Soul Speaker

Liuyin asked, "Do you remember your name? Do you remember where you were before you got lost?"

The soldier shook his head.

He didn't remember his name.

He didn't remember his unit's designation.

He didn't remember how he had died.

The only thing he remembered was going home—his wife and unborn child were waiting for him there.

Liuyin wanted to ask more, but the Stars Signet on her hand dimmed at that very moment.

The soldier's figure wavered faintly in the air, then vanished into the afternoon sunlight.

"What happened?"

Baffled, Liuyin went to Griseo.

Griseo told her the Signet had been protecting the soldier's soul.

Generally, a human soul could only be recorded by a Hollow if the person died inside it. A powerful obsession might keep that soul there for a long time.

Later, Griseo used the power of Discipline to help Liuyin identify the soldier.

Paul. A sergeant in the Defense Force's Obsidian Battalion, Third Squad. Killed twelve years before the fall of the Old Capital, twenty-five years before New Eridu.

Paul looked young in his file photo, dressed in a crisp uniform. He had died during a routine Hollow reconnaissance mission.

After his death, his concern for his wife and unborn child had turned his lingering will into a wandering spirit, adrift in the rifts of the Hollow.

Then the Old Capital fell. The six great Companion Hollows formed, swallowing vast stretches of New Eridu, including the small Hollow where Paul had been.

Later, Griseo's battle with the First Lord shook the rules of the world and blurred the boundary between reality and the Hollows.

Paul had seized that chance to emerge from the depths of the Hollow into the living world.

"Liuyin, what happened after that? What did you do?" Griseo asked. She hadn't been