The Hollow Vale

The wind howled through the jagged cliffs, carrying with it the whispers of the forgotten. Beneath the sickly glow of a fractured moon, a lone infant lay wrapped in tattered cloth, his breath shallow, his body frail. The Hollow Vale did not welcome the living.

It was a place where spirits lingered, where the boundary between life and death blurred into nothingness. Yet here, in the cradle of decay, the child did not cry. He simply watched. His eyes—pale as ghostly embers—reflected the drifting wraiths that circled hungrily above.

Jin Morai was born cursed.

The Withering Veil Physique was an abomination, a body that siphoned the last remnants of life from all things it touched.

A child destined to bring ruin.

His parents had abandoned him here, in a land where even the strongest cultivators feared to tread.

They believed the Vale would consume him, that the restless dead would make him one of their own.

But the Vale did not take him.

Instead, it watched.

For three days and nights, he lay there, untouched by hunger, by thirst. The dead drew close, but they did not devour him. The land of decay had recognized one of its own. And then, on the fourth night, the whispers changed. They were no longer directionless murmurs of the lost. They carried intention, curiosity. And then they spoke.

"Come, little shade. We have waited long for you."

A figure emerged from the mist, neither living nor truly dead. She was draped in shadows, her form shifting like smoke in moonlight. Her voice was soft, but it carried the weight of centuries.

Jin did not flinch. He simply stared, his pale eyes unblinking.

"You are not afraid," the woman mused. "Good. Fear has no place where we walk."

She extended a hand, her fingers long and gnarled, yet strangely gentle. The moment her touch met his skin, the air trembled. A surge of energy, cold and endless, coiled around them. The spirits recoiled, whispering frantically among themselves.

"From this moment, you are no longer abandoned," the woman said. "You are my disciple."

Jin did not yet understand what that meant, but deep within his tiny, fragile body, something stirred. A hunger, ancient and boundless.

The Hollow Vale had not taken him.

It had chosen him.

The years passed in a haze of moonlight and whispered lessons. The woman, known only as Grandmother Night, taught him to listen—to the wind that carried forgotten names, to the roots that curled around bones long buried. He learned to weave shadows like thread, to call upon the dying breath of withering leaves and command the restless spirits that dwelled within the Vale.

Jin grew, not in the way of ordinary children, but as something between life and death. His hunger deepened, but so did his control. The land no longer whispered of his doom but sang his name in reverence. The dead obeyed his call, and the living came to fear the pale-eyed child who walked unscathed through the Hollow Vale.

Yet Grandmother Night was not the only presence within the Vale.

Others lurked, watching from the veil of mist, ancient spirits whose voices slithered through the silence. Some sought to test him, their forms manifesting in twisted shapes of bone and sorrow. Others whispered secrets in the dark, names of old gods and forsaken lords whose echoes still clung to the earth.

One night, a presence far older than Grandmother Night stirred from the depths of the vale.

Jin stood at the edge of a broken shrine, its stones slick with the passage of time. The air crackled with unseen energy, a force neither benevolent nor cruel. Something slithered through the darkness, unseen but felt. The whispering ceased, replaced by a deafening silence.

A voice, deep and ancient, rumbled through the vale. "The child of ruin walks."

Jin's breath turned cold in his lungs. He had felt fear before—but never like this.

The mist coiled, taking shape. Not human, not entirely spirit. It loomed before him, a thing made of shadow and the echoes of forgotten prayers. "What will you become, little one? A scourge upon the heavens, or the hand that guides the lost?"

Grandmother Night appeared beside him, her form flickering like a dying ember. "His path is his own," she murmured. "But the heavens will learn to fear him."

Jin clenched his small fists. He did not understand everything, not yet. But he knew one thing.

He was not meant to follow the heavens.

He was meant to walk the path of decay.

And so, the Vale taught him.

Years later, under the same fractured moon, Jin stood at the border of the Hollow Vale, his tattered robes whispering against the wind. He had grown—no longer the frail infant left to die but a young man, his gaze as cold as the breath of the dead.

Grandmother Night stood beside him, her form more faded than before. Time did not pass for spirits as it did for the living, but even the strongest wraiths could not resist the slow pull of oblivion. She had given him all she could. It was time for him to step beyond the veil.

"The time has come," she said, her voice softer than usual. "To step beyond the threshold of this land."

Jin studied the darkened path beyond the Vale's boundary, where the mortal world shimmered in a dream-like haze. He knew what awaited him—a world that would fear him, a destiny entwined with blood and secrets.

He turned to Grandmother Night. "What will happen if they come for me?"

She smiled, her shadowy form flickering like dying embers. "Then let them learn why the Vale chose you."

Jin stepped forward, his pale eyes reflecting the starlit horizon. The Hollow Vale whispered its final blessing.

And the Pale Reaper walked into the world beyond.

As he took his first step away from the Vale, a final whisper reached his ears, as soft as the sigh of the wind.

"Remember, child... The dead do not forget their own. Neither should you."