Coker didn't feel like he was walking anymore.
His legs moved, but something else was carrying him. The beast inside... it wasn't just awake now. It was watching. Studying. Waiting for something.
He reached the place where all the cursed ones go when they disappear from the academy.
The Hollowed Vale.
It was a forbidden valley carved between jagged, screaming cliffs where lightning never stopped dancing above the clouds. People said it was cursed. Some even said a god died there, long ago. But Coker knew it wasn't the valley that was cursed.
It was the people who sent others there.
He stepped into the mist.
The world changed.
No sky. No sound. No end. Just an empty silence that pressed against your soul like invisible hands around your throat.
But Coker wasn't alone.
From the mist came whispers. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Voices speaking in broken tongues. Some called him. Some warned him. Some begged.
And then came the first figure.
A girl.
Silver hair. Pale skin. Eyes like broken stars. She looked just like the one in his memories—but her eyes were wrong. Hollow.
"Coker…" she said in a whisper that wasn't hers. "Why did you let me die?"
He stepped back, hands shaking. That name. That face. He remembered her—but not from this life. Not even from this world.
Before he could speak, she vanished.
And another figure rose.
A boy, one of the academy students. Gantor. The loud one. The one who used to laugh every time Coker tripped in the training yard.
Except now… Gantor was burned. Eyes gone. Skin melted like wax. And his voice was full of shadow.
"You were never supposed to have a beast," it hissed. "You stole from the vault of the first gods… and now we burn for it."
Coker's heart pounded.
He ran.
But there was no ground anymore. Only falling.
He screamed—yet no sound came. His voice was swallowed.
Darkness took him.
And then…
He landed.
Not in mist. Not in shadow.
But in flame.
A circle of ancient stone surrounded him. And in its center stood a figure cloaked in black armor, holding a chain made of glowing bones. Each bone whispered. Each bone screamed.
"Finally," the voice said. "The Shadow Beastling comes home."
The flames parted and revealed… a throne.
But it wasn't stone. It was alive. Made of crawling, shifting, writhing things that moaned without mouths. And at its base, names were carved in blood.
Coker's eyes widened.
One of them was his.
"What is this place?" he gasped.
The figure turned.
"This is the Flame Court. Where broken beast masters go to forget who they were… and burn for who they could have been."
The chain snapped forward, wrapping around Coker's arm. Pain lanced through his soul. He screamed again, but now it echoed—back to the real world. Back to the beast inside him.
And for the first time… the beast spoke not in growls.
But in words.
"Do not kneel, boy. You are my heir."
A pulse of cursed energy exploded outward.
The court shattered.
The throne cracked.
And the figure in armor hissed as half its face melted off—revealing a twisted, burned version of someone Coker knew all too well.
His father.
But that couldn't be. His father was dead.
Wasn't he?
Coker woke on the ground outside the Hollowed Vale.
But something followed him out this time.
A crack in the sky.
And a message burnt into the grass.
"The Beast Gods are watching."