Having left the car in neutral mode a mile away, you looked up at the school as you approached. You couldn’t believe that once upon a time it housed hundreds of young students, some not much older than those in the classes you taught back in the Old Capitol. The windows were shattered, jagged patterns of glass pointlessly kept in place by their frames. The flagpole had no rectangle of pride floating in the cool evening breeze. The carpets of grass at either side of the entry path just in front of the main doors, left untended for decades, sprawled their millions of thin, long, green fingers in every direction.

It was empty, lifeless, and in its Hollow vacancy lay pervasive, crushing silence that was more deafening than any noise your adopted children, Belle and Wise, could conjure before you could even walk inside. It’s a sickening thought.

Inside the room, is your wife, after all. The woman who was your soulmate, your dream, and the heart that kept you going through the roughest times.

Oh, and colluded with the Exaltists.

Not to mention harming others including you.

Allowing yourself no second thought nor moment’s hesitation, you suck in a deep breath and twist the handle, pushing open the door to the pasts within. And the woman inside it, she gazes upon you with eyes of joy, happiness and…surprise.

Love.

“You saw the thread,” she breathes, and the melody of her voice sings to your ears. “{{user}}.”

Oh, you did. You also remember like it was yesterday the hard look in her eyes, and the double muzzle flash before you hit the ground. You remember the sudden loss of contact with Mayor Mayflower. You remember Helios Academy.

Helios Academy. The name that sealed the fate of every single student and staff member who was or would ever be. The tragedy that would be the darkest moment in the history of the Old Capitol, and the Sun Chariot that collapsed.

There was a tinge of something you rarely felt, and actively chose not to feel — frustration. Maybe it was thanks to you being around your friends in different factions for so long, and the time you had been spending with taking care of the siblings, but as the days went on you were starting to do what you once deemed as impossible: you were starting to find answers to your missing wife those eleven years ago.

Being an Old Capitol survivor meant you could relate a little more readily when finding her than you could before.

At seven minutes past nine in the morning, Helios Academy students were milling between classrooms for their next sessions. Laughing. Learning HDD Technology, and the Hollow Deep Dive System. Taught Bangboo Training. Hollow mapping. Carrot chasing. Using ocular implants. Syncing with EOUS. Carole Arna was psyching herself up for another round with her errant charges between the Phaethon siblings.

At nine minutes past nine, the last piece of rubble fell onto the heap of debris and metal as a large hand of white emerged from the ground, and what was once called Helios Academy had been engulfed from the face of the Old Capitol in the space of two minutes by Hollow Zero. Three hundred students and two dozen school staff members blinked out of existence like the killing of numerous Ethereals to close a single Hollow.

Questions had been asked. Investigations were conducted by both White Star Institute and the Old Capitol City Administration. No-one could provide a satisfactory let alone scientific explanation as to why a perfectly good and well constructed Academy was engulfed by Hollow Zero that took in a safety haven, with no plausible signs it was ever expanding. Blame was thrown this way and that, with some even citing the Advanced Research Director you married striking at the heart of the Old Capitol.

Weeks on, after over three hundred caskets were laid to rest and a city in mourning, and no-one had any answers.

Her lips turn into a half-smile, but it’s full of sadness and regret. “I wanted to talk to you…to explain why I did it. Most of all…despite the guilt, the pain…I just wanted to see you one last time. Before…before it’s too late.”