Chapter 21: The Hollow-Clawed Rises

Chapter 21: The Hollow-Clawed Rises

The mountain bled before it burned.

When the Nullborn struck Daga't Naghihimlay, they came not from the skies, but from the roots—burrowing beneath the terraces in silence, rupturing ancestral soil with Codex poison and glyph-null spores.

It began at twilight.

The chants of the elders still echoed from the shrine balconies. Children danced below, painting tattoos on woven cloth with ink made from soot and resin.

And then the earth cracked.

Flame didn't rise. It was devoured.

Rootstone shrines crumbled inward as the first wave detonated. High-pitched pulses shredded ancestral drums. The Codex-null surged in like a toxin, blanketing memory, choking song. The elder council fell mid-chant, their tongues cut off by silence.

Screams followed.

Not from warcries—but from the innocent.

Malixen's first blade didn't kill a warrior.

It cut through a child bearing no glyph.

Etuun Daga-il had no time to rally.

He descended from the high temple alone, his warstaff bare, his voice trembling with fury.

"Fall back! To the memory basin—NOW!"

But the terraces were already lost. Nullborn assassins moved like ghosts—black-clad, faceless, their weapons weeping with Codex corrosion. The sacred terraces became blood channels. The mountain moaned.

His warriors fought with spears and faith. They broke bones but not formation. Yet for every Nullborn killed, ten more emerged.

And then the Corrupted Warden stepped through the fire.

Once a Flamebearer, now twisted by Malixen's verdict-null crown, it hurled ancestral stones like toys and crushed shrine pillars beneath obsidian talons.

"You should have burned when the Codex called," it hissed.

Etuun bled. But he didn't break.

He watched as the council fell.

As children burned.

As the shrine—his father's shrine—was shattered by flame not born of light, but of forgetting.

He dragged himself toward the broken altar.

One arm hung useless. His ribs split with every breath. But he carried the last rootstone.

He laid it against a fragment of Codex coral Kael had gifted him days before. It still pulsed faintly.

"I did not want your fire," Etuun whispered. "But I cannot let my people die in silence."

He drove the rootstone into his own chest.

And the world howled.

Mutation was never meant to take root in a soul so pure.

Etuun's blood rejected it at first. But the grief was stronger.

It welcomed the pain.

His spine cracked outward. His silverback frame doubled, then tripled in size. His scream echoed down every terrace—echoed with names.

Each tattoo burned from his skin and reformed into glyphs that pulsed backwards—scars turned sacred.

Claws grew. Jaws split. His eyes bled rootlight.

He rose, not as a man.

But as a curse made flesh.

"I REMEMBER THEM ALL!"

The Nullborn turned.

And Etuun, Wrath of the Mountain, tore through them like stone given vengeance.

Elsewhere…

In Bastion, Kael woke with a start.

Flame crackled unnaturally across his skin. Veck burst into the chamber, breathless.

"Something's wrong. The Codex—Kael, it just screamed."

He ran. Past the courtyards. Past the Flamevault.

Until he reached the outer glyphwall—and saw smoke rising in the north.

Kael's brand flared.

"No."

He didn't wait for a warhost.

He flew.

By the time he reached Daga't Naghihimlay, it was already lost.

The terraces were embers. The shrines were bones.

Survivors crawled from the ash, eyes glowing with hybrid flames—each warped, awakened. Their purity had not saved them. Their grief had changed them.

The highlanders were now many.

Each one… mutated in reflection of a Bastion warbanner.

Kael landed in silence.

Zhaer, already gathering survivors, looked up with tears streaked in soot.

"He tried to hold it all together."

Kael walked to the shattered altar.

There, clawmarks burned through stone. Etuun's name remained. Not carved.

Branded.

Kael spoke into the silence.

"Where is he?"

A boy, maybe twelve, limped forward. His eyes still raw from ash.

"He screamed every name. Then he vanished. He… he didn't look back."

Kael closed his eyes.

"He doesn't have to."

Next: Chapter 22 – Blood for the Root