They warned Soren not to go near Hollowreach—that the city was dead, cursed, lost to time. They were wrong.
The ruins stretched out like a forgotten wound. Blackened stone, shattered statues, towers choked by ivy and frost. Nothing living remained inside the valley—only roots twisting through bones and silence that pressed like weight. Every step deeper felt like trespassing inside something sacred. Or something buried alive.
Soren moved slowly, fingers tight on the hilt of the rusted blade at his hip. The journal he'd stolen from the Briarhold vaults was tucked beneath his cloak, folded to the margin that started it all: The shard still remembers. No page number. No author. Just a scribbled warning beside the old Hollowreach crest—a tree with veins for roots, a sun with no face.
He found the altar by accident.
It stood in the center of the collapsed sanctum, a slab of obsidian veined with glowing cracks. Around it, the glyphs on the floor were nearly erased by time, but not gone. They still hummed if he looked too long. In the center of the altar lay the shard.
At first glance, it looked like broken glass—curved, blackened, sharp. But when the torchlight touched it, it pulsed once. Softly. Like breath behind a veil.
Soren stepped closer.
He didn't understand why he wanted it. He only knew he had to. A voice deep in his chest whispered that it belonged to him. Or he belonged to it. He reached out.
The shard flared before his fingers even touched it. Images crashed into him—memories that weren't his. A silver crown floating in black sky. A bell tolling beneath the earth. A scream swallowed by stone. He dropped to his knees, gasping, the shard hot against his palm.
Then he saw it.
A figure at the edge of the ruin. Wrapped in torn priest robes, face hidden behind a jagged porcelain mask—split down the center, one half blank, the other leaking ink. It didn't walk. It arrived. No footsteps. No breath.
"You shouldn't have touched that," it said.
Its voice was calm. Too calm. Like it had said these words many times before, to many versions of him.
Soren stood slowly. "What is this place? What's happening?"
The figure tilted its head. "This is remembrance. And you are the echo."
"I don't understand—"
"You will. The shard called you. As it once called me."
The stone beneath Soren's feet pulsed. Lines of silver bloomed in the cracks, forming a seal he didn't recognize. Air thickened. His heartbeat fell out of rhythm.
"Say the vow," the masked one said. "Or be erased."
"I don't know any vow—"
"You always do. Every time."
The light rose.
The shard lifted on its own, pressing against his chest.
And without knowing how or why, Soren whispered, "I accept."
The shard vanished.
And the ruin began to burn.
It wasn't fire. Not really.
The ruin didn't burn—it unfolded. Light poured from the glyphs in waves of silver and violet, tracing old lines of power through the stone beneath his feet. The air cracked like paper in flame, revealing seams of something deeper. Reality peeled.
Soren stumbled backward, hands raised to shield his eyes, but the light was inside him now—threading through bone, burrowing into muscle, awakening something ancient that had been dormant far too long. His breath came in short gasps. He could feel the shard moving, not physically, but symbolically, like it was stitching itself into his existence.
The masked figure remained where it had stood, robes billowing in wind that didn't exist. Its voice cut through the chaos, perfectly still.
"You've invited the crown's memory. It won't forget you again."
Soren gritted his teeth. "What is it?"
"A remnant," the figure replied. "From before the pact broke. Before the gods fell."
He was about to ask what that meant when the floor split open. Thin cracks spidered outward from the altar, and through them, the sky appeared—not the one above, but another one, wrong and colorless, where stars didn't twinkle but watched.
He was falling.
Not in body, but in presence. His soul, or whatever passed for it, was being yanked downward through the cracks in the world. The ruin faded. The wind vanished. The air turned sharp, and he landed—without motion—inside the hollow sky.
It wasn't a place. It was a memory shaped like a world.
He stood on a platform of nothing, surrounded by branches that stretched across space like veins in frost. Each one pulsed with pale gold, and at their center hung a throne made of roots and starlight. Empty. Waiting.
Then something rose from beneath it. A shape—not man, not god, not beast. Fluid and towering. Its body shimmered between forms: a tree, a figure in armor, a storm with a crown. Its face was nothing but hollow light.
Soren couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
"You return."
The voice wasn't sound. It was understanding forced into shape.
"You carry a shard of what once bound us. A memory sharp enough to wound."
The branches overhead stirred, shedding leaves made of glass.
"Do you wish to wield it? To finish what was broken?"
Soren tried to speak, but no sound came. His mouth moved, and instead of words, a vow poured from him—not chosen, but remembered.
"I will not forget."
The throne pulsed. The sky answered.
Threads of light—gold and black—coiled around him, burrowing into the mark on his chest. He convulsed, eyes wide, as visions slammed through him: wars waged in shadows, gods consumed by their own pacts, a crown lifted by hands that bled history.
His knees buckled.
"Then you will carry it."
And the mark ignited.
Pain bloomed like a second heartbeat. He screamed, not from agony, but recognition. The shard didn't just remember him—it had been waiting.
The light swallowed him whole.
The light died fast.
Soren hit the floor of the ruin hard, coughing, clutching his chest. Cold stone, broken glyphs, wet moss—he was back. His body still trembled, but the sensation of falling was gone. The memory of the hollow sky, however, clung to him like smoke beneath the skin.
The altar had gone dark. The glyphs no longer pulsed. The masked figure was gone, leaving no footprints, no scent, only a faint smudge in the air, like a place where meaning had once stood.
Soren crawled away from the altar, breath ragged. Every part of him hurt—not from impact, but from rearrangement. The shard had not simply fused with him. It had rewritten him. His blood felt heavier, his thoughts too loud. Symbols danced at the edge of his vision and vanished when he tried to focus.
He pulled open his shirt. There, over his heart, was the mark: a gold sigil shaped like a root system curling into a crown. Faint, almost elegant—but the power beneath it pressed against the inside of his skin like something trying to remember itself through him.
He whispered, "What did I just agree to?"
Silence. Then a flicker in the torchlight. His shadow on the wall moved—just half a second too late, mimicking his gestures like it was catching up. It didn't make sense. None of this made sense.
But it was real.
He could feel it now: the shift in the world around him. A hum in the air. As if something unseen had opened one eye and would not close it again.
He pushed himself upright, legs shaky, and looked back toward the tunnel. Time to leave. Time to get out and pretend none of this happened—except he knew that was impossible.
The shard was gone, but its weight was permanent.
He stepped into the corridor. The temperature had dropped. Outside, the wind didn't move. Trees stood still, their branches stretched toward the ruin like listeners trying to hear what had awakened.
Then came the bell.
One deep toll—far off in the mountains. Not from any church. Not a warning. A signal.
A veil bell.
Soren froze. Only veilwalkers and death-priests used those anymore—and only when a pact had been made or broken.
The kind of pact that left blood in its wake.
He looked back at the sanctum once more. The altar now looked smaller, ordinary. Like any other relic of a forgotten age. But he knew better. It had chosen him. Or cursed him. Maybe both.
And somewhere, something else knew too.
He didn't know what kind of power he had accepted.
Only that it was no longer asleep.