EPISODE 1:
A blood moon bled its light over the dying Vale.
Ashwood burned. Trees wept smoke into the night sky. Villages once nestled in the womb of the valley now lay gutted—homes broken, bodies twitching, silence more deafening than screams. Somewhere between fire and shadow, a boy ran.
He was barefoot, wrapped in a torn wolfskin, legs caked in mud and blood. His name was Kaelen, though the forest did not care. His breath tore through his lungs like knives. He did not cry—he couldn't. His tears had burned away in the fire that devoured his home.
Behind him, the hunt continued. The Black Sons—war priests clad in ash-colored steel—moved like phantoms through the trees, torches in hand, hounds at their heels. They did not shout. They did not taunt. They hunted with the cold reverence of men on holy duty.
Kaelen tripped.
His ribs cracked against a root hidden beneath the underbrush. He coughed, tasting iron. He dragged himself forward and stumbled into a clearing.
In its center stood a single black tree.
Its bark pulsed faintly, like veins beneath pale flesh. Its leaves were white—not the white of snow or paper, but bone-white. Dead white.
He staggered toward it.
The tree whispered.
It had no mouth, no face, yet Kaelen felt the words not in his ears but deep in the marrow of his bones.
"Run, little king..."
He collapsed beneath it.
He dreamed.
A throne made of twisted roots and bone.
A woman screaming in childbirth.
A man crowned in silence.
And then darkness. And then memory. And then nothing.
He awoke to firelight.
He was no longer beneath the tree. Now, he lay in a crumbled ruin of stone and moss. An old chapel, half-swallowed by earth and time. Rain tapped gently against the broken ceiling.
Beside him, a girl no older than seventeen sat cross-legged, sharpening a long, slender blade. Her face was gaunt, smudged with dirt and blood. One eye was covered in black cloth, frayed at the edge, but the other—gray, sharp, alive—watched him like a blade unsheathed.
Elyra.
"You breathe like a king, but piss like a boy," she muttered, not looking at him.
Kaelen sat up too fast. Pain lanced through his chest. He gasped.
"My—my mother," he whispered. "They took her. The men with the black sun."
Elyra said nothing.
The fire crackled.
"They said she had 'the blood.' They said I did too."
Elyra turned her blade slowly in her hands, watching the firelight dance across the steel.
"Then you run," she said. "Like I did."
Elsewhere, in the burning Vale...
Lord Vorcen of the Ash Choir stood atop a scorched hill, surveying the smoking wreckage. His armor was ash-stained, adorned with relics—finger bones, cracked icons, and a crown split down the middle.
Beside him, a priest stood—hooded, mouth sewn shut, holding a censer that bled smoke into grotesque shapes.
The smoke formed a boy's face.
Then a crown.
Then a tree.
Vorcen's eyes narrowed. "The bloodline sings," he murmured. "The Hollow Throne remembers."
Later that night
Kaelen and Elyra entered a tavern built half into the earth—a haven for deserters, widows, thieves, and those with no past worth naming. The air was thick with mead and rot.
They sat in the back.
Kaelen stared at the weapons nailed above the hearth—old swords, rusted spears, a cracked shield with a lion scorched into it.
"Why did you help me?" he asked.
Elyra took a slow sip of blackroot ale. Her eye flicked toward him, then back to the fire.
"Because I watched my brother burn," she said. "And you remind me of him."
A bard began to sing.
A slow, broken tune about a hollow king who wore a crown of bone and forgot his name.
And then—the tavern trembled.
A scream.
The door slammed open. A creature shambled in—pale, eyeless, weeping blood. A Hollowborn.
It howled with a thousand stolen voices.
Panic.
Men drew blades. One charged. The Hollowborn ripped his throat out in a flash.
Elyra stood fast, blade drawn.
Kaelen froze—his legs locked, heart thunderous.
Then, a whisper inside him.
"You are not made to run."
He grabbed a broken spear.
The creature turned. Its mouth opened. From it came his mother's voice:
"Kaelen... help me..."
He screamed and thrust the spear into its chest.
The Hollowborn shrieked, then fell, smoke leaking from its corpse.
Silence.
The room slowly exhaled. Elyra stared at him, something unreadable in her eye.
"Maybe you are him," she whispered.
That night, Kaelen dreamed again.
He stood before the Hollow Throne.
A voice beckoned him.
A crown hovered above the seat—dripping blood.
And in the shadows, something smiled.
A breath in the dark:
"Wake up, little king."
Cut to black.
EPISODE I END