The road curved like a spine through Gharun's Hollow, winding between crumbling walls and watchtowers that had long since fallen into disrepair. Every few steps, Kael caught himself glancing over his shoulder, half-expecting Serin to appear again—or something worse.
He hated that the name still had weight.
Serin.
He hadn't spoken it aloud in years, not since the betrayal, not since the flames and the screams. If it truly was her—or some twisted remnant of her—it meant the Hollow wasn't just dredging up ghosts. It was digging straight into his soul.
The wind shifted again, colder now. Beneath it, Kael heard the faintest sound: not footsteps, but whispering. Not language, but breath—like a thousand lungs drawing air through a thousand cracked mouths. It wasn't real. It couldn't be.
Yet the shadows along the alleys moved when he passed.
He pulled his cloak tighter and pressed on.
At the end of the road, a tower loomed, cracked at the top like a tooth. It hadn't fallen, though by all logic it should have. There was something about it—a wrongness, a defiance of gravity and reason. Symbols ran down the sides of the stone like veins, glowing faintly with a pulse of dying magic.
He approached slowly, hand near his sword again.
The door was ajar, hanging on rusted hinges. It creaked as he pushed it wider, revealing the darkness inside.
No footsteps echoed. The floor was thick with dust and ash, muffling all sound.
Inside the tower, the air was heavier—like he'd stepped underwater. Cold clung to his skin, and the light outside vanished as soon as the door closed behind him.
He moved by instinct, not sight.
Then the room lit up—not with flame, but memory.
Suddenly, he stood in a different time.
The walls were whole. The dust gone. Fire crackled in a hearth that hadn't burned in decades. And at the center of the room, seated at a long, wooden table, was Serin. Not as he'd seen her before—worn and veiled—but alive. Young. Beautiful. Her hair a curtain of obsidian, her eyes fierce with purpose.
Kael staggered back.
"Stop it," he growled. "This isn't real."
Serin looked up and smiled. "Of course it's not. But what is, Kael? A broken world? A burned oath?"
"You don't get to use that word."
"Which one?"
He said nothing. He didn't need to.
Serin rose from the chair, placing a hand on the tabletop. "You never asked why I did it."
"I knew why," he said. "You were afraid."
"No," she said. "I was right."
The hearth crackled louder, and for a moment, the smell of smoke changed sharper now. Not firewood. Flesh.
Kael stepped forward, fists clenched. "You betrayed me. You sold us out to the very thing we were fighting against."
Serin's expression softened. "Because we couldn't win. Not then. Not like that."
"I would've died for the cause."
"You did," she said. "Just not all at once."
His breath caught. Her words weren't fire—they were knives. Sharp. Precise. Meant to bleed slow.
"I buried you," he said.
"And I never left," she whispered.
The light flickered—and the illusion shattered.
He stood alone in the ruined tower once again. The table was gone. The hearth cold. Dust returned to the floor like time had rewound itself in silence.
Kael dropped to one knee, gripping the stone beneath him as if the world might tilt.
The Hollow wasn't just haunted.
It was alive.
And it knew him too well.
He pulled himself back to his feet, wiping blood from his nose. The hallucination—or whatever it had been—had taken something out of him. Not just strength. Something deeper. Memory? Will?
He wasn't sure anymore.
There was a staircase winding up the side of the tower. Each step groaned beneath his weight, but it held. He climbed in silence, surrounded by echoing nothing. Dust motes danced like spirits around him. The higher he went, the harder it became to breathe. The air was thick with old power—forgotten and buried, but not dead.
At the top, he emerged into a chamber lit by a strange blue light. It glowed from the cracks in the stone, pulsing like veins in skin. A circle had been carved into the floor, lined with runes, smeared with dried blood.
In the center stood a mirror.
Tall. Framed in black metal twisted like thorns.
He approached.
At first, the reflection was normal. Himself, gaunt and battle-worn, cloak tattered, eyes too old for his age. But as he drew closer, the image changed.
Not him.
A version of him—but wrong.
This Kael wore blackened armor, eyes glowing faint gold. A crown rested on his brow, forged from bone and ash.
A king.
A tyrant.
A possibility.
Kael stepped back—but the reflection didn't move.
Instead, it leaned forward and spoke, though no sound escaped the glass.
Its lips moved in perfect sync.
"You will become me."
Kael unsheathed his sword in a flash, swinging it at the mirror with a roar.
The blade shattered the glass into a thousand screaming shards—but instead of falling, the pieces floated mid-air, twisting and reforming into the shape of a face.
Serin's.
"You can't outrun what's inside you," she whispered.
Then everything went black.