Ashes of the Hollow

Ashren

The wind was silent.

No birds. No beasts. No whispers from beyond.

Just the burnt circle in the valley and the prince who crawled from it, broken and barely breathing.

Ashren stood alone now. His hands—once weapons of blood and fury—hung limp at his sides. The soulbound blade had vanished the moment the Hollowborn was destroyed, leaving only a faint scar in the dirt where it pierced the world.

He'd won.

But it didn't feel like victory.

Selene was gone. Liora, too. The ritual had worked, but the cost was greater than he had imagined.

He wasn't a savior.

He was a gravekeeper.

---

The Land

The Hollow's collapse left a scar that bled across the land.

Magic, once ordered, now moved erratically—storms of raw essence rose from the ground, swallowing villages, corrupting rivers. Crops blackened beneath unseen suns. The Veilmar sky cracked open on the fifth night, and three stars bled for seven days.

What Ashren had killed wasn't just a creature.

It was a pillar—a cornerstone of dark balance.

Without it, the world tipped.

---

The Couriers of the New Moon

They arrived on the sixth day.

Cloaked in white, faces hidden beneath veils of silver mist, they walked through the ruins of the summoning circle without fear. Each bore a mark on their palms—seven spiraling teeth, forming the sigil of a god long thought lost.

Ashren watched them from the shadows.

He knew better than to trust the peace in their steps.

One turned toward him, though her eyes never opened.

"You've broken the seal," she said.

Ashren clenched his fists. "I destroyed a monster."

The figure tilted her head. "No. You opened the gate it was guarding."

---

The Gate

Deep beneath the ruins of Veilmar, a stone door pulsed.

It had no lock. It had no handle.

It responded to power alone.

When the Hollowborn shattered, the pressure it once held in check surged outward—and downward.

Now the gate breathed.

And behind it, something stirred.

Not old.

Not godlike.

But angry.

And awake.

---

Ashren (Again)

He stood at the edge of his legacy, watching the winds shift and the world bend.

Everything he had lived for was done.

Which meant only one question remained:

"What am I now?"

The wind didn't answer.

But deep within his bones, something called.