The wind had teeth that night.
It howled through the trees around Hollowreach like an old warning song, shaking shutters, pulling at doors. Serelith didn't sleep.
She sat by the fire in Maeren's hut, fingers curled around a cup of bitterroot tea that had long gone cold, staring into the embers as if they might answer the questions clawing through her.
Faelan.
The name whispered like a forgotten spell in the back of her mind.
Where had she heard it before?
Why did her chest ache when she spoke it aloud?
She barely remembered the man's face—but his voice, his presence, the way he looked at her… it had cracked something open.
She left the cottage before dawn.
The woods welcomed her in their quiet, watching way. Mist hung low, curling through branches and underbrush like smoke. She walked without thinking, pulled by something deeper than memory.
You were Serelith of the Hollow Courts, he had said.
That name—the same name stitched into her cloak.
But it wasn't just a name. It was a key.
She came to a stone pool deep in the forest, its surface still as glass. Birds didn't sing here. The world felt paused. She leaned over the water and looked at herself.
Pale skin.
Silver-flecked eyes.
Hair like dark smoke.
She didn't know who she saw. Not truly.
Then she reached up and pulled the collar of her shirt aside—and gasped.
There, along her collarbone, something burned faintly beneath her skin. A shape. Lines etched not with ink, but light. Gold and violet and pulsing softly like breath.
A mark.
A sigil.
She pressed her fingers to it—and the world shattered.
The forest dissolved.
The pool turned black.
And Serelith stood again in that other place.
Not the Hollow Vale.
But the Court Beneath.
A dream—but more than a dream.
Before her rose a great hall built of bone-white stone and twilight flame. The sky above was a dome of stars, and within the hall, a throne carved from obsidian root.
There sat the Hollow Queen.
Her eyes were endless.
Her crown bled shadow.
And she spoke without moving her lips.
> "You remember now, don't you, my lost child?
You are not made for the mud and cinders.
You are bound to the Codex.
You are mine."
Serelith stumbled backward—but the court held her fast. Around her, masked courtiers raised goblets of gold, faces blank, voices whispering in a dozen tongues.
Her skin burned.
Her heart thundered.
And then—
Faelan's voice cut through it all.
Not in dream. Not illusion.
> "Wake up, Serelith."
She gasped—and the forest returned.
She was on her knees by the pool, shaking, the mark on her collarbone pulsing with dim light.
She wasn't alone.
Faelan stood nearby, watching with eyes full of sorrow—and something else.
Hope.
"You saw her," he said quietly. "Didn't you?"
Serelith looked at him, everything in her unraveling.
"What am I?" she whispered.
He stepped closer.
"Not what they want you to be," Faelan said. "But what you choose next will shape more than you know."
Serelith didn't move.
The wind stirred the leaves above.
And the Hollow Queen, deep in her distant throne, smiled.