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

The silence was unbearable. Kael stood at the center of the scorched crater, chest heaving, ash clinging to his skin. Mira pressed against his side, trembling, her hand gripping his torn shirt as if letting go meant losing him to the abyss all over again.Around them, the vessels knelt dozens, maybe hundreds faces hidden in shadow, their bodies marked with crimson fissures that pulsed like living wounds. Their eyes glowed faintly beneath their hoods, all fixed on Kael.They didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t exist as individuals. They were one. And their one voice still hung in the air. All hail the Hollow Crown.Kael’s hand tightened on Ryven’s sword until his palm split, blood dripping into the scorched dirt. “I’m not” His voice cracked, raw. He tried again, louder, desperate. “I’m not your king!”The vessels’ heads lifted in perfect unison. Their glowing eyes locked onto him, empty yet suffocating. And as one, they answered.You are the fracture. The crown is bound to you. You are

The crater quaked like a living wound. Kael stood in its heart, Ryven’s sword raised, shadows boiling from the fissures in his flesh.Around him, the vessels formed a circle, their kneeling silhouettes outlined in crimson flame. Their chants faded into silence as the Hollow King’s colossal shape began to manifest above them.It was not a man this time.The Hollow King rose like a storm given flesh wings of abyssal fire blotting out the broken sky, a crown of jagged shadow suspended above a faceless head. Each movement shook the battlefield; its very presence crushed the air from Kael’s lungs.Mira clutched his arm, her breath trembling. “Kael, this isn’t like before. It’s… it’s stronger.”He didn’t answer. His human eye burned with determination, while his fractured one pulsed with corruption, both locked on the towering god before him.The Hollow King’s voice thundered through the crater, a sound that shook stone and marrow alike. “You cannot cage what is eternal. You are mine, Hollo

The first thing Kael felt was weight. Crushing, unbearable weight. Not the kind of weight that pinned the body, but the kind that buried the soul.He clawed his way upward, dragging himself out of darkness that seemed endless, a pit with no bottom. His chest burned. His veins throbbed.And then air. He sucked in a ragged breath, coughing as his body slammed against cold stone. His eye snapped open. The battlefield. Or what was left of it.The ruins of the citadel were nothing more than charred rubble. The once proud spires had collapsed into jagged heaps, and the earth was split with glowing fractures that hissed with lingering godfire.Ash fell like snow. The sky was fractured, great cracks where light and shadow bled through, colliding in storms that made the heavens scream.Kael groaned and rolled onto his side. His body was broken bones cracked, muscles torn. The corruption in his veins had not vanished, but neither had it consumed him. It pulsed faintly, black against the human r