The pit convulsed like a living thing. When Kael’s blade tore through the fracture, flame erupted in a blazing arc that carved across the Hollow King’s domain. The cavern howled, stone splitting as torrents of shadow writhed away from the searing light.The Hollow King recoiled with a roar that split the air, its towering frame staggering backward, jagged crown sparking as fissures of crimson light tore across its form.Mira gasped, the chains crushing her chest slackening for the first time. She collapsed to both knees, clutching at the ground, her vision blurring from the sudden rush of air back into her lungs.Through the storm of shadow and fire, Kael stepped into the pit.He was barely standing. His armor was shattered, his body battered and broken, blood streaking across his face.Yet his human eye blazed like a furnace, and the flame of Ryven’s sword burned steady in his hand. Each step he took shook the pit, his presence carving a path of light through the suffocating darkness

The abyss did not breathe. The chains were still. The fires that once raged in the pit guttered out, leaving only the low crackle of molten stone. A silence hung so heavy that even Mira’s ragged breaths seemed too loud, as though sound itself feared to move.Kael’s grip on Ryven’s sword trembled. The blade still burned, but dimly, the flame faltering as if it too were stunned by what now stood before them.The Hollow King’s towering form was gone. In its place, rising from the cracked stone, was a figure no taller than Kael himself. Human shaped. But not human.Its body was forged of shadow and light both, fissures glowing crimson across pale, almost flesh like skin. Fragments of the jagged crown floated above its head, orbiting slowly like broken moons.The face was half covered in darkness, half bared enough for Kael to see lips curved in a smile that chilled him to the bone.The figure tilted its head, as if testing the limits of its neck. When it spoke, the voice was smooth, almos