Ever since the day of reckoning when deceit and fear tore through Cedric, Liora, and Avaia's lives, they've done everything they could to forget. To bury it. Pretend it didn't change them. But it did. And not for the better.
Only two in the Valerius line bore the truth before it struck: Cassius and his youngest brother, Lucius. Even as a baby, Lucius dreamt of impossible things. Cassius, though... he had seen visions since the age of two, fractured prospects of different realities. Or maybe they were glimpses of the past. Or the future. He never could tell.
When he told his parents, they summoned priests to examine him. The priests listened, exchanged uneasy glances, then dismissed him entirely. "Just dreams," they said. "Oddities. Nothing more." That lie held until the demon came.
After that day, no one looked at Cassius the same. Everyone grew wary, fearful of what else he might see. What else might be true?
The figure in his dreams, the presence he felt lurking in every corner of the waking world, was it man or myth? He didn't know. But it was always there. In every shadowed crevice, behind every flickering candle, it watched. Cassius never saw it outright, but he knew it was there. His senses were too sharp, too cursed, to ignore it.
Still, nobody else knew.
Not even after ten long years.
Cassius retreated from the world, burying himself in books: math, science, forbidden texts, ancient philosophies. He had a hunger for knowledge that surpassed anything his tutors could offer. But while his mind expanded, his spirit withered. By the age of ten, while his siblings blossomed under the spotlight of nobility, Cassius collapsed beneath its weight.
They still loved him, his parents. But they didn't understand him. They didn't know what to do with him. They stopped trying.
He started drinking.
No one noticed until his thirteenth birthday. But by then, the damage had been done.
In those same years, Cedric reached the second stage of resonance. His flame attunement had been revealed to be something legendary: Phoenixfire. The house was electric with celebration. The Golden Child, they called him exceptional in swordplay, unshakable in temperament. He'd trained under the Lord Commander of the knights himself by the age of eleven to twelve, and soon after, was sent to the Academy to rise even further.
The same rumors that exalted Cedric began whispering of Liora.
She was strong and brutally so, but lacked his swordsmanship. She preferred fists, raw momentum, and the full weight of her body in combat. Many dismissed her until her barrier resonance evolved. Now it was spatial, a rare mutation that terrified her. It gave her incredible power, but little control. She feared hurting others... and more than that, feared herself.
Avaia changed, too.
Quiet, solemn. She never quite recovered after witnessing the demon that night. Her spatial resonance took a prophetic turn, and she began seeing things in her sleep. Things that hadn't happened yet. Not with the clarity of Cassius, but enough to leave her shaken. Unstable. Cold.
Even Lucius, the youngest, bloomed. Late, sure, but once his resonance awakened at ten, he grew fast. Strong. Pragmatic. And in five years, he joined his older siblings at the Academy.
Cassius, though?
He refused to go.
Not because he was weak, he was stronger than anyone gave him credit for. Faster, sharper in swordplay than even Cedric. And somehow, without having reached his attunement, without collecting a single resonance shard. It terrified people. Made them whisper.
They called him names, Hellspawn. Hollow. Cursed Child.They spoke as if he were a blight on the Valerius name.
And yet, none of his siblings visited anymore. Too busy. Too praised. Too burdened with missions from the Academy. Even Lucius, who once made time for him, was pulled away to join his siblings on sub-plane expeditions.
The drinking returned.
But the worst part wasn't the isolation.
It was the knowing.
The knowing that something ancient was awake in him. That his resonance summon-type, mixed with flame, wasn't like theirs. That it wasn't a gift, but a response. A reaction. A parasite.
He wanted to run from it.
He wanted to burn it out.
But the Hollow never forgets.
***
Cassius awoke at dawn, clutching his head.
His curls were soaked, sticking to his forehead in damp strands, and his once-white button-down clung to his chest, drenched in sweat. Books on science and math were scattered across the bed and floor, buried beneath empty bottles of alcohol. A sour haze filled the air.
Knock knock.
"Cassius?" a voice called softly from behind the door. "Cassius, wake up. It's time for breakfast."
Fatima.
He groaned, rolling over to the edge of the bed. Feet hit the cold floorboards. Without a word, he stumbled to the bathroom, turned the faucet, and splashed freezing water onto his face. It ran down his neck, into his shirt, through his hair. Still dizzy. Still burning behind the eyes.
The stench hit next.
He grimaced, sniffing at his collar. Disgusting. A shower was overdue.
But as he looked up, his hands gripping the edge of the sink, his eyes locked onto the mirror.
There it was.
Him.
That same figure. Always in the corner of his vision. A silhouette lurking just outside light and logic. Cassius blinked, and it vanished. Gone. Like always.
Cassius reluctantly sighed and took a pill from the pill cabinet behind his mirror.
He studied himself for a long, uncomfortable second. His hair wasn't as curly anymore, less like himself, more like Cedric. And the bags under his eyes? Heavy. Sunken. Tired. He looked... wrong. Less human. He sighed, stepped into the shower, and let the water drown the silence.
Minutes later, dressed in fresh clothes that looked no different than before. Cassius stepped downstairs. He moved graceful, but slow. Tired. Fatima stood to the side, hands folded. One of the knights lingered near the door, armored and alert.
Cassius sat. Ate in silence. Then stood, glass of water in hand, drinking every drop like it was air.
Then he walked straight to the knight.
"Hand me your sword," he said.
The knight hesitated but obeyed. Cassius took the blade. Stepped outside.
The moment his foot touched the last step, his brain snapped.
A sharp spike of pain shot through his skull. His vision folded in on itself. The world collapsed.
His eyes went black.
Three seconds of airtime.
That's all he had before his body would hit the stone, three seconds of weightlessness, and in that space between falling and impact.
He remembered.
He remembered his dream.
Something cloaked in black had whispered to him. A voice ancient, half-sung, half-snarled.
Then flashes.
Geometry impossible to describe. Angles that shouldn't exist. Shapes that bent space around them like gravity.
Then the being. That being.
Standing there in his mind. Watching him. Always watching.
Cassius felt his skull inch from the ground.
And just before it cracked against the cold.
He heard a voice.
A different one. Darker. More playful. Twisted by joy.
"The world sings lies... just as resonances are."
Then laughter. Cold and layered. And a second shrouded figure beside it, laughing too.
Then.CRACK.