulders, a tear-shaped blade in her hand. Her expression was no longer one of loss… but of strength.
Their souls—linked by something older than fate—touched, if only for a heartbeat.
At the same moment, deep within the Hollow, Aymelle froze.
The blade in her hand pulsed.
"Elwin?"
His name came unbidden from her lips, drawn out by instinct more than memory.
Meyr, standing nearby, turned slightly. "Ah. So the thread still holds."
She didn't answer. Couldn't. All she knew was that for a fleeting moment, she felt him. Felt his warmth, his stubbornness, the way he used to hold her hand before daring steps into the unknown.
He was coming.
He still believed in her.
That single thought… made her stand taller.
"Elwin," she whispered again, eyes closed, lips trembling.
Far away, by the shrine, Elwin whispered too.
"Aymelle. Just hold on."
Above them both, far across the sky of this shattered world, two stars—once dim—flickered with light.