The shadows didn't just swallow Kael—they chewed.
He felt the Maw's amusement ripple through the void as the cathedral dissolved around him, its stones turning to smoke, its altar crumbling into whispers. The transition wasn't seamless. It never was.
[Transitioning: Hollow Realm]
— [Integrity: 68%] —
— [Warning: Temporal Instability Detected] —
Kael's boots hit black sand that hissed like static. The air here was thick, syrupy, pressing against his skin with the weight of forgotten breaths. Above him, the sky wasn't empty—it was full. A thousand fractured reflections of the cathedral hung suspended, some pristine, some burning, some overgrown with veins of pulsating light.
The Hollow King's laughter echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
"You're late," Kael said.
The sand at his feet spiraled into a vortex, forming a throne of jagged shadows. On it sat a figure with Kael's face, his crown dripping void like tar, his eyes twin abysses.
"Time doesn't work here, heir." The Hollow King leaned forward, grin splitting his face too wide. "But you already knew that."
Act I: The First Truth (All Kings Are Liars)
The Hollow King gestured, and the sand surged upward, forming a grotesque diorama:
• The Saints' Stronghold, rendered in obsidian grains, their towers cracking like eggshells.
• The Breach, a seething wound in reality, pulsing with the Crown's corruption.
• A Single Figure standing at its heart—not Kael. Lyra-7, her diamond heart flickering.
"She's praying," the Hollow King mused. "To you."
Kael watched as the sand-Lyra knelt, her frost-sigils flaring blue. The breach shuddered in response, its edges writhing like living tissue.
"Not to me," Kael corrected. "To what's behind me."
The Hollow King's grin sharpened.
Act II: The Second Truth (All Chains Are Choices)
A notification seared across Kael's vision:
[Dominion Established: 53%]
— [Assimilation Threshold: 66%] —
— [Condition: Kill the Last Saint] —
The Hollow King spread his hands. "Finish it. Claim your throne."
Kael studied the sand-Lyra. Her diamond heart showed reflections within reflections—a teenage girl drowning in starlight, a warrior carving sigils into her bones, the entity wearing her skin. All trapped. All suffering.
"No."
The Hollow King went very still.
Kael reached into his own chest—through it—and pulled free a shard of the Crown. Black fluid dripped from its edges, eating holes in the sand.
"You want a king?" He tossed the shard at the sand-Lyra's feet. "Then learn to kneel."
The breach screamed.
Act III: The Third Truth (All Thrones Are Traps)
Reality inverted.
The sand-Lyra exploded into a storm of frozen glass. The Hollow King's throne shattered. The sky's reflections cracked like mirrors, and for a single, terrible second, Kael saw—
—the Sleeper.
A vast, pale thing curled around the heart of the world, its ribs a cathedral, its breath the wind that howled through every breach. Then the vision snapped shut.
Kael stood alone in the ruins of the cathedral, the true Lyra-7 convulsing at his feet, her diamond heart now blackened, its facets showing only his face.
The System's final message burned itself into the air:
[Dominion Rejected]
— [New Title Earned: Kingbreaker] —
— [Effect: ???] —
The Maw whispered, equal parts horrified and proud:
"What have you done?"
Kael turned toward the dying Saint, his shadow stretching too long, too sharp.
"Started a war."