The mist thickened as Vaelen pressed westward, each step a soft crunch upon brittle salt crust. The bodies of the fallen hunters faded into the gloom behind him, forgotten. In this dead place, corpses meant little. The Hollow would drink their blood, leech their bones, and leave no trace come dawn.
Above, the sky was a pallid sheet, neither day nor night. A colorless eternity.
Vaelen's fingers brushed the cover of the Threnody of Broken Stars, feeling the pulse beneath its skin-thin leather. The glyphs shifted again, as if aware of his intent. Another name. Another wordless promise.
They would come.
And he would meet them.
The ravine walls gave way to an open basin, salt pillars rising like malformed gravestones. In the center, a stone altar — ancient, broken, half-consumed by the earth. Runes older than kingdoms were etched upon it, their shapes distorted by centuries of salt-wind erosion.
But some remained.
Vaelen knelt beside the altar, tracing a finger along one of the half-legible sigils. A ward. Old, feeble now, but once potent. He whispered a fragment of the tongue. The glyph glimmered faintly — enough to draw something's attention.
A ripple in the mist.
Movement.
But not human.
The Hollow's scavengers.
A low, wet chittering rose from the salt flats. Shadows unfurled themselves from behind broken stones and jagged crevices. Gaunt, pallid things — bodies stretched and withered, flesh leached of color. Saltwights.
Once men, long dead, claimed by the Hollow.
Their eyes glimmered a dull, milky grey as they shambled forward, limbs moving in slow, broken jerks. Five… seven… no — nine.
Good.
Vaelen rose, unfastening the clasp of his cloak, letting it drop to the ground. The saltwights hissed at the scent of blood on his skin.
He drew a slender, curved dagger from his belt — not the clean blade of earlier, but a ritual fang of old obsidian. Its edge shimmered with residual power.
The first wight lunged, maw gaping in a silent howl.
Vaelen pivoted, the obsidian blade slicing across its throat. The flesh parted not with blood, but a burst of pale dust. The creature staggered, collapsed.
Another charged from the flank.
A twist, a step aside — the dagger drove up beneath its jaw, cracking through brittle bone. A sharp pull. The head toppled.
They were clumsy. Starved things. Dangerous in number, but predictable.
The third managed to rake cracked nails across his arm, leaving a shallow line. Vaelen didn't flinch. Pain was an old companion.
A harsh whisper left his lips — a name from the Threnody.
"Aeth'kalith."
A ripple through the mist. The ground cracked. Pale chains of salt burst from the earth, wrapping around three of the advancing wights. They writhed, shrieking in voices lost to centuries. The chains tightened. Bone snapped. Dust billowed.
Only four remained.
They hesitated.
Vaelen stepped forward.
A swift, vertical cut cleaved one's head from its shoulders. Another caught a dagger through its heart — though it mattered little, for the saltwights did not live. But the strike left it stunned long enough for a crushing boot to shatter its skull.
The final two turned, instinct overriding whatever fragment of command held them.
Vaelen let them go.
A message sent.
He retrieved his cloak, wiping the blade clean, and moved to the altar. From a pocket, he drew a single, withered coin — etched with the same symbol as the Threnody's cover.
A relic. A marker.
He placed it upon the altar.
"Let them follow," he murmured.
The Hollow swallowed his voice.
And Vaelen moved on.
The Salt Hollow stretched behind him, the scent of old blood and scorched air fading into memory. Vaelen's pace was measured, each step deliberate, every movement weighed for purpose. He moved as one untethered from mortal burdens — no fear, no haste. Only inevitability.
Ahead, the land rose in uneven ridges, jagged salt cliffs like the ribs of some colossal, long-dead beast. A narrow passage wound between them, half-choked with mist. It was here the Choir would send their next trial. He could feel it, like a flaw in a blade edge — inevitable, waiting.
He relished it.
They misunderstand me.
They think me a vagrant, a fugitive clinging to old rites.
Fools.
Vaelen knelt at the base of a crooked salt pillar, fingers brushing the brittle ground. Symbols formed beneath his touch, ancient characters that shimmered faintly in the gloom. Not wards. Not barriers. Invitations.
Let them come.
He drew out one of the bone charms from the fallen caster's corpse. A crude thing, etched with clumsy prayers. Vaelen turned it over, lips curling in faint contempt.
"You sought protection from gods long dead."
He crushed it in his palm. Dust and splinters scattered on the salt winds.
Footsteps. Careful this time.
Soft-soled. Weighted evenly. No scattered formation — a hunt, properly led. They'd sent someone clever. Someone who suspected what hunted them in turn.
A voice, low and precise, broke the hush.
"Vaelen Morghast. We come not as zealots. We come as reason."
Vaelen's pale eyes narrowed.
A negotiator.
He rose, cloak hanging like a shadow about him. The voice belonged to a woman — measured, educated, schooled in rhetoric. The kind sent ahead of armies to measure their quarry.
"I wonder," Vaelen murmured, more to the air than anyone, "how much of your reason you'll keep when your heart ceases to beat."
He stepped into view.
Three figures stood in the pass. The woman in front, robes of muted ochre and grey, sigils marked in ink and thread. A slender blade hung at her side. Behind her, two soldiers — proper ones this time. Movement balanced, weapons drawn but lowered.
"You waste your blades," Vaelen said coldly.
The woman didn't flinch. "The Seer wishes words. Blood can wait."
A lie.
He could see it in the set of her jaw, the telltale flicker of her gaze to the soldiers behind her. She was here to measure how much danger he truly was — whether he was worth what it would cost to drag him down.
Vaelen stepped forward, each word sharpened as if honed on glass.
"Your Seer already bleeds. He simply hasn't noticed."
One of the soldiers tensed. The other kept his composure. Good — one fool, one professional.
The woman's lips pressed into a thin line. "You hold relics forbidden. You slaughter our kin. This path leads nowhere, Vaelen."
He allowed the faintest trace of a smile. Not warmth — the smile of a predator afforded sport before the kill.
"All paths lead to ash. Some of us choose the fire."
A sudden shift. Vaelen's hand flicked, and the symbols on the ground ignited in pale blue flame. Mist churned, a rising wall of vapor that swallowed the pass in an instant.
The soldiers reacted — too slow.
Vaelen was already moving, a shadow in the fog. A wordless strike. The soldier on the left crumpled, throat split with surgical precision. The second wheeled, blade raised.
Vaelen let him.
The clash came sharp and quick. Blade met dagger, momentum stolen. Vaelen's hand shot forward, two fingers striking the soldier's temple. A precise nerve shock — the body sagged, twitching.
The woman's spell ignited. Lines of fire coiled toward him.
Vaelen spoke one word.
"Nar'veth."
The flame stuttered, guttered out. Her eyes widened.
He was there in an instant. No weapon drawn. A hand gripped her throat, not tight enough to kill, just enough to command.
"You came for words. Listen well."
His gaze bored into hers, a depthless abyss.
"Tell your Seer: Every hunter he sends, I'll peel away. One by one. Until only he remains. And when he stands alone, the Hollow will devour his name."
A flick of the wrist. The woman fell, gasping, her throat bruised but intact.
Vaelen turned, not looking back.
"Let him come."
Mist swallowed him once more.
The Salt Hollow held its silence.
[To be continued…]