The rumors reached them before the screams did.
They came in fragments, half-whispered warnings carried by traders, a broken prayer muttered by a fleeing shepherd, the uneasy silence that settled over roads once traveled at all hours. Villages dimmed their lanterns early now. Doors were barred not against bandits, but against the night itself.
Nyra noticed first.
"They won't meet our eyes," she said quietly as they passed through the outer hamlet of Greythorne. "They're afraid to look at us."
"They are afraid to be noticed," Aethric replied.
The villagers watched from behind shutters and doorframes, faces pale in the torchlight. No one approached until an elderly woman finally stepped forward, fingers clenched around a charm worn smooth by decades of fear.
"Shadow things," she whispered. "They come after sundown. Not every night. Only when the bells fall quiet."
Aethric inclined his head. "How many?"
"Never more than three," she said. "But they leave nothing… alive. Not even echoes."
That made Nyra tense.
Aethric's expression did not change, but his attention sharpened. "Show me where."
They waited until night.
The village square lay empty, lanterns extinguished as ordered. Only the moon remained thin, distant, and pale. Nyra stood near the well, senses extended, feeling the ambient mana sag like a damp cloth.
"Something's wrong," she murmured. "The mana feels… thin."
"Hollow-adjacent constructs," Aethric said. "They consume context before substance."
As if summoned by the words, the shadows detached themselves from the alleyways.
Three shapes slid into view, humanoid only by suggestion, their forms folding in on themselves, edges blurring like smoke trapped in skin. No eyes. No mouths. Just absence arranged into motion.
Nyra felt fear spike, then confusion.
They weren't attacking.
They were probing.
Aethric stepped forward once.
The creatures froze.
Not bound.
Not stunned.
They hesitated as if the world itself had warned them.
Aethric raised his staff and tapped it lightly against the stone.
The sound echoed far too loudly.
The nearest shadow lunged.
Aethric did not cast a spell.
He shifted position by half a step.
The creature passed where he had been, tearing through empty air. As it overextended, the ground beneath it forgot how to support hollow things.
The shadow collapsed inward, imploding without sound.
The second adapted, splitting into mirrored forms, attacking from multiple angles.
Aethric exhaled slowly.
He adjusted the local hierarchy.
Gravity tilted not enough to harm the village, not enough to crack stone—but sufficient to force the mirrored forms to overlap.
They merged.
Then unraveled.
The third creature did not attack.
I watched.
Nyra felt it studying them not with intelligence, but with instruction embedded deep within its structure.
"Teacher," she whispered. "It's learning."
"Yes," Aethric agreed. "Which means it will retreat."
The creature dissolved into shadow, seeping into the cracks between stones.
Aethric allowed it to go.
Silence returned to the square.
No explosions.
No scorched earth.
No visible proof of battle.
Nyra swallowed. "You let it escape."
"I wanted it to," Aethric said. "It will report."
They followed the creature's trail beyond the village, into a field where the grass lay flattened in a perfect circle. At the center, the soil had blackened, not burned, but emptied.
Nyra knelt, heart pounding.
"There's something carved here."
Aethric crouched beside her.
A symbol lay etched into the earth, subtle, precise, and deeply wrong. Lines curved in non-Euclidean logic, forming a mark that refused to settle in the eye.
Nyra felt the hum in her chest react instantly.
"This isn't the same sigil as before," she said. "It's… related. But altered."
Aethric's gaze hardened.
"This is not a summoning mark," he said. "It's a measurement."
Nyra looked up sharply. "Measuring what?"
"Response time. Resistance. Adaptation," Aethric replied. "The Hollow Sovereign's influence is no longer spreading blindly."
He straightened slowly.
"It is mapping the world."
Nyra's stomach dropped.
They returned to the village before dawn. The villagers emerged cautiously, relief warring with terror as they saw the square intact.
"You're safe," Nyra told them.
Aethric said nothing.
As they departed, Nyra glanced back once more.
The symbol had already begun to fade.
But she knew it would not be the last.
Far away across borders and kingdoms, similar marks were appearing.
Different shapes.
Same intent.
And somewhere beyond mortal sight, something ancient was learning how the world now fought back.
Shadow creatures linked to the Hollow Sovereign begin coordinated attacks, leaving behind identical but evolving symbols. Aethric realizes the enemy is no longer testing strength but gathering data, signaling a strategic escalation across kingdoms.