Beneath the broken roots of the world, where light had not touched in ten thousand years, the Hollow King stirred.
He sat upon a throne he had not moved from in centuries — a seat carved from obsidian and bound in the ribs of giants long dead. Around him stretched the Court of Whispers, a vast cavern lit by veins of red crystal and the slow drip of molten shadow. The air stank of ruin, of old magic and older memory.
His eyes were not eyes, but voids — two pits of perfect absence, ringed in faint gold flame. They opened now with purpose.
Kaelen lived.
More than that — he remembered.
The Hollow King felt the tremor through the strands of fate like a storm on the edge of a still lake. Each Crown reclaimed was a weight against his chains, each fragment reawakened another name reborn.
He rose.
The Court fell silent.
No creature dared speak. Even the Hollowborn — his eyeless servants of bone and ash — knelt low, pressed flat to the stone.
"My blood moves," the Hollow King whispered, his voice a fracture in time.
From the dark, his high priest — a thin, serpent-eyed shade called Vethir — approached with trembling reverence. "The flame-wielder grows in strength. The Ember has accepted him."
"I know," the Hollow King said, and the cavern shuddered.
He stepped down from the throne. The ground withered where his feet passed — a ripple of decay. "He awakens the Nine. The blood seals break. He walks into my story."
Vethir bowed. "Shall we strike? Unleash the Hollowborn in force?"
The Hollow King turned, slowly. "No."
He raised one skeletal hand, and from the stone a mirror of shadow bloomed — a scrying gate of smoke and ink. Within it, Kaelen rode across a frost-bent plain, fire dim in his chest, a weary storm behind his eyes.
"He is not ready," the Hollow King murmured. "But he will be. The flame is shaping him. And fire, when tempered, burns clearer."
He reached into the gate and let it fracture into pieces, each shard scattering into the air like dying stars.
"Send the Watchers. Let him see. Let him learn what came before."
Vethir blinked. "But if he knows—"
"He must know," the Hollow King said. "To make the same choice."
A pause. Then, softer: "I do not fear his power, Vethir. I fear his remembrance. When he becomes whole… the world may yet choose him again."
He returned to the throne.
"And I will not be forgotten. Not this time."
The crystals dimmed.
Far above, in places still living, shadows stirred.
The Hollow King smiled. It was not a smile a man could wear — it was hunger, shaped like memory.