Mist rose like a living thing over the valley. It coiled along the jagged stones of the ravine and spilled into the ruins of what had once been a city of spires. Black Hollow did not sleep; it merely waited.
For three nights the valley walls had whispered of movement—metal against metal, torches flaring in the distance. On the fourth, the whispers became a tremor.
The Nocturnix had come.
Their banners—ashen cloth painted with a silver crescent—glimmered faintly through the fog. An army of men and constructs marched under that sign: war-priests, steel-bound golems, and the spectral siege-machines of the Church of Dawn. They came not for conquest, but for what they called purification.
From the highest ruin of the Hollow, Vallen Heir stood motionless, cloak dragging across the cracked marble floor. The air trembled around him as if unwilling to touch his skin. The torches below painted him in flashes of bronze light, but his eyes absorbed it all, leaving them pale and cold as moonstone.
He had known they would come. The Shadowbinders had warned him—the world never forgets what it fears.
Below, the remnants of House Heir's servants prepared in silence. There were few of them left: half-living shades bound to duty, remnants of those who had sworn to his blood centuries before. They did not breathe. They did not speak. They simply waited for their master's will.
Vallen descended the broken stair. His steps left faint after-images, as if the world hesitated between accepting that he still existed. He reached the gatehouse where the walls of Black Hollow had fused with ancient veins of onyx crystal, pulsing dimly with trapped Umbra energy.
The commander of the outer sentinels, a tall phantom wrapped in the tattered regalia of an old knight, bowed his head. "The lightborn advance, my lord."
Vallen's voice was quiet, almost human. "Then the debt is due."
The phantom's helm lifted. "Shall we open the veil?"
A breath escaped him—a thing halfway between sigh and memory. "No. Let them see the Hollow with open eyes. Let them remember why they feared us."
At dawn, the valley burned gray.
The Nocturnix formations moved with the precision of scripture. Drummers pounded, not for rhythm but for command. Each beat sent a ripple through the armored ranks and the half-mechanical beasts pulling the siege-engines.
At their center rode High Inquisitor Rhael, the man who once studied Umbra magic before denouncing it. His armor shone like sun-polished glass, and his eyes were fevered with faith.
"Strike swift and clean," he told his captains. "The last heretic dies today."
He believed that. He believed the stories that said the Hollow was a nest of spirits, that its heir was a ghost clinging to the living world. He did not understand that belief was a weak weapon here.
When the first cannon loosed its fire, the sound echoed through mountains older than maps. Stone shattered, dust rose—and then, silence. The shell had struck the main wall. It should have broken. It did not.
The impact left a dark bloom across the surface, as if the stone itself had inhaled the explosion.
Rhael frowned. "Reload."
The second shot landed true—and vanished. The dust cleared to reveal the same wall, unscarred.
Then came the first sound from within Black Hollow since the siege began: a low hum, harmonic and wrong, crawling under the skin like cold breath.
Vallen watched from the parapet. The hum came from the wall, from the city itself—an instinct older than him, awakening. The Umbra had no language, yet it understood threat.
He extended a hand, palm upward. Light bent around his fingers; shadows congealed there, forming threads that pulsed to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
Below, the Nocturnix army wavered. The mist thickened, distorting distance. The front ranks saw the wall move—not physically, but through shifting layers of reality. Towers seemed closer than they were. The road seemed longer.
Panic whispered through discipline.
Rhael raised his sword, voice echoing: "Form the circle of light!"
But the light faltered.
The torches that should have flared in unison instead guttered, their flames dragged sideways as though by unseen wind. Shapes began to walk between them—thin, colorless silhouettes, echoes of those who had died defending the Hollow centuries ago.
They did not attack. They only watched.
Vallen spoke to the unseen, his tone barely louder than the breath that left his lips. "You waited long enough. Come forth."
The silhouettes obeyed.
They stepped out of the mist and became something more—bodies that half-reflected the light of the living, blades forged of absence. The Eclipsed Phantoms, his inheritance.
He did not command them with words. The Hollow itself moved through him; he merely thought, and the shadows answered.
When the first rank of Nocturnix charged, their steel passed through one phantom, through another, and then found resistance where none should have been. The air hardened. Blades snapped. The dead did not bleed, but the living did.
By midday, the gray mist had turned a faint, soft red.
Within the citadel, Vallen stood before the ancient throne of obsidian—his ancestors' seat, now half-buried in rubble. The great hall was lit only by the trembling veins of onyx along the walls.
He had not sat on that throne before. Even now, he hesitated.
Every king of House Heir had ruled through pact: life for power, power for service to Umbra. Vallen was the last, and there was no one left to make the pact with.
He touched the armrest. The obsidian was cold, almost wet. A pulse moved under his palm—slow, deep, the heartbeat of the Hollow itself.
