Kael's breath was ragged, his fingers clenched tight around his shattered sword. The undead knelt before him, their hollow eyes flickering with eerie recognition. It wasn't reverence. It wasn't fear.
It was acknowledgment.
"No," he growled under his breath.
His cursed eye pulsed, the sigil on his arm burning with unnatural heat. The dark power within him stirred, coiling like a beast awoken from slumber.
"You feel it now, don't you?" The skeletal figure took a step forward, the tatters of its once-regal robes drifting in the unnatural stillness of the ruined library. "The mark upon your flesh is not a prison—it is a crown waiting to be worn."
Kael turned to him, jaw tight.
"I don't want a crown."
The figure chuckled, dry as rusted chains.
"They all say that, at first."
The kneeling dead remained motionless. Silent. Watching. Kael felt the weight of their presence, pressing against his mind like unseen chains.
His fingers twitched. If he gave the order—would they obey?
A shiver crawled down his spine. No. This wasn't happening. He would not become like them.
Kael forced himself to step back, to break free from the circle of kneeling corpses.
"Enough of this." He leveled his blade at the hooded figure. "Tell me what you want."
The figure tilted its head.
"Want?" It let out a slow, deliberate laugh. "I am merely here to bear witness. The Hollow King has yet to rise, and yet—" it gestured toward the kneeling dead—"his kingdom already stirs."
Kael grit his teeth.
"I am not your king."
The shadows quivered. The sigil on his arm flared.
And then, the undead spoke.
"Yet you bear the mark."
The voices did not come from a single throat, but from all of them at once—a chorus of hollowed souls, whispering from beyond the grave.
Kael took an instinctive step back. His pulse hammered.
The skeletal figure watched in silent amusement.
Kael's grip tightened on his sword, his mind racing. He had to end this.
Without hesitation, he lunged—his blade slicing toward the figure's robed form.
But the moment his steel struck—
The world shattered.
A pulse of cold energy rippled outward, the air twisting like fractured glass. Kael's vision blurred, his cursed eye flaring with unbearable light.
For a moment, he was somewhere else.
A throne of blackened bone.
A crown of rust and shadow.
A city swallowed by endless night.
A name whispered in reverence… and fear.
"Hollow King."
Kael gasped as the vision shattered, the weight of it crashing back into reality. He fell to his knees, gripping his head as the last echoes of the voices faded.
The skeletal figure loomed over him, its empty sockets glowing with faint amusement.
"You will deny it for now," it mused. "But the throne does not ask for permission, cursed one. It only waits."
The shadows shifted—and in the next breath, the figure was gone.
Kael knelt in the ruined library, the scent of dust and decay thick in the air. The undead had collapsed, their magic spent.
He was alone.
But in the silence, the whispers still lingered.
The throne had seen him.
And it was waiting.
---
End of Chapter 6