The wind changed.
Not the kind that stirred leaves or whispered through trees. This one moved through the veins of the world. A deeper current. A warning.
Serelith felt it first in her dreams.
A dark tide lapping at the edges of her mind—cool, quiet, and ancient. Not from the Codex. Not from memory.
Something other.
---
Faelan awoke to her scream.
She stood in the temple's inner sanctum, hand clutching Silvara, blade half-drawn, her eyes glowing faintly with that inner gold that came when the Codex stirred.
> "What did you see?" he asked gently.
> "It's not a vision," she whispered. "It's coming."
The Hollowborn.
---
Far away, across a shattered mountain pass, Vorthen knelt in a black field lit by no stars. He dipped his clawed hand into the soil and tasted the echo Serelith left behind.
> "She remembers," he murmured. "How deliciously foolish."
He rose, bones shifting, robes trailing behind him like fog.
> "We will remind her of silence."
He walked forward, and the land withered beneath his feet.
---
At dawn, the Codex pulsed again.
Tyren, the blind seer, staggered mid-ritual.
> "He hunts," she gasped, clutching the stone circle. "The Queen's beast. Her forgotten. A thing that should never have walked again."
Faelan drew closer, eyes narrowing. "How long do we have?"
Tyren turned her head, though her eyes were covered. "He moves like smoke and famine. But the Codex... it calls him too. He remembers the old world. And he hates it."
Serelith clenched her jaw.
> "Then he'll come for me."
---
They moved quickly.
Through forgotten roads, sleeping shrines, and caves warded with faelight and ancient scripts. They left signs for old allies to follow. To gather.
But it wasn't enough.
He found them.
The air died first—no birds, no breath, no wind.
Then the fog came. Vorthen stepped from it.
Not with fury, but grace. The elegance of something that knew it didn't need to rush.
> "Little heir," he said, voice like cracking ice. "You've wandered far from your cradle."
Serelith raised Silvara. "I remember enough to know I don't kneel to you."
The Hollowborn smiled. "No. You'll kneel to the void."
And then he struck.
---
The battle was unlike anything Serelith had known.
Not with fire. Not with steel.
But memory.
He reached into her thoughts, twisted the echoes, showed her the face of her mother, screaming.
Showed her Faelan, cold and dead.
> "You will forget," Vorthen whispered.
> "No!" she roared.
The Codex flared inside her, and for the first time—it answered.
Not with words.
With force.
The veil tore, and a blast of raw truth rippled outward, shattering stone and casting Vorthen back into the dark.
He did not die.
But he bled.
And he remembered fear.
---
After, Serelith collapsed in Faelan's arms.
> "He's not the last," she whispered.
> "No," Faelan said. "But he'll carry a warning back to the Queen."
> "Which is?"
> "The daughter of the veil has teeth."