The Hollow Ones moved like a tide of shadow—silent, swift, and merciless.
They emerged from the rift Ellie had torn into the world, spreading across the wastelands of the surface, their hollowed eyes glowing like dying stars. Towns whispered of strange shapes lurking in the mist. Cities near the old borderlands fell silent overnight.
And the Sovereigns, in all their golden glory, sent their answer.
The Divine Guard.
Ten thousand elite soldiers, clad in radiant armor etched with celestial sigils, descended from the sky like blades of judgment. They landed near the rift's edge, their commander, Seraph Valion, standing tall atop a dune of broken stone.
Behind him, banners of light unfurled, blinding the night with defiance.
"Hollow Queen or not," he proclaimed, "she bleeds like the rest."
But Valion had not seen Ellie yet.
He would.
At the Edge of Ruin
Ellie stood upon a crumbled tower overlooking the battlefield. The stars above swirled unnaturally, as if the heavens themselves watched in fearful anticipation.
Beside her, her most loyal Hollow—Thren, the first to kneel, once a warlord of the old age—watched the Divine Guard gather.
"They come with fire and songs of false divinity," he growled. "Shall we silence them?"
Ellie's gaze lingered on the sky.
"No. Let them sing."
She turned, her cloak of abyssal silk flowing behind her.
"I want the world to hear what happens next."
Then she leapt from the tower—a streak of darkness crashing into the battlefield like a falling star.
The earth trembled.
Time itself seemed to slow as the Hollow Queen descended.
And the war began.
The First Battle
The clash was thunder and silence. Divine spears met abyssal blades. Celestial light flared—only to be devoured by creeping shadow.
Ellie moved like a storm, weaving through formations, cutting through gold-plated zealots like parchment.
Valion met her in the center of the field.
Their blades met with a sound that cracked the sky.
"You're no Queen," he spat, "you're a blight."
Ellie parried, her voice ice. "And you're a fossil choking on dead light."
She struck.
Valion blocked.
But he staggered.
He had not expected her power. He had not expected the abyss to answer her will with such speed, such hunger.
Her Hollow Ones surrounded them, pressing in.
But Ellie raised her hand.
"Leave him."
The battle paused. A circle formed. All eyes on them.
A duel—Queen against commander.
And in three heartbeats, it was over.
Valion lay broken in the dirt, divine armor shattered, blood pooling into black sand.
"Tell your Sovereigns," Ellie said, crouching beside him, voice cold but quiet, "the Hollow Ones have risen. The throne is reclaimed. The age of chains is over."
She stood and turned as the Divine Guard—leaderless and shaken—began to flee.
Thren appeared beside her, his grin like fractured bone.
"A fine message."
Ellie's eyes flickered with abyssal fire.
"It's only the beginning."
The Fortress of Forgotten Names
The scent of ash still lingered in the air as Ellie and her Hollow Ones crossed the shattered highlands. Behind them, the battlefield remained scorched—etched with broken banners and the fading embers of divine arrogance.
But Ellie's eyes were set forward.
Their next destination loomed ahead—the Fortress of Forgotten Names. A relic lost to time, sealed and buried by the Sovereigns themselves after the First Banishment. Once a bastion of rebellion, it was now little more than crumbled stone and myth.
But Ellie knew the truth.
It was more than a ruin.
It was a key.
The Journey Through Dust and Echoes
The path to the fortress wound through a region the maps no longer named. Locals whispered of voices in the wind, bones that walked on moonless nights, and shadows that fed on memory.
As they passed through these haunted lands, some Hollow Ones slowed—whispers clinging to their minds, attempting to pull them back to who they once were.
A child.
A sister.
A murderer.
A god.
Each of them had been something before they were hollowed.
Ellie alone walked untouched.
Or so it seemed.
In truth, the whispers reached for her, too. They just didn't recognize her. Not anymore.
She had become something beyond memory.
Something new.
The Fortress Awakens
They found the fortress at dusk, hidden beneath an overgrown valley of thorns. Its stone gates had long since crumbled, but the true entrance was buried beneath.
Ellie extended her hand—and the ground shuddered.
