Chapter 30 – The Hollow Monarch

1 – The Silence of the Unmade

The room was silent.

Not just quiet—wrongly silent.

No wind. No breath. No movement.

Just absence.

Vex had heard silence before—stealth missions, empty corridors, moments when the world paused before a fight.

But this was different.

This was the silence of erasure.

His fingers twitched on his gun. Not that it mattered. Not anymore.

Because the thing sitting on the throne wasn't Riven.

Not really.

Vex's mind refused to accept it.

His best friend—the man who had carried them, fought for them, held them together when everything else fell apart—was gone.

And in his place sat the Monarch.

A new one.

A worse one.

Because this Monarch still remembered who he had been.

And yet, he did not move.

Riven—or what remained of him—sat perfectly still, head tilted slightly as though listening to something no one else could hear. His armor had darkened, shifting with the pulsing threads of the Hollow. The crown of flickering, fractured light still hovered just above his head, unstable, as if the unraveling had not yet finished its work.

And his eyes.

Black.

Not just dark, not just void-like—but entirely empty.

No reflection. No depth.

Just the abyss, stretching beyond time, beyond meaning, beyond anything Vex could comprehend.

"Riv?"

The whisper barely made it past his throat.

The Monarch blinked, slow and deliberate.

And then, he smiled.

"I thought you'd run."

The voice was wrong.

Still Riven's.

But not.

Because it wasn't just one voice.

It was many.

A chorus of echoes layered beneath his words, all speaking at once, some ahead, some behind, some whispering things that weren't meant to be spoken at all.

Vex's blood turned to ice.

Because that meant Riven was still inside there.

Trapped. Twisting. Changing.

Or worse—accepting it.

"We're not leaving you." Vera's voice cut through the silence like a blade.

Vex turned slightly. She was standing rigid, hands clenched into fists at her sides, trembling—not from fear, but from fury.

The Monarch—Riven—sighed. "You always were stubborn."

His voice was… amused.

Not hostile.

Not even cruel.

Just disconnected.

Like a man remembering an old dream.

And then, without warning, he stood.

The unraveling shifted with him, warping the space where he moved.

The entire throne room shuddered as if reacting to his presence, the walls flexing in and out of existence.

"You don't have to do this," Vera snapped. "Fight it. We can still fix this."

The Monarch tilted his head.

"Fix?"

His tone was curious.

Not angry. Not desperate.

Just genuinely confused.

"Vera," he said softly. "There is nothing to fix."

And then—

The room collapsed.

---

2 – The Unraveling Throne

It wasn't like before.

Not like the twisting shifts in reality they had seen in the Hollow City.

This was worse.

This was the world breaking all at once.

Vex barely had time to react before the floor beneath them dropped.

Space stretched, time fragmented—gravity reversed, then folded, then ceased to exist entirely.

He felt himself falling and standing still at the same time.

The throne wasn't just a throne.

It was a doorway.

A paradox.

A wound in reality that bled existence itself.

And Riven—the Monarch—stood at the center of it, unmoved, untouched, as the world shattered around him.

"This is the truth," he murmured. "This is what was always meant to be."

Vex gritted his teeth, forcing himself to move, to push through the collapsing space.

"RIVEN!"

The Monarch turned toward him, slow, almost thoughtful.

"Still fighting?"

"Always."

The echoes of his own words burned in his mind.

They had fought together for so long. Against the dark. Against the impossible.

And now—

Now, he was fighting against him.

No.

Not against him.

For him.

Because somewhere, deep inside that Hollowed shell, Riven was still there.

He had to be.

Vex refused to believe anything else.

So he lunged.

---

3 – The Breaking Point

Vera was right behind him.

No hesitation. No second-guessing.

Just pure, reckless determination.

The Monarch didn't step back.

Didn't defend.

Didn't even raise a hand.

He simply watched.

And when Vex's fist connected—

The world glitched.

One moment, he was striking forward—

The next, he was on the ground, twenty feet away, gasping for breath.

What—?

He didn't fall. He didn't even remember being thrown.

It was like reality itself had simply decided he was somewhere else.

Vera was beside him, eyes wide in shock.

The Monarch sighed.

"You're not ready to see it."

"See what?" Vex spat, struggling to his feet.

The Monarch turned his gaze upward.

And for the first time, Vex followed it.

And he saw.

The Hollow stretched above them—

And something was inside it.

Something vast.

Something wrong.

Something that was watching them.

And suddenly, he understood.

The Monarch wasn't just holding the throne.

He was holding something back.

Or worse—

He was becoming it.

---

4 – No Turning Back

Vex forced himself to breathe.

The unraveling storm was pressing in from all sides, the walls of reality cracking apart like thin glass.

They didn't have time.

He looked back at the Monarch—at Riven.

"We're not leaving you here."

The Monarch's black eyes met his.

And for just a fraction of a second—

He saw something.

A flicker.

A shadow of the man he once knew.

But then, it was gone.

And the Monarch smiled.

"You already have."

And with a single motion of his hand—

Everything disappeared.