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This isn’t just about escape.

This is a decision withconsequence.

And all of us feel it.

“The one on the far end,” Riven says, breaking the quiet first. “It’s older. The stone is weathered. That could mean it was part of the original design, before Branwen rewrote the Hollow around herself.”

“That could also mean it hasn’t been touched in centuries because it’s a literal death trap,” Elias mutters, arms crossed, leaning against one of the darker columns. He raises a brow. “I’m just saying, if this was a video game, that would be the one that kills you instantly for being too curious.”

“You assume Luna’s the player,” Ambrose murmurs from behind him, tone like a scalpel. “But what if she’s the prize?”

Elias winces. “Thanks, that wasn’t unsettling atall.Want to go ahead and say something about sacrifice while you’re at it?”

Silas has wandered halfway down the third row, trailing fingers along the glowing runes of each pillar with a reverence I don’t like. His magic is quiet, but his thoughts aren’t. I can feel them radiating off him in waves—curiosity, hunger, that low hum of envy that never really sleeps.

“You notice how they’resinging?” he says suddenly, too brightly. “Not like voices. But like... resonance. Each one’s tuned slightly different. Which means they’re... individualized.”

“Individualized for who?” Lucien asks, sharp, arms rigid at his sides.

“Forher,obviously,” Silas grins, gesturing toward Luna without looking at her. “The universe is obsessed. I can’t even blame it.”

Luna doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond. She’s watching a pillar closest to her—one carved in layered bands of onyx and copper, pulsing slow and deep, like a heartbeat underwater.

“What if they’re not doors,” she says finally, voice low and deliberate, “but reflections? What if each pillar is a future?”

“That would mean the ‘wrong’ one doesn’t kill us,” Orin says from the edge of the chamber, his voice a calm, collected echo, “it simply locks us into something we weren’t meant for.”

“And what would that mean?” I ask. “We end up somewhere we shouldn’t be? In a version of our world that doesn’t know us? Or doesn’twantus?”

“We need a test,” Lucien says, too sharp, too fast. “Something to anchor our understanding. If each pillar represents a path—”

“There’s no way to test it without committing,” Riven interrupts, shaking his head. “These aren’t dials. They’re choices.”

“Which means,” Elias chimes in, “we have to do that thing we’re famously bad at.”

“What?” Silas asks.

“Trust,” Elias says with a sigh. “We have totrustthat Luna will know.”.

She doesn't flinch beneath the pressure. She was made for this kind of burden. But that doesn't mean it doesn't cut. I move closer—not because I think I can help, but because Ineedher to know she doesn’t have to shoulder it alone.

“Do you feel anything?” I ask her quietly. “Pulls? Heat? Anything that makes you lean one way or another?”

“I feel all of them,” she says, and it’s not a complaint—it’s almost reverent. “It’s like… they allwantme. Each one feels like it knows me in a different way.”

She turns toward me then, and when our eyes meet, the full weight of it hits me. She’s not overwhelmed. She’schosen by all of them.The problem is that we only need one.

“So then we take the one that knowsyoubest,” I say. “Not the version of you the Hollow remembers. Not the one Branwen feared. The one that’sours.”

Her throat works as she swallows. “And if I don’t know who that is anymore?”

I reach out. Let my fingers brush her wrist—barely there. Enough to make her feel it.

“Then we stay,” I say. “Until you do.”

She steps forward again. The pillars hum louder. The air thickens with magic, charged like a sky before a storm. The light stains her skin in bronze and blood-gold, her eyes catching every fractured reflection the columns throw back at her, as if they can’t agree on which version of her is real.

They’re not guiding her.