The first ember was lit in a ruined shrine carved into the cliffs of dusk.
Serelith stood before the crumbling altar, hands raised—not in prayer, but in declaration.
"I was stolen," she said to the shadows.
Her voice did not tremble.
"I was hidden. Bound. My name, my power, my history—all broken on purpose."
She turned to Faelan, and to the three others he had gathered—old allies who once served the Hollow Court before retreating into obscurity.
"We are not rebuilding the past," Serelith told them. "We are unmaking what was never just."
---
Faelan had called on former oath-bearers of the Veil: a blind seer named Tyren, a shadowmancer called Lirae, and a silent sword-monk known only as Kain. All had once served the Hollow Queen, and all had broken away.
Together, they lit wards and sigils that would mask Serelith's presence from the Queen's gaze.
But only for a time.
"She'll come," Lirae warned, circling the shrine's edge, her voice dry as parchment. "The moment she feels the Codex shift again, she'll send her chosen."
Faelan nodded. "Then we give her something to fear."
---
But even as their new alliance took shape, the Hollow Queen moved her hand.
She did not shout.
She unfolded.
Across the Veil, from the deeper realms where time flowed strange and shadows fed on memory, the Queen summoned her emissary: a creature called Vorthen, one of the Hollowborn—formed not of flesh, but forgotten dreams and devoured truths.
He bowed before her obsidian dais, his form constantly shifting.
> "You will find her," the Queen said, "and remind her that remembering can be... unwise."
> "And if she resists?"
> "Then remind her what forgetting costs."
---
Far from the Queen's halls, Serelith stood in the sanctuary, fingers brushing the edge of a relic Faelan had unearthed—a blade once forged for the Hand of the Codex.
Its name was etched in forgotten runes: Silvara.
"It's waiting for you," Faelan said.
"I don't know how to use it," she replied.
"But it knows you."
She took the blade.
And it sang—not with sound, but with the resonance of awakening power.
---
That night, they marked the first stronghold.
The shrine of Vael'Rithen, lost to the Hollow Court a century ago, lit again under the starlight, its ancient wards awakening with Serelith's touch.
Not a declaration of war.
But a whisper that the world could change.
And whispers, she knew now, were what started storms.