RELIC OF THE NAMELESS KING

The sky wept fire the night the Hollow King was sealed.

Lightning tore jagged scars across the sky, while thunder cracked the heavens open with a deafening roar.

Beneath that storm, four kings stood shoulder to shoulder upon the black cliffs of Endspire, their cloaks torn, their blades cracked, their crowns heavy with ash and grief.

The land of Eldara; once golden, now ruined, bled beneath their boots. Fields burned. Rivers ran thick with magic twisted beyond sense.

The Weave, that sacred breath of the Earth, that all magic is drawn from, had been torn like a scroll fed to flame.

And at the center of the storm, bound in chains of celestial iron, knelt the man who had once been their brother. The hollow king, as he was now known.

“Is this mercy or cowardice?” spat the Hollow King, his voice a thunder of its own, shaking the chamber walls.

“To bind what you cannot destroy?” His eyes gleamed like coals in a dying fire, locked on the circle of runes that held him.

“You were one of us,” said King Theron of the East, stepping forward despite the heat that radiated from the Hollow King like a furnace.

Theron’s once-silver hair, now blackened by soot and war, clung to his brow with sweat. “We trusted you. We raised you from nothing. We loved you. We named you king of Central Eldara!” he shouted.

The Hollow King tilted his head, mockingly. “And you call that love?” he hissed. “You gave me a crown, then shackled me with rules and fake goodness. You wanted a puppet in a gilded cage.”

“No,” King Malrik of the North said quietly, his voice heavy with grief. “We wanted a brother. A guardian. Not… this.” He gestured to the broken remains of what the Hollow King had become; armor rusted over with black magic, skin cracked like old stone.

The Hollow King chuckled, a sound that scraped like bone on metal. “And yet here I am.” He leaned forward, pressing against the invisible barrier of his prison. “Look what your love has made. You called me king, but you feared my strength. So now you bind me like a beast.”

“Because you chose to become one,” Caelen, King of the south snapped. “You tore down the sanctum. You unleashed the Hollow upon our people. You betrayed everything we stood for.”

For a moment, silence hung between them; tense, vibrating with years of history and ruin.

Then the Hollow King grinned, blood trailing from the corner of his mouth. “And you were fools,” he whispered, voice colder than the void behind his eyes. “You still are. Bind me, curse me, bury me in a thousand spells. It won’t change the truth. I was right. I am the future.”

Theron’s jaw clenched. “Then the future will remain in chains.” He barked.

He was beautiful once, they said. Before the madness. Before the hunger. He had studied the Weave not for power, but for truth.

But truth led to ruin, and ruin fed his ambition. He reached for eternity. And when the gods offered silence, he tore a hole through the stars to steal their voice.

In time, even his name was lost, stripped from the annals of the realm. Not forgotten, but forbidden. To speak it was to invite shadow. To remember it was to awaken it.

Thus was born the Hollow King.

His final scream echoed through the land as the last relic; the Crownshard, was shattered. A piece of old, glowing power was broken off from the source and scattered across the far corners of Eldara.

Five relics. Five seals. Five kingdoms.

It was enough. For a time.

Centuries passed.

The war slipped from memory to myth, from myth to legend, and from legend to silence.

The ruins of Endspire were buried under the vines and ghost light. The Guardian Kings vanished, dead, exiled, or forgotten.

Magic became the blood-right of noble houses, passed down by bloodline and gold. And the Weaveless, those born without magic, were left to toil in dust and shadow, unworthy of legacy.

The world spun on.

But legends do not die. They wait. Beneath stone. Beneath breath. Beneath the skin of the world.

And in the small village of Duskmere, far from all maps, under a sky that never fully lit up, a boy was born. He had no name, no magic, and no special fate.

He didn’t cry when he was born. Only later, and quietly, when he was alone. His mother wrapped him in a thin, worn cloth. His father, already gone. No stars sang for his birth. No prophecy stirred. No mage came knocking.

He was just a boy.

But the Weave shifted that day, though none noticed.

Far away, in the sealed sanctum beneath Ardentum Academy, a single torch flickered and went out.

In the Western Wastes, where the earth had long been cursed to silence, a wyrm egg cracked.

And deep in the Forbidden Ruins, where even the crows refused to build nest, a relic pulsed once. Then again.

The Crownshard was waking.

There is a tale often told in whisper, too old for scholars, too foolish for priests.

They say a nameless one, born of no line and no magic, shall rise with the relic of kings to challenge the return of the Hollow King.

They say the relics of the Guardian Kings will never answer to kings again.

They will wait for one born without magic. One who earns power through suffering. One with no title, no destiny, and no legacy.

One whom the world will mock and discard.

One who will rise with flame in his fist and mercy in his heart.

One who will remind the world that the greatest kings are not born, they are forged.

They say he will awaken the relics.

They say he will stand where the five once stood.

They say he will face the Hollow King… and choose not to destroy, but to restore.

But that is just a tale.

And tales are for children.

Aren’t they?