ASHES BORN OF SILENCE
THE HOLLOW BREATHES
RIVEN
The air tasted of fire and betrayal.
Riven ran. Not away... toward. Toward the ache that coiled like barbed wire through his chest. Toward the place where the psychic tether twisted into unbearable silence. Every step churned the scorched soil beneath his boots. His claws were half-shifted now, bone and sinew pulsing with primal magic, barely restrained.
Elara.
Her name throbbed inside him like a wound that refused to close. He felt her, still, even after the eruption, even after the vault ruptured and the Hollow bled. But now her soul moved like something not her own, distant, weighted, submerged.
She was close. Alive.
But no longer the same.
The bond that once flickered like a flame in winter had grown cold and strange. He felt Aamon's presence smothering it, coiling around her like a second skin.
He stopped atop a jagged cliff of obsidian, looking down upon the shattered vault. The land groaned beneath his feet. Twisting heat danced across the horizon, warped by something far more ancient than fire.
And then, as if summoned by his fury, he saw them.
Below, near the heart of the crater, shadow and light folded together—Elara and Aamon. Not touching. But something passed between them, like the memory of a kiss held in the breath before speaking.
Riven's claws extended fully. His jaw clenched, fangs emerging.
It was not just anger that swelled in him.
It was grief.
He's taken her.
And she'd let him.
ELARA AND AAMON
Elara stood amid the ruins of the Vault, ash clinging to her like snowfall. She had stopped shaking hours ago. Or minutes. Time was shattered here.
Aamon stood a few feet away, his silhouette still cloaked in that unnatural calm. He looked toward the Hollow's breach, the place where the monstrous thing had climbed free, not with fear, but with something like recognition.
"It wasn't part of the seal," she said, her voice hollow.
He turned to her.
"No," Aamon answered. "It was a leftover. An echo. A sentient residue of the Hollow's last breath. It remembers nothing. That makes it more dangerous than me."
Elara swallowed. "And what do you remember?"
Aamon smiled softly, and in that moment, something in him looked almost human.
"Too much."
She didn't move when he approached.
He reached out slowly, brushing ash from her cheek. She didn't pull away. His hand lingered longer than necessary, his touch surprisingly warm.
"You've changed," he said.
Elara met his eyes, haunted and unblinking. "You did this to me."
"No," he whispered. "I woke it in you. It was always there. The bloodline, the seed of the first Nyxis witch. Your ancestor betrayed her gods for me. And now her echo lives in you."
Their proximity became unbearable. Her breath hitched, her pulse thundered beneath her skin. The Vault's ruins around them pulsed like a dying heart.
She hated him.
She needed him.
When their lips finally met, it was slow—uncertain. A kiss. The kiss didn't promise love.
It promised the unraveling.
SERAH VAEL
Serah limped through the skeletal forest surrounding the Vault, her wings flickering between visibility and starlight. Her divine resonance ached with every step. The Hollowborn had vanished deeper into the world's crust, drawn by instinct or hunger.
But it would return.
She had glimpsed its nature in her communion: a Hollow spawn with no master, forged of pain and purpose. It would not negotiate. It would not feel.
She pressed her hand to a dying tree and murmured a prayer not meant for gods.
"I wasn't made to destroy you, Aamon," she said to the ash-laden wind. "But if your child walks, I must become something else."
The wind answered.
So did her bones.
AERON VALE
The revenant stood motionless, watching where the Hollowborn had emerged. Visions still haunted him, stitched into his skull by forgotten gods.
The Oath had returned.
He could feel the others awakening—Revenants buried beneath time, called now by a fate older than any throne.
And in his chest, the ember that should have gone out flared anew.
"They will come for her," Aeron whispered, more to himself than to the wind.
Elara.
Not because of love.
Because of what she was becoming.
And because she might be the only one who could stop what came next.
THE HOLLOWBORN
It moved beneath the earth now, swallowing memories.
With every breath it took, civilizations it had never seen shuddered.
With every heartbeat, the sky darkened just slightly.
It did not understand names.
It would be given one soon enough.
And when it emerged again, it would wear it.
The Vault's ruin became a grave and a beginning. The factions scattered to reorganize. New allegiances would rise. The Hollowborn's first breath would ripple outward like prophecy.
And far away, deep in the folds of shadow, the remnants of the Eclipsed Moon Order stirred.
They had seen the signs. They had waited.
Now, they would act.