Chapter 24 – The Hollow Monarch’s Game

The city had no end.

Riven felt it in his bones, in the way each street bled into the next, folding in on itself like a maze designed to trap. They had been running for what felt like hours, yet every turn brought them back to the same cracked streets, the same shattered reflections.

And Vex—Vex wasn't the same.

He moved like a man half-there, flickering at the edges, like static bleeding into the air. Riven had seen people who had been changed before. People who had brushed against something they weren't meant to survive.

But Vex wasn't just changed.

He was haunted.

They had taken shelter in an abandoned train station—if it could even be called that anymore. The tracks were broken, leading into tunnels that didn't exist, twisting into the dark like veins feeding something deep beneath the city.

Vex sat against a rusted column, his hands clenched into fists, his breathing shallow.

"Tell me what happened to you," Riven demanded.

Vex exhaled, slow. Controlled.

"You already know, don't you?"

Riven's jaw tightened.

He didn't want to say it. Didn't want to acknowledge what the gnawing feeling in his gut was already screaming.

Vex wasn't whole.

Something of him had been taken.

---

A Door That Shouldn't Exist

The air inside the train station was thick with something unseen. It clung to the walls, hummed beneath the floorboards, whispered through the fractured windows.

Vex's voice cut through the silence.

"I saw it, Riven."

Riven turned toward him slowly.

"Saw what?"

Vex's gaze flickered to the far end of the station. To the door.

Riven followed his line of sight, and for a moment, he couldn't breathe.

It hadn't been there before.

A door, tall and wrong, carved with spiraling sigils that seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them. It wasn't made of metal, or wood, or anything he could name. It pulsed. It breathed.

And somehow—it knew him.

"It's been waiting," Vex said. His voice was distant, hollow.

Riven's hands curled into fists. His body screamed at him to back away, to leave.

But something inside him knew the truth.

This was why he was here.

This was what the Hollow Monarch wanted.

---

The Monarch Speaks

The room shuddered.

A low, resonant hum filled the space, vibrating through Riven's bones.

Then—the door opened.

Darkness spilled from its edges, thick and suffocating, folding into the room like smoke.

And from within, a voice.

Deep. Endless. Familiar.

"You came back."

The words weren't spoken—they bypassed sound entirely, sinking into his mind like hooks.

Riven knew this voice. He had never heard it before, yet it had been with him his entire life.

It was inside him.

It had always been inside him.

"You left something behind, Sentinel."

The smoke coiled through the air, twisting into something almost human. A shape that flickered and blurred, a presence that wasn't meant to be seen.

The Hollow Monarch.

Riven's throat went dry.

"What do you want?" His own voice barely sounded like his own.

The Monarch did not answer right away. The silence stretched, pulling at the edges of reality, making the walls shudder.

Then—laughter.

Low. Amused. Patient.

"The same thing I have always wanted."

"You."

Riven moved before he could think, reaching for his power—but it was gone.

The Hollow Monarch was faster.

The darkness lunged.

---

A Mind Torn Open

Pain.

Not the kind that lived in flesh and bone. Not something that could be healed.

Something deeper.

Something older.

Riven was falling.

Falling through memories that weren't his.

Flashes of a world where the Sentinel had never existed. A world where heroes had been erased before they were ever born. He saw cities without protectors, battles that had never been fought, graves that had never been dug because the people who should have been buried there had never existed.

And in every memory—the Monarch was there.

Watching.

Unmaking.

Erasing.

Riven hit the ground, gasping for breath, his head splitting with a pain that wasn't his own. The Hollow Monarch loomed over him, its form shifting, unraveling, its voice curling around his mind like a whisper of something inevitable.

"You are the last."

"The only one who resists."

"And yet—"

The Monarch leaned closer, and Riven felt its presence press against his very soul.

"Even you are beginning to break."

---

The Choice

Riven couldn't breathe.

The weight of the Monarch's presence was suffocating, pulling at him like gravity, rewriting him.

But then—a voice.

"Riven!"

Hands grabbed him—real hands. A presence solid and human.

Vex.

He was pulling him back.

The Monarch's grasp faltered.

Riven gasped as reality snapped back around him, the station coming into focus again. The door was still open, but the shadows had recoiled, writhing away from the light.

Vex was breathing hard, his expression tight.

"We need to go. Now."

Riven could barely stand, his body still trembling from the Monarch's touch.

But Vex didn't let go.

Together, they ran.

---

The Monarch's Warning

The city twisted around them as they moved. The streets no longer led anywhere. The sky flickered like a broken screen, showing glimpses of something else beyond it.

The Monarch's voice followed them.

"Run if you wish."

"But you will return to me."

Riven didn't look back.

He didn't have to.

He already knew the truth.

No one left the Hollow City.

Not completely.

And no one—no one—escaped the Hollow Monarch.

Not forever.