Ancient runes glowed from beneath the soil. The earth split, revealing a spiraling descent carved with symbols older than language.
They entered.
The fortress was alive with echoes—not quite voices, not quite memories. Weapons of bone and obsidian lined the walls, untouched by time. Faint light pulsed from within the structure, as if the very walls recognized Ellie's presence.
And they did.
"You are not the first Hollow Queen," a voice whispered in the dark.
Ellie turned. A figure emerged—wreathed in flickering shadow, a former monarch consumed and preserved by the abyss.
"But you may be the last."
An Audience With the Past
The spectral queen called herself Verixa, the First Hollow Sovereign. Long ago, she had ruled the rebellion before Ellie's time—before betrayal, before the abyss was sealed.
Her bones had long since turned to dust.
But her will had remained.
"The Sovereigns will not fight you alone. They will awaken what lies beyond the stars. They will break the world before they let you wear a crown."
Ellie stepped forward, unshaken.
"Then let them break it. I'll reshape it with my own hands."
Verixa laughed, a hollow, haunting sound.
"Then take what I once held."
She extended her spectral hand. From the abyss, a relic formed—The Hollow Diadem, forged in the days before the fall.
Ellie accepted it.
Dark light flared.
The fortress trembled as if taking a breath.
And the Hollow Ones fell to their knees.
Their Queen had ascended—no longer merely chosen.
She was now enthroned.
The Citadel of Shadows
The ground split beneath the Fortress of Forgotten Names.
Mountains trembled.
Rivers halted midstream.
Birds fell silent in the sky.
The ancient fortress, long buried beneath centuries of dirt and silence, began to rise.
Stone ground against stone as mechanisms older than time groaned awake. Towers surged upward, black spires scraping at the clouds. Sigils burned into the air, trailing violet smoke. Chains of obsidian—anchored in forgotten dimensions—snapped loose, and the entire valley heaved as the fortress detached itself from the earth.
The Hollow Ones watched in silent reverence as their Queen stood at the heart of it all, the Hollow Diadem now resting on her brow.
"Let them look to the heavens and see their end rising from the dirt they buried us in," Ellie whispered.
And with her will alone, the fortress moved.
It did not walk.
It floated, suspended by abyssal force—a moving citadel, alive with shadow and hatred. A throne of war.
The world would never know rest again.
The Deep Vaults Open
As the fortress rose, entire sections that had been sealed for millennia began to awaken.
Vaults containing weapons etched in unknowable runes, war-beasts grown in stasis, and maps that showed not just land—but fractures in time. The Hollow Ones began to explore the depths of their new stronghold, reclaiming relics of an age erased from history.
One such relic was brought to Ellie.
A sword, long and crooked, wrapped in rusted chains and sealed inside a crystal coffin. Its name whispered itself into her mind.
Veyrix. The God-Taker.
"Forged in the first betrayal," Thren murmured beside her. "Said to have tasted the blood of a Sovereign's heart."
Ellie reached for it.
The chains snapped the moment her fingers brushed the crystal.
The sword screamed.
And the abyss sang in answer.
She raised it, feeling its weight, its hunger. It was not a tool—it was a promise. A reckoning.
The first blow in the war to come.
A Spy in the Sky
Far above, beyond the mortal veil, in the Citadel of Light, the Sovereigns watched.
Altharion stood at the edge of the divine observatory, his gaze fixed on the black spire rising from the cursed lands.
"It moves," he muttered. "The Hollow Queen has built a kingdom that walks."
Behind him, Sovereign Elaria stepped forward, golden eyes dimmed with unease.
"We have delayed too long. The Diadem answers her. She's no longer just a ruler of exiles. She's... becoming something else."
Altharion's jaw tightened. "Then we send the Harrowborn."
Gasps echoed across the chamber. The others recoiled.
"They're unstable," one Sovereign hissed. "Barely bound to our realm."
"They were made for war," Altharion growled. "Unleash them. If the Hollow Queen wants war..."
He turned to the shattered horizon. His reflection wavered in the divine glass—aging, cracking.
"…then we will give her annihilation."
End of Chapter 27.