The crown was cold in Kael's hands.
Not the chill of stone or metal—but the kind of cold that lived in graveyards and broken prayers. It hummed against his palms, a vibration too deep for sound. Like it knew him. Like it had waited.
The Hollow King has returned.
The words echoed still, not in the air but in his blood. They sank deep, curling into his bones. He didn't want to believe it. But when the flames had obeyed him, when the warrior turned to ash before his eyes, belief was no longer a choice. It was a sentence.
Kael stumbled out of the cairn, the twisted crown wrapped in torn cloth and hidden in his satchel. Dawn had not come. The sky was locked in red. Time itself felt broken, trapped in a bleeding twilight that refused to end.
Wyrm's Hollow lay silent as he crept back into the village.
The cobbled paths were slick with dew and soot. Windows were shuttered. Doors barred. Even the birds had fallen silent. Kael felt like a trespasser in his own home.
He paused before the Evernight cottage. Smoke still rose from the chimney. That meant they were safe—for now.
Elira.
Mother.
He could go inside. Pretend nothing had changed. Let the world rot while he stayed hidden beneath thatched roofs and firelight.
But the truth was written into the scars across his hands. Into the crown in his pack. Into the fire that still pulsed faintly under his skin.
He was no longer just Kael. He was something else.
And that terrified him more than the Blood Moon ever could.
A noise broke the stillness—a sharp crack of wood behind him. Kael spun, reaching instinctively for a blade he didn't carry.
An old man stood in the shadows of the apothecary. Robed in gray, hood drawn low. His eyes gleamed like molten gold beneath the cowl.
"You're bleeding," the man said, voice like dry leaves. "And you carry death on your back."
Kael didn't answer.
The man stepped closer. "You touched the crown. You took it."
Still no reply.
"Then you have little time. They already hunt you."
Kael tensed. "Who?"
The old man smiled, and the lines of his face shifted like cracked porcelain.
"The Inheritors. The ones who would see the Hollow Throne remain buried forever. They smell the blood of kings. And they will burn this village to salt and shadow if they think it hides you."
Kael's throat tightened. He stepped forward, fists clenched. "Then tell me what I am. What this means. Why I see fire when I close my eyes. Why I dream of armies that never lived."
The old man nodded slowly.
"Come."
They sat in the ruin of the village chapel, long abandoned after the last priest hanged himself under a Harvest Moon.
Candles lit themselves as the old man raised a hand. No match, no flint. Just will.
Kael didn't flinch. Not anymore.
"I am called Thalen," the man said. "I was once a Flamebinder, sworn to the Hollow Court. Long before it fell."
Kael's jaw tightened. "I've never heard of it."
"No. Because history is written by the living. And the Hollow Court is made of ghosts."
Thalen drew a circle in the ash between them, sketching nine sigils with a trembling hand.
"Hundreds of years ago, there were Nine Crowns. Not kingdoms. Ideals. Powers that shaped the world—through fire, bone, blood, shadow, wind, and more. The Hollow Crown was the last. The most dangerous. It did not seek conquest. It sought understanding. Mastery of death and flame."
He looked up. "And you are its heir."
Kael laughed bitterly. "I'm a blacksmith's son. I swing hammers. I fix tools."
"And yet you called flame without a single rune or spell. Do you think that's normal?"
Kael didn't answer.
"The blood in your veins is older than this village. Older than the kingdom. When the Hollow King was betrayed and the Nine Crowns scattered, only a few of his line survived. They hid. Married. Bled into the world."
Thalen pointed to Kael's chest.
"Until you."
Kael whispered, "Then what happens now?"
The old man's eyes darkened. "Now? You run."
He stood, robes brushing the ground like whispering ghosts. "The Inheritors will come with steel and light. They fear what you are. They do not care that you never asked for this. They will kill everyone who shelters you."
A thousand thoughts crashed into Kael's skull at once. Elira. Mother. His friends. His village. All caught in a fire they never lit.
"I have to warn them—"
"You have to leave." Thalen's voice snapped like a whip. "Tonight. If you stay, they die."
Kael rose, fists trembling. "So I abandon them? Leave them to burn while I run into the dark?"
"You do what every king must do." Thalen's voice softened. "You choose who lives."
He left before the sun rose.
Elira would never forgive him. He hadn't said goodbye.
He couldn't.
He walked alone down the old road that led into the Weeping Wood, the cursed forest where children vanished and stories went to die. No one followed. No one watched.
Except one.
From the high ridge above the trail, a girl knelt in the shadows of twisted trees. Her cloak was the color of storm clouds, her hair white as bone. In her gloved hands, she held a longbow carved from obsidian and yew.
Her eyes tracked Kael like a hunter follows a wounded stag.
She touched the silver pendant around her neck and whispered:
"Target confirmed. The Hollow Heir walks."
Kael walked for hours. Then days.
The world beyond Wyrm's Hollow was raw and cold. No roads, only game trails and forgotten ruins. The Blood Moon never left the sky. He ate what he could trap. Drank from rain-barrels and rivers. Slept under trees that groaned in their sleep.
And still, the dreams came.
Worse now. Sharper.
A throne forged from flame.
A serpent eating its tail.
A girl with dead eyes holding his crown in bloody hands.
Every morning he woke sweating, the earth scorched in a circle around him.
On the fifth day, Thalen found him again.
"I've found a place," the old mage said. "A sanctuary. You need training."
Kael stared at him, hollow-eyed. "I need answers."
"You'll get them. But not if you're dead."
The sanctuary was a ruin tucked deep in the Red Mountains—an old fortress carved into stone, long abandoned, half-swallowed by ivy and frost. They entered through a hidden path beneath a waterfall. Inside, the air pulsed with old magic.
There were others.
Five of them. Strangers. Outcasts. Mages. Warriors.
And all of them had one thing in common:
They were watching him like he was a wolf among sheep.
Thalen gestured to them.
"These are the last free remnants of the Hollow Court. And you are their king."
Kael whispered, "Then gods help us all."