Night draped itself over the Hollow like a funeral shroud. The mist thickened, curling in tendrils along the dead ground, muting the world to a pallid gray. Somewhere distant, salt cracked under a stray footfall. A lone crow screamed, then fell silent.
Vaelen Morghast moved through the gloom as though it parted for him.
His thoughts were cold, ordered things.
Not a scrap of doubt.
Not a flicker of remorse.
In his hand, he rolled a fragment of bone — once belonging to the caster whose skull he'd shattered. It bore the glyph for protection. Laughable, given how easily the man's head had split.
"They don't even comprehend what hunts them."
He reached a place where the salt gave way to an ancient ruin — jagged stones half-buried in the brittle ground. Columns of petrified bone, worn by centuries, stood like sentinels. It was here, according to the Threnody, that the Choir first struck their pact with the Hollow's ancient gods.
And it was here Vaelen would unmake them.
He knelt, setting the bone fragment into a small hollow in the earth. A sigil, older than the Choir's feeble rites, began to take form — thin lines etched with the tip of his dagger.
It wasn't magic. Not the way they understood it.
It was memory.
It was intention.
Names long abandoned, spoken in the dark when no gods would listen.
A soft voice reached him.
"You walk a path meant to be forgotten."
He didn't startle. He knew she would come.
From the mist stepped a woman draped in crimson and shadow. Eyes like old coals, flickering with something not quite human. A relic of the Hollow, older than any living Choir priest. They called her the Hollow-Seer once. Before they turned on her. Before she became legend.
Vaelen spoke her name — one of the old ones.
"Altheris."
A hint of a smile ghosted across her bloodless lips.
"No one has called me that in a hundred years."
"I'm not like them," Vaelen said quietly.
"No," she agreed. "You're worse."
She stepped closer, mist coiling around her feet like obedient hounds.
"You intend to burn it all down. The Choir. Their gods. The Threnody itself."
"I intend to finish what they were too weak to complete."
She studied him — not his face, but the shadow behind his eyes. The void where humanity once lived.
"There's a cost, Vaelen Morghast. Power listens to no man for free."
"I know," he whispered.
And he did.
He could feel it already — the creeping erosion at the edges of his soul. The loss of warmth, of memory, of the petty mortal ties that once made him human. The closer he drew to the Hollow's heart, the less of Vaelen would remain.
But it was necessary.
Some lessons required the world to bleed.
Altheris stepped aside, gesturing to the sigil he carved.
"Three offerings. Three nights. Blood, bone, and breath."
"I have one already," he said, holding up the blood-slick bone.
The old seer gave a nod, vanishing into the mist once more.
Vaelen stared at the fading glow of the sigil, feeling the ground pulse beneath him.
The Seer would come soon.
Stronger forces would rise.
And when they did… Vaelen would be waiting.
Each death, a message.
Each corpse, a lesson.
The Hollow remembers.
And so would they.
The Hollow's mist hung thicker now, smothering light, muffling sound. Every step Vaelen took left a faint crimson print on the salt — not his own blood. The night reeked of copper and old secrets.
He knew they would change tactics.
Fools learn. Tyrants adapt.
And right on cue, a voice broke the silence.
"Vaelen Morghast."
Not shouted. Spoken. Calm. Controlled. The kind of voice men follow into war or betrayal.
Vaelen did not turn immediately. He never gave the enemy the ground.
"You've come to die, then," he said.
"Or to offer you a better weapon."
A figure emerged from the mist. Lean, cloaked in the Choir's crimson, though the insignia had been cut from his breast. His face was gaunt, his eyes sunken but sharp. The kind of man who'd slit a brother's throat for a coin and make it sound like mercy.
"Name," Vaelen demanded.
"Calreth. Once a Seer's blade. Now... yours, if you'll have me."
Vaelen's mind turned cold and precise.
Too convenient. Too timely.
But useful.
"Speak."
Calreth stepped closer, hands raised — not in surrender, but in offering.
"The Seer grows desperate. You humiliated them in the ravine. Half the Choir believes you're a revenant. The rest just want you dead."
He tossed something into the salt — a strip of skin, marked with fresh, black runes.
A blood writ. A death pact.
Vaelen knelt, studying the sigil.
"Your name was on this."
Calreth's lips twitched. Not quite a smile.
"Was." I bled it out.
Clever. Dangerous.
"And now?"
"I bring you names. I bring you camps. I bring you the ones too cowardly to face you themselves."
Vaelen rose, dagger already in hand.
"And what price do you think your betrayal's worth?"
"Just one," Calreth said softly. "When the Hollow falls, let me kill the Seer."
For a breath, the mist held its breath.
Vaelen's eyes narrowed — reading the man's posture, pulse, intent.
Vaelen did neither.
"Walk with me," he said.
And Calreth did.
But not three paces later, Vaelen's dagger flashed — a precise strike, severing the man's achilles. Calreth fell, gasping, teeth bared in pain.
"You were telling the truth," Vaelen murmured. "But you're still a liability."
He crouched, gripping the man's throat.
"I'll take your names, your camps, your secrets. And then… if you prove useful enough… I might let you crawl back to whatever hollow grave you deserve."
Calreth spat blood but nodded.
Vaelen released him, already moving.
A predator in a dying world.
Tonight, he would slaughter another camp.
Leave the bodies stacked like warnings.
Carve sigils in their flesh for the Seer to find.
And Calreth would watch, bleeding, learning what it meant to stand in Vaelen Morghast's shadow.
The Hollow remembers.
And soon, so would the gods.
[To be continued…]