Chapter 49
Chapter 49: The Child of Ash and Crown
(Selene takes the battlefield. The Hollow grows stronger. And the truth about the child begins to burn through fate itself…)
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The air above the Northern Expanse cracked like glass.
Not thunder.
Not magic.
But time itself — folding, breaking, bending to something ancient enough to remember when the sky still bled gold.
Selene stood atop the ridge, cloaked in night, her hair braided with silver thorns, her eyes—those fierce, glowing eyes—watching the black wave approach.
Thousands of Hollow-born.
Not soldiers. Reflections. Lost memories in borrowed skin. Some looked like kings. Some like children. All of them bleeding silence.
Behind her, Valerian readied his blade.
It had been reforged by Ezren the previous night in silence and starlight. Dark as spilled ink, it pulsed to Selene's heartbeat, not Valerian's.
It was named: Duskbane.
"Say the word," he murmured.
Selene stared ahead.
The word was war. But her lips didn't move.
Instead, she whispered to the child within her:
> "You were born of fate and fire. But you will be raised by fury."
And then she stepped.
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The First Blow
Selene didn't run. She didn't scream.
She walked into the Hollow Army like a goddess reclaiming stolen ground.
And the Hollow hesitated.
Because they remembered her. From another life. From the prophecy.
From the beginning.
The first to reach her was a woman with her mother's face—Isolde—but hollowed, cruel, and dripping with black vines.
Selene raised her hand and unmade the illusion.
The Hollow-Isolde collapsed like ash.
The rest screamed.
Valerian descended from the sky behind her, his wings spread wide, slicing through enemy after enemy with Duskbane blazing with purple flame.
Ezren's spells echoed across the ridges, ancient and furious.
And in the heart of that war, Selene was not a queen, not a vessel, not even a mother.
She was the cursebreaker.
The prophecy's end.
And maybe... the beginning of something the world had never known.
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Elsewhere – The Hollow Throne
Morgala screamed.
"She's bending the Hollow?! That's impossible!"
Kael knelt, barely breathing.
"She's not just bending them," he whispered. "She's becoming something else."
Morgala turned to the last thing she hadn't dared use:
A mirror, forged of blood and betrayal.
Within it swirled a shadow even she feared.
"I summoned the Hollow," she growled. "But she—she was chosen by something older."
"Who?" Kael asked.
The mirror cracked.
A voice whispered:
> "She is not the end. She is the door."
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The End of the Battle – Nightfall
Hours passed. Bodies crumbled. The Hollow retreated.
Selene stood at the center, covered in ash, bleeding from her hands but not her spirit.
Valerian reached for her. She leaned into him, shaking.
Ezren approached, his voice low.
"The child… something changed."
Selene looked down.
Her belly glowed softly now—not gold, not red. But a pale violet light that shimmered like dusk.
Ezren's eyes widened.
"No," he whispered. "Not prophecy anymore."
Valerian tensed. "What is it?"
Ezren looked up at them both.
"The child is rewriting everything."
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That Night
They buried the fallen.
Selene sat alone under the stars, her fingertips tracing the glowing rune that had appeared on her stomach.
It wasn't a mark of power.
It was a crown.
She didn't know how she knew.
But the Hollow were never the real threat.
The Hollow were running from something worse.
And now that Selene had bent them—now that they had seen her—they would lead that thing right to her.
She looked into the stars.
"Come then," she whispered. "I was never afraid of the dark."
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End of Chapter 49
💛 we are officially entering the final arc of Act II. The Hollow have been pushed back. The child is awakening. The prophecy is evolving. And something far worse is coming.