The Hollow Crown was no longer silent.
Whispers of the dead stirred in the stone. The air had thickened with the scent of burning ozone and unraveling magic. Shadows lengthened unnaturally along the obsidian walls. And from the far archways, footsteps echoed like the pounding of war drums.
The Pale Hand had arrived.
Kael stood before the broken arena, his white hair rustling in a wind that came from nowhere. His chest glowed with the freshly burned glyph—the Crown Sigil—still warm, etched into his very soul. Around him, the fractured remnants of the Trial platform hovered over a chasm of light.
"They're close," Arin muttered, drawing two silver-bladed daggers. "Too close."
Lira, clutching her runes, whispered, "Something's wrong with this place. I feel... watched."
Kael nodded. He felt it too. Not just the Pale Hand, but something deeper. Something older. The Vault of the Serpent Kings hadn't been truly dead. It had been sleeping.
And now it was waking up.
---
Clash in the Hollow Crown
The first wave came in silence—half-seen shadows cloaked in plague-ridden veils. Their eyes glowed a soft, unnatural green. They moved like whispers through oil.
Kael moved faster.
The glyphs around him flared to life, not just in his hands now, but across his back and legs, wrapping his form in glowing serpentine coils. His body became a conduit of flowing runes.
He raised a hand.
**"Ashrend."
A wave of fire-blackened energy surged forward, disintegrating three of the cultists before they could raise their blades. The flames clung to the ground like a living thing, writhing, feeding.
Arin lunged in, twin daggers spinning like silver comets, each strike guided by speed magic and reflex enchantments. His movements blurred, a dance of death among the cultists. Blood sprayed in arcs as he carved down two more.
Lira stood firm behind them, whispering spellwords into her scroll. A protective dome flared around her, absorbing the acidic mist that now poured from the cultists' bodies as they fell.
"Watch the gas!" she yelled. "It corrodes spirit and flesh!"
Kael pressed forward, each footstep igniting the ground beneath him. More figures emerged. Some wore bone masks, others wore nothing at all—skin tattooed with ritual scars. The Pale Hand were not just zealots. They were remnants of a failed god.
---
A New Flame
The battle swelled, and Kael felt his pulse synchronize with something deeper. A rhythm. A memory.
Not his own.
"Let me help you," the relic whispered from his core.
He closed his eyes.
Power poured into him. A second heart, made of myth and war, beat within him.
Kael opened his eyes. They no longer glowed—they blazed.
His voice deepened. "Flamewalk."
He vanished.
A blur of heat. A blink across space.
He reappeared behind a high-ranking cultist, arm raised, flame coiled around his fist like a chained serpent.
"Fall."
He struck. The impact created a small explosion of light and force, sending bodies flying.
Then he turned to the next.
This was no longer Kael the boy.
This was Kael the heir of something forgotten.
---
The Herald Arrives
A shriek silenced the chamber.
From the far gate—the largest of the Vault's arches—a figure emerged. It didn't walk. It floated. Cloaked in robes the color of bleeding dusk, its face was hidden behind a mask shaped like a broken sun.
It didn't breathe.
It didn't speak.
But every soul in the chamber felt it:
The Herald of the Pale Hand.
Kael stopped. Sweat dripped down his brow, evaporating in the heat of his own aura.
The Herald raised a staff made from bone and iron. Black veins of magic pulsed along it.
"You are the fire that remains," it said, voice layered in echoes. "We are the silence that follows."
It moved.
Kael barely dodged the blast of void energy that carved a crater into the stone. He leapt to another platform. "Lira, Arin—stay back!"
The Herald followed. Each motion was wrong. Too fluid. Too fast.
Kael summoned his full aura—glyphs spinning, his eyes burning.
"You want fire? Come burn with me."
They clashed.
---
Duel in the Vault
Kael and the Herald circled each other mid-air, surrounded by floating debris and glowing runes. Spells collided like thunderclaps. The Herald wielded void and entropy, spells that aged stone and unraveled bindings.
Kael answered with lightfire and ancient glyphs, defensive circles and strikes drawn from buried memories.
One glyph—a coiling ouroboros—shone particularly bright on his arm. He activated it.
"Serpent's Embrace."
Flames took shape, coiling into a colossal burning snake that lunged at the Herald. It collided with a barrier of starlight—exploding in a shockwave that rocked the Vault.
Kael pressed the advantage.
Strike.
Block.
Dodge.
Every move faster. Stronger. Guided.
The Herald, now staggering, spoke again. "You do not yet know what you carry. But soon... all will."
It vanished in a blink of shadow.
Kael landed hard, breathing ragged. The relic had dimmed.
Arin and Lira ran to him.
"It escaped," Kael muttered.
Lira placed a hand on his shoulder. "But we survived. And you... you controlled the glyphs. That shouldn't even be possible."
Arin added, "The Herald won't forget this. They know your name now."
Kael stood, looking out across the ruined Hollow Crown.
"Then let them come. I'll burn them all."
---
End of Chapter 13
> Kael has fought his first duel with a Herald of the Pale Hand—and lived. But the war has only just begun. The Vault has awakened. And far away, old powers begin to stir...