The Hollow Court did not rage.
It waited.
When Serelith vanished and Faelan with her, there were no alarm bells, no open cries of treason.
The Queen merely smiled.
Her court of whispering masks and veiled prophets circled her throne like dying stars. The Hollow Queen sat unmoving, fingers steepled, dark eyes veiled beneath a lattice of enchanted gold.
"Let them run," she murmured, voice like velvet drawn across steel.
"They are doing exactly what they must."
---
Faelan knew this.
Even as he led Serelith deeper into forgotten paths, he felt it: the gaze behind every tree, the breath behind every silence. The Hollow Queen's reach was vast—woven into the dreamways, the shadowfolds, the courts that had sworn to her peace.
He would need to be cleverer than the gods.
And faster than prophecy.
---
They passed through Veil-torn valleys where ruins dreamed in mist. Serelith asked him once, "What is the Hollow Court, really?"
Faelan hesitated.
"It used to be a sanctuary. For those cast out from the other thrones. A place of oaths and balance."
"And now?"
"Now it's a cage made to look like a throne."
---
The Hollow Queen's summons echoed across the darkened realms—masked emissaries to every corner, seers and hounds unloosed beneath moonless skies.
But she did not move in haste.
She moved in design.
She dispatched a shadow priestess—Velhara, who whispered to bones and walked through mirrors—to follow the trail Serelith and Faelan left behind.
And beneath the Court, she lit the braziers of the Codex Hall.
She had once bound the Book of Origin.
She had once looked into it—and survived.
What Serelith now awakened… she intended to claim.
---
Far beyond her reach, Faelan stood beside Serelith as they crossed the border into the northern wastes—toward Vaerethryn.
They were ragged, weathered, and no longer silent.
Faelan looked at her as the wind tugged at her cloak.
He didn't speak of fate.
Not yet.
But something fierce and unspoken filled his gaze.
He had defied his Queen.
And in doing so, had found something more dangerous than any god.
Hope.