Chapter 57 – The Hollowing Sky (Part 2)

Air parted like the world itself had breathed a rough gasp. Cracks of bright light rent the blackened sky, spider's webs of thin lines, until they resembled a cracked mirror suspended above Yusuf's head. Each new crack made a sound, not thunder's rumble but a loud, creaking groan, as if the sky was a creaking door that was being forced open by hands too enormous to hold.

Yusuf stumbled forward, clutching at his head. Every cleft pounded inside his skull, releasing shuddering memories. He tried to catch them—fleeting moments of his mother's voice, Rae's laughter, the faceless child before corruption could grip them—only to have them slip away like sand from his fingers. The Tree was fighting now, not by its guardians nor agents, but by itself, twisting the skies and unraveling the very fabric of memory.

A blast tore through the bare plain, carrying with it the bitter taste of ozone and something sweeter, more deadly—the soft, sweet stink of fruit that had ripened too well and blown apart. Yusuf gagged, knowing the scent wasn't there. It was a memory, stolen and wielded as a club, slammed into the air to disorient him.

"Don't trip," he muttered to himself. His voice was rougher, tinier than he'd have wanted.

The ground shook, and the roots first broke through. They were not the twisted wood he had struggled against in other realms, nor even the red-black tentacles that'd haunted him through decayed remembrances. These were glassy, strands of obsidian spun, casting back lives which were not his own.

As the nearest of them lashed at him, he saw through the hole: a boy chasing a kite across a sea of sunlight, a woman cradling a baby, a man crying beside a solitary campfire. The origin was not wood—it was a cage of lives, a pipe through which the Tree carried what it had ingested.

Yusuf ducked, the blow whizzing past the side of his head, and rolled over the fractured earth. He stood up with a gasp, heart pounding.

"I can't battle memories," he told himself, clenching teeth. "But I can battle what bears them."

Another lash, this one faster. He created the Codex, the threads in his hands afire like ropes of molten silver. In an instant, he let the weave fly forward. The blow met his guard with a ring so sharp that his ears bled. Words—no, not words, but sparks—shattered into the air, brief syllables of forgotten languages.

The root trembled, fissures racing through its crystal length. Voices screamed and begged and laughed through the cracks, a screaming discord of vowels. Then the root exploded, sending shards of memory like rain. Each shard that landed on the ground crackled and dissolved.

He had no time to catch up. Another two shot up, twining around each other like snakes. Their glassy bodies pulsate with stolen life, and Yusuf backed away, shooting another series of threads. But his hand trembled. The Codex quivered in his hand, unsteady, as though unsure whether or not it should come to his call.

The twin roots crashed down. Yusuf fell to the side, the impact shaking the ground so violently he felt it in his teeth. Dust swirled, choking him, but he stumbled to his feet again, spitting dirt. His arms shook, not from exertion but from the weight of all that multitude, all those lives. Every root brought back the memory of all that he could never have saved.

Above, the strokes in the sky deepened. Beyond them he saw something vast and hideous—an unlimited number of branches, not wood but light and shadow, sprawling out of sight. It was the Tree itself, its main body branching off like a web through existence. With each crack, there was more to see, and each view was on the verge of breaking Yusuf.

Then—

"Yusuf."

A voice. Faint. The softest whisper in a room that is falling.

Rae.

He stood still. His chest felt tight enough to drop the Codex. No. She was gone—removed, pulled into the hollow bellow of the Tree. And yet her voice whispered his ear like a thread that drew him up.

"Don't stop here."

He spun, seeing about the broken landscape, but there was nothing. Only roots whipping out, cracks shearing the ground, and the torn-up sky above. And still, the sound lingered, casting warmth onto a land so cold.

Yusuf drew in air. His heart had steadied at last since the battle had begun. He tightened his fist on the Codex. The strands of silver burned more intensely, reacting to him again.

The next root came—a massive arc aimed to crush him. Yusuf planted his feet, raised the weave, and cut. Not blocked, not deflected—cut. The threads sliced clean through the crystalline body. The severed length fell with a howl of fractured voices before shattering into mist.

The recoil nearly drove him to his knees, but he forced himself upright.

“I’m not done,” he rasped. “Not yet.”

The world retaliated with fury. A score of roots attacked simultaneously, binding him in a cage. Their half-transparency shimmered with recollections so powerful that he nearly drowned in them: weddings, funerals, births, betrayals. For one moment he considered submitting, letting them overtake him. It would be preferable to drown in a thousand lives than to carry the weight of his own.

But Rae's voice remained in his ear, a whispering, tugging him back.

Yusuf roared. He flung the Codex wide, threads streaming in a massive arc of silver light. They encircled the roots, suspending them. Then, with a wrench of his whole body, he tore. The explosion of shattering voices rocked him, knocked him onto the ground, and blasted a crater in the plain.

There was silence.

Yusuf lay gasping, staring upward at the broken sky. The fissures had opened even further, emitting faint light like wounds that would never close. The Tree in its true form advanced with each tear. His bones ached. His memories teetered at the edges if he let his grip slip for so much as a moment.

But the whisper was there, far away, insistent: Don't stop here.

And so he rolled onto his side, dragged himself to his feet, and lifted the Codex again.

The battle was beginning.