Gramiel: the alternate world and the Hollowborn Vindicator
Gramiel’s other world: the door beyond the ending
A later encounter opened a separate possibility rather than changing the ending at Trygve. A Mysterious Figure stood beside a glowing door and described another world, one where the Hero had not met Lae in time. Entering would carry the Hero’s consciousness there, not move the original world into a new history. The figure insisted that matters at Dawn Sanctum be settled first before opening the route.
In the ruined Vindicator fortress, an unnamed speaker explained that the Dragon of Time’s perspective could overlap with another version of themself. This Lae and Veronika had not known the Hero as their counterparts had. The visiting Hero remembered stopping Gramiel’s transformation into a Hollowborn, while this world’s conspirators had carried their plan to the point of his reascension. Its apparent success had brought a far worse disaster.
Gramiel’s other world: the creator reclaims a tool
As Gramiel regained his Celestial strength, his creator Anethyx’o had noticed the interference. Lae and Veronika said that the creator had taken control, erasing Gramiel’s memories and ego. His love no longer guided him. The drive to destroy non-human life remained, now in his creator’s service; the survivors were to lose their free will and praise Anethyx’o forever.
Lae reported that most non-human life in this Lore was already gone. Their failure to involve its Hero had denied that version a chance to intervene. Veronika called the timeline a dead end, but refused to let the Hollowborn surrender. Neither promised that defeating Gramiel would restore the lost world. They wanted a chance for what remained, even if Lore could never be the same.
Gramiel’s other world: a borrowed Hollowborn life
The visiting Hero found themself linked to a counterpart who had accepted the Shadow Fiend’s blessing. Lae hailed that counterpart as the Hollowborn Vindicator, the last stand for their fate. The Hero asked whether the alternate self had accepted this change; the response emphasized desperate circumstances and a remaining sliver of hope. The weekly quest descriptions make the distinction clear: when the visitor’s consciousness returns home, the local counterpart remains.
This was therefore a Hollowborn life experienced through another self, not proof that the original Hero had become Hollowborn after Dawn Sanctum. Lae asked the visitor to trust him against a Gramiel far stronger than the one already defeated. The Hero agreed to another favor. Lae envied the bond their other selves had formed; the visitor had wanted to see him again, though this meeting was not the reunion they had imagined.
Gramiel’s other world: what the prophecy missed
Veronika blamed the Oracle for setting her scheme in motion. In her account, he had tried to stop it partway through after sensing that something was wrong: Lae was supposed to involve the Hero, and the transformation together with the Hero’s actions would change the Hollowborn’s fate. She resented learning those details too late. That explanation remained her account of a vision, not a guarantee that manipulating Gramiel had ever been safe.
Learning the original world’s ending also wounded her certainty. There Gramiel had lost the will to live when he understood the manipulation, although he knew Veronika was Hollowborn and had loved her. Here his creator had stripped those feelings away. She described a heartbreak unfamiliar since her first death and refused to let Anethyx’o have the last word. Lae likewise apologized to the Hero who belonged to this world for the choice that had shut them out.
Gramiel’s other world: hope after a broken world
Lae’s commission, Resuscitated Hope, asked for Gramiel’s defeat in that alternate timeline. Its completion account did not proclaim the old world repaired. Instead, Lae looked toward rebuilding something different, having heard what the original Lae persuaded the Shadow Fiend to do. The visiting Hero had suggested that a new generation of Hollowborn might give this devastated Lore another beginning. It was an opening for the survivors, not the return of everything lost.
The Mysterious Figure offered two alternative weekly commissions, Trial of the Vessel and Echoes of a Forgotten Fate. Each explicitly excluded completing the other in the same week, and both described training the instincts of the Hollowborn counterpart who would remain behind. Their reward text left the visitor’s lasting claim to the Vindicator title as a question. These recurring commissions extended the alternate-world frame; they did not show the main Hero’s transformation or establish a universal fate for every timeline.