"Do you still remember them?" he whispered to the stone. "Those who built you? Those who burned for you?"
The hall did not answer. Only a faint rustle—like ash disturbed by wind.
He could have fled. The Shadowbinders once offered him safe passage beyond the mountains. Yet here he stood, within walls already doomed.
The choice no longer belonged to him.
Outside, the drums changed rhythm. The Nocturnix had breached the outer gates. The commander's phantom voice reached him through the walls: They come, my lord.
He turned from the throne. "Let them."
By twilight, the first breach opened.
Rhael himself led the vanguard through the shattered gate, stepping over the bodies of soldiers half-devoured by the mist. He advanced with light-forged shields that pulsed in steady rhythm, each step a declaration of faith.
"Find the source!" he shouted. "The Hollow's heart—destroy it!"
They entered streets lined with statues—men, women, even children frozen mid-motion, their faces serene. They looked real because they were real once.
"Witchcraft," one of his captains murmured.
Rhael ignored him. He felt it too—the air growing thicker, as if the city rejected their presence.
Ahead, through drifting smoke, a figure walked alone down the main avenue. Cloak of black and silver threads, eyes pale as dawn.
Vallen Heir.
He did not speak. He simply kept walking, and every torch within sight dimmed until even their holy light turned colorless.
Rhael raised his sword. "By the Creed of Dawn, you are unmade."
Vallen stopped. His gaze lifted, and for an instant the world held its breath.
The sound that followed was not thunder. It was the collapse of silence itself.
The street fractured; stone became weightless. Every shadow leapt toward him and vanished beneath his skin. The phantoms around him swelled into form—dozens, hundreds—each one a shard of his own soul.
The vanguard broke. Men screamed, but the sound did not travel far; the mist drank it.
Rhael fought through the shifting dark, cutting down shapes that re-formed faster than he could move. Somewhere behind him, his captains were gone. The circle of light was gone.
Only the Pale King remained.
Vallen walked until he reached the city's heart, where the central spire had collapsed centuries ago, leaving a crater of fused glass. He stood at its edge. The echoes of battle throbbed through the ground like distant thunder.
He looked down. Beneath the glass, faint lights pulsed—the souls bound to the Hollow, the essence of every generation that had fallen here.
He could end it. He could release them, let the Hollow crumble into nothing and free himself from its curse.
But release was not what the world had earned.
He raised a hand. The shadows surged from the crater, pouring upward in a column that swallowed the sky. The mist became a storm, the storm became night, and the night became him.
When Rhael finally reached the crater, what he saw made him falter.
A figure stood in the storm, its features almost human, its presence infinite. Pale light burned from within Vallen's skin like moonlight through water. Around him, the shades knelt.
Rhael lifted his sword in one last gesture of defiance. "You are no king. You are a curse."
The sword disintegrated before it touched air.
Vallen looked at him, and the High Inquisitor saw his own reflection—not in armor or blade, but in those hollow eyes.
Then there was nothing.
When the storm ended, dawn came uncertainly.
Where the city had stood was a plain of black glass stretching to the horizon. No bodies, no banners—only faint silhouettes burned into the glass like memories.
At its center, a throne of vapor and shadow waited. Upon it sat the Pale King, motionless, his eyes closed as if listening to something far away.
The Hollow lived, though it no longer had walls or people. It lived because he did.
And somewhere, beneath that silent plain, the heartbeat of the Umbra continued—slow, patient, eternal.
The Siege of Black Hollow
The first travelers reached the valley three days later.
They came from Atherion, drawn by the smoke they had seen from the outer hills—merchants, pilgrims, mercenaries hoping to loot the fallen city.
There was nothing to take.
They found no ruins, only a plain of obsidian glass that reflected the gray sky. When they stepped upon it, their boots left no mark. The air was still, too still; sound seemed to sink instead of carry.
A woman among them knelt and touched the surface. Beneath the glass, faint shapes shifted—faces, hands, the curve of a crown. She drew back with a cry.
"The ground is dreaming," she whispered.
The others thought her mad until night fell.
Under the moonlight the plain awakened.
Shadows moved beneath the glass as though walking under ice, endless silhouettes circling a single point—the throne.
There, the Pale King sat.
He did not move. His eyes remained closed, yet the light of the moon dimmed around him. When wind passed over the plain, it avoided the throne as water avoids oil.
Those who dared linger longer than a heartbeat saw more: faint ripples spreading from his feet, each one carrying whispers. The words had no tongue, but they burrowed into thought, and those who heard them fled.
By dawn the valley was empty again.
Far from the Hollow, in the city of Solbrin where the great academies of the Arcanum still held court, rumors arrived before witnesses did.
