Three days after the ritual, Darien stood on the eastern watchtower of Lyothara, staring at the horizon where smoke still rose from the ruins of Orion's Gate.
His right hand no longer looked like flesh.
It was gray, veined with faint violet lines, cool to the touch—like stone breathed to life.
He could clench it into a fist… or let it dissolve into swirling ash, then reform at will.
But the true change was inside.
He no longer felt the Great Tree's warmth.
No golden thread connected him to the light.
Instead, he sensed the world through absence—the hollow spaces where magic should be, the voids left by the orcs' passage.
And in the east… something watched back.
That afternoon, scouts reported a raiding party—two hundred orcs—moving toward the River Lys, burning farms, dragging captives.
"They're testing our defenses," Thorin growled. "Seeing if we've broken."
Darien turned to the King. "Let me go. Alone."
Aerion hesitated. "You've only just taken the Unlight. What if it consumes you?"
"If I wait until I'm ready," Darien said, "more will die."
The King gave a slow nod. "Then go. But remember—you are still an elf of Eldarín. Even in shadow."
Darien rode east at dusk.
He wore no armor. No elven sigils. Only dark leather and the dwarven axe at his belt.
At the banks of the Lys, he found them.
Orcs herding a dozen elven civilians—farmers, mostly—toward the Ashen Wastes. Their eyes were black. Their movements precise. And around their necks, each captive wore a collar of twisted Voidstone, pulsing faintly.
The orcs weren't just taking prisoners.
They were harvesting them.
Darien didn't shout a challenge.
He stepped from the trees—and let his right hand dissolve into ash.
The orcs froze.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
One turned, its mouth opening in a soundless cry—then pointed at Darien.
"Hollow-Born."
The word slithered through the air, spoken in the old tongue.
Darien didn't understand it… but his blood did.
He charged.
What followed was not a battle. It was a reckoning.
Where his ash-hand touched an orc, its body crumbled—not to dust, but to blackened husks, as if its very soul had been devoured. The violet runes on their skin dimmed and died.
The dwarven axe shattered armor with one strike.
Within minutes, the raiding party was gone.
But as Darien freed the captives, he saw their eyes.
Not gratitude.
Terror.
They backed away from him, clutching their Voidstone collars—which now lay inert, cracked.
"You're not one of us anymore," whispered an old farmer, tears cutting tracks through the soot on his face.
Darien said nothing. He cut their bonds and pointed west. "Go. Now."
As they fled, he knelt beside a dead orc—and pried the black shard from its chest.
It pulsed weakly in his ash-hand.
Then, for the first time, it spoke:
"You walk the path… but do you know where it leads?"
Back in Lyothara, Darien placed the shard on the council table.
"It's alive," he said. "Not just a weapon. A messenger."
Lira examined it with trembling hands. "It's linked to the cloaked figure. To the Heart of Void."
Prince Kaelin stared at Darien's gray hand. "You killed them… easily."
"Too easily," Darien admitted. "And they knew what I was. They called me 'Hollow-Born.'"
A chill fell over the room.
Elyar spoke softly: "If the enemy sees you as one of them… what does that make you to us?"
No one answered.
That night, Darien stood again before the Great Tree.
He reached out with his human hand—but the bark recoiled.
With his ash-hand, he touched it.
The Tree shuddered.
And deep within its roots, something wept.
Not for him.
For what he had become.