Chapter 18: The Weight of Knowledge

The underground chamber fell silent at Seraphine's words. The air was thick with anticipation, the dim torchlight casting eerie shadows along the damp stone walls.

The woman who had spoken her presence commanding yet unreadable stepped forward, her cloak billowing slightly as she moved.

"My name is Elaris Veran," she said, her voice steady. "And I am one of the last remaining scholars of the old world. We have waited for someone like you."

Seraphine frowned. "Waited?"

Elaris nodded. "We have long known that the Hollow One would mark someone again. It has not happened in over a century, but the moment your existence was revealed, we knew the cycle had begun anew."

The murmurs in the room grew louder at her words. Seraphine felt Valen shift beside her, his fingers twitching near the hilt of his dagger.

"The cycle?" Seraphine repeated, suspicion lacing her tone.

Elaris exhaled, folding her hands behind her back. "There is much you do not know, child. Much that was hidden from history, erased by those who feared what the Hollow One represents."

Seraphine's grip on her cloak tightened. "Then tell me."

Elaris studied her for a long moment before speaking.

"The Hollow One is not a god. It is older than gods."

A cold chill ran down Seraphine's spine. The torches seemed to flicker, as if the air itself recoiled at the words.

Eliam tensed beside her. Even Valen who rarely showed fear let out a quiet breath.

Elaris continued.

"It was here before the divine, before the heavens and the stars. A force of unshaped will, an entity that exists beyond the cycle of life and death. It does not seek worship. It does not seek conquest. It simply… is."

Seraphine swallowed, the markings on her arm tingling as if responding to the words.

"And what does it want?" she asked.

Elaris' gaze darkened. "That, we do not know. But those it marks… they are always changed. Twisted by its power. Some lose their minds. Some become something no longer human."

Silence fell over the chamber.

Seraphine's breath came slow and measured, her thoughts racing.

Was that what was happening to her?

Had the Hollow One marked her to turn her into something else?

She looked down at the swirling black veins along her arm, pulsing faintly under her skin. The whispers in her mind had grown quieter since she had entered this place, but she could still feel them lurking just beneath her thoughts, waiting.

"I won't let it control me," she said, more to herself than to anyone else.

Elaris' expression softened slightly. "That is why you must learn. If you wish to resist it, you must understand what you are becoming."

Seraphine hesitated.

A part of her wanted to run. To leave this place and pretend she had never heard these things.

But that would change nothing.

She had already been marked.

Turning away from the truth would not save her.

Taking a deep breath, she looked back at Elaris.

"Then teach me."

The First Lesson

Elaris led Seraphine deeper into the underground sanctum, through a winding corridor lined with ancient texts and faded murals carved into the stone. The depictions showed figures with dark markings just like hers standing at the edge of battlefields, their eyes void of color, their hands raised as unnatural forces swirled around them.

Seraphine stopped in front of one carving, her fingers grazing the etched stone.

A lone figure stood at the center, surrounded by corpses. Their face had been scratched out.

"Who was this?" she asked.

Elaris' expression darkened. "The last to bear the Hollow One's mark. A man who believed he could master its power."

Seraphine turned to her. "What happened to him?"

Elaris met her gaze.

"He lost."

The words sent an uneasy weight settling in Seraphine's chest.

Elaris gestured toward an open space in the chamber, where the floor was marked with a circular symbol. "Step into the center."

Seraphine hesitated before moving forward. The moment she crossed the threshold, a strange pressure wrapped around her not physical, but something deeper.

Elaris raised a hand. "Close your eyes."

Seraphine obeyed.

"The Hollow One's power is not drawn from the elements, nor from divine blessings. It does not answer to faith or ritual."

The pressure around her intensified.

"It is the power of the void, the space between existence and oblivion. And it has already begun to shape you."

A sharp pulse ran through Seraphine's veins.

Her heartbeat quickened.

She felt… cold.

And then

She wasn't in the chamber anymore.

She was somewhere else.

A vast, endless expanse stretched before her colorless, soundless, a world without form. The ground beneath her feet was neither stone nor earth. It simply was.

And at the center of it all

A figure stood waiting.

Seraphine's breath caught in her throat.

The Hollow One.

It had no face, no eyes, no mouth. Only an empty void where a human shape should have been.

And yet, she could feel it watching her.

The whispers returned, louder this time.

You are not ready.

Seraphine clenched her fists. "Then tell me what I need to be ready for."

The Hollow One did not respond in words.

Instead, something moved.

A shadow coiled around her feet reaching, twisting, pulling. Sinking into her skin.

Seraphine gasped as a wave of something ancient surged through her not pain, not power, but knowledge.

Memories that were not hers.

A temple burning beneath a crimson sky.

A voice screaming in a language long forgotten.

A figure standing alone, marked as she was, with nothing left but ruin behind them.

Seraphine's knees buckled, her vision spinning.

And then…

She was back.

The chamber returned around her. The torches. The stone. Elaris standing nearby, watching.

Seraphine staggered, catching herself against the ground.

Her breathing was ragged.

Her body trembled.

"What …what was that?" she gasped.

Elaris knelt beside her, placing a steadying hand on her shoulder.

"The beginning," she said softly.

Seraphine swallowed hard.

She could still feel it. The weight of what she had seen. The whispers still echoing in her mind.

But through the fear, through the uncertainty

Something else stirred.

A flicker of understanding.

A path she could no longer turn away from.

She had wanted answers.

Now she had them.

And she was not ready for what came next.