The first tale said the Nocturnix army vanished into smoke.
The second claimed a plague of glass now spread across the north.
The third—the one that made the magisters listen—spoke of a voice in the dark that called itself king.
Within the marble halls of the High Council, Magister Orin Vehl unrolled a map of Mystinia. "If even a part of this is true," he said, "then the Umbra has returned to motion."
Across the table, the Archmagister of Light scowled. "Superstition. The Hollow was cursed long ago. The Inquisition has dealt with it."
"Have they?" Vehl countered softly. He pointed to the map. "No messenger returns. Not one."
Silence.
They all felt it—something vast shifting beneath the skin of the world. For centuries, the Umbra had been myth: the breath of night itself, sealed by faith and flame. But now…
Now it stirred again.
Back in the valley, Vallen woke.
He did not breathe, but he felt the faint rhythm of the Hollow through his chest—like a pulse remembered. The storm was gone; only the throne remained. Around him, the phantoms waited in silence, their forms dimming in the newborn light.
He rose slowly. Each movement sent small fractures through the glass beneath him, not cracks but veins of shadow that healed as soon as they appeared.
He looked toward the horizon. The world beyond seemed distant, unreal.
The Umbra whispered from below, not with words but with longing. It wanted him to stay. To reign.
But the vow he made to himself the night before the siege lingered: If I survive, I will not rot here.
He stepped down from the throne. The phantoms bowed once and dissolved into mist, returning to the Hollow's deep places. The glass plain shivered; then stillness returned.
When Vallen walked away, his reflection stayed behind—frozen upon the surface like a promise unfulfilled.
He travelled west through the broken mountain passes.
For weeks no one saw him; for months the stories grew.
Miners in the Frostreach claimed a pale wanderer passed through tunnels where torches failed to burn, and when he left, their shadows walked a heartbeat slower than their bodies.
Fishermen along Lake Morwen swore the water dimmed when he looked upon it.
Each story reached the cities in time, changing with each retelling. Some called him a revenant; others said he was the last god of the dark.
Only a few spoke his true name.
One evening, he reached the borderlands of Atherion. The world here felt alive again—rain on soil, smoke from chimneys, the distant thrum of voices.
Vallen stopped at a ridge overlooking the city. Its towers glimmered under the setting sun, gold and white, untouched by war.
He should have felt something—nostalgia, anger, envy—but the emotions came muted, as if filtered through glass.
A merchant caravan passed along the road below. The driver, seeing a lone figure on the ridge, called out:
"You there! Storm's coming—Atherion's close if you seek shelter!"
Vallen nodded once. The man hesitated, uneasy under the weight of that pale gaze, then whipped the reins and hurried on.
When thunder rolled behind the mountains, Vallen followed the caravan's path.
He did not yet know why he walked toward the world that had forsaken his bloodline.
Perhaps curiosity.
Perhaps vengeance.
Perhaps something smaller—a flicker of what used to be human within him.
In Atherion, festivals lit the night. The people celebrated the harvest under lanterns shaped like suns. Music spilled from the taverns; laughter from the streets.
None noticed the newcomer in the dark cloak.
Vallen moved among them like a ghost wearing skin. He watched the firelight dance on smiling faces and wondered what it felt like to belong to warmth again.
He entered an inn near the outer square. The keeper, a kind-eyed woman, offered him a room without question. When she placed the key on the counter, her hand brushed his.
She flinched. "Cold night," she said quickly.
"Yes," he answered.
She did not meet his eyes again.
That night he dreamed.
He stood once more upon the glass plain. The shadows beneath it no longer moved—they watched.
A voice without sound filled the air: Why did you leave us, heir of Hollow?
He reached toward the throne that was no longer there. "Because I must know what waits beyond the dark."
The voice replied, Then carry the dark with you.
He woke before dawn.
By the time the sun rose, the inn was quiet.
The keeper knocked on his door but found it empty. On the table lay a single coin—blackened silver, bearing the sigil of House Heir.
When she touched it, a faint warmth pulsed through her fingertips. She drew her hand back, eyes wide.
Outside, the morning mist clung to the streets. The pale wanderer was already gone.
In the weeks that followed, whispers spread through every kingdom.
They said a figure wrapped in twilight walked the roads where bandits once ruled, and none dared ambush him twice.
They said the nights grew deeper after he passed, the stars dimmer.
They said that in dreams, some saw a throne of vapor rising again, waiting for its king.
None of them knew that the Pale King sought no throne now.
He walked because the world had become too small to contain what he carried.
Far beneath Black Hollow, the Umbra dreamed of him.
It dreamed of the day he would return.
And in that dream, the heartbeat of the dark kept time with the heartbeat of the wandering king.