The sky had no sun. It never had. Only the moon, full and watchful, high above the broken ridges of Veyrnas. Its glow filtered down in silver strands, painting the world in soft light and long shadows. Calyx walked with steady steps now, the obsidian name-shard swinging lightly against his chest. Each beat of it felt like a small throb of memory reminding him that he was no longer a nobody.
He had a name now.
A name that whispered when he wasn't listening.
Ashwrought.
The Waneholds were behind him, their carved cities and name-bound rituals fading into the mist. Ahead stretched the Gloamhollow, a land where no titles echoed and silence was law.
This was where the Hollow Kings ruled.
He had heard whispers of them, even as a child. Not kings of castles or armies. They ruled memory, silence, and sorrow. In the old tales, they were once gods but bled their names into the stone and became shadows instead. Now they watched from thrones made of whispers, speaking only in the space between thoughts.
And apparently… they had taken an interest in him.
The hills turned pale beneath his feet. The ground was soft ashen and sometimes crunched as if stepping over bones.
He walked alone. Or so he thought. Until he felt the air change.
A low hum drifted from the horizon. Not a sound exactly more like the absence of one. It was like a space where noise had once been, but was pulled out and never returned. His ears ached from it.
Then a voice.
Not spoken aloud, but inside his mind.
"Ashwrought… do you carry fire, or the memory of it?"
Calyx stopped moving.
"Who's there?"
No reply.
The mist thickened. Shapes formed in the fog tall, robed figures that didn't walk, but glided. Their feet never touched the ground. Their faces were masked blank stone with no eyes, no mouths.
There were three of them.
One wore a crown made of folded pages.
Another wore bones of birds shaped into a halo.
The third had no crown at all but his robe was stitched from names, thousands of them, each letter moving slightly like it was trying to escape.
The first figure raised a hand, and silence deepened until even Calyx's heartbeat felt distant.
Then, words again not heard, but felt.
"You walk with the scent of old fire."
"You bear a name not carved by human hands."
"Why?"
Calyx forced himself to stand tall. "Because I had to. Because the forest tried to take everything from me."
The second king's voice slid into his skull. "The forest only gives. What it gives is not always yours to keep."
"I didn't ask for it," Calyx replied.
"Yet you carry it. That makes you responsible."
He narrowed his eyes. "What do you want from me?"
They didn't answer right away. Instead, the one without a crown stepped forward. He held out a long object a mirror. Calyx frowned. The mirror didn't show his reflection. It showed a memory.
He saw himself, younger still in his village. His father calling his name, his sister laughing. Then fire. Screams. Darkness.
And a shadow standing in the center of it all.
Not the Hollow Kings.
Not a monster.
Himself.
Holding a blade made of silver bone.
Wreathed in light from the moon.
He stepped back. "That didn't happen."
"Not yet," the kings whispered together.
"But it will."
Calyx shook his head. "No. That's not who I am."
"Then tell us who you are, Ashwrought."
He clenched his fists. "I'm… I'm someone who survived. I'm someone trying to remember the truth."
Silence again.
The bird-bone king finally moved.
He reached into his robe and pulled out a small object a thorn, wrapped in strands of silver hair. He dropped it into Calyx's hand.
"Then carry this. It is the memory of your future."
The thorn pulsed once, faintly.
"When the moon burns red and the ash begins to sing, you will come to us again."
The kings began to fade into the mist.
"Wait!" Calyx shouted. "What does that mean? Why me?"
The last thing he heard before they vanished:
"Because the Symphony needs a conductor."
And then silence.
He stood there alone, in the stillness, with only the thorn in his hand and the echo of their words burning behind his eyes.
Calyx didn't move for a long time.
The Hollow Kings were gone. The fog had scattered. The sky still gripped by the cold, unwavering glow of the moon hung like an eye that never blinked. But something had changed. He could feel it in the quiet.
He looked down at the thorn they had given him.
It wasn't just a piece of plant or bone. It moved, subtly pulsing like it had a slow, sleeping heartbeat. Wrapped in the silver hair-thread, it looked like something plucked from a god's dream. Or maybe a nightmare.
He turned it over in his fingers.
No pain. Not yet.
But the weight of it… it was like holding a promise that hadn't been spoken aloud. Or a warning that had no language.
A cold wind swept across the Gloamhollow's edge, tugging at his cloak.
"Keep walking," he whispered to himself. "Just keep walking."
So he did. The terrain shifted with each hour.
Pale stone gave way to shallow dunes of lunar dust. Strange, glowing roots snaked underfoot, like veins beneath skin. At times, he saw shadows in the distance figures that didn't move, or moved too much. But they didn't approach. Not yet.
The thorn pulsed again in his palm. He considered discarding it. Leaving it in the dust. But he didn't. Something about it whispered: You'll need me. As he reached a ridge of broken moonrock, he saw light ahead. Faint. Flickering.
A fire?
He climbed the slope carefully, crouching as he peered over the edge.
Below, nestled in a hollow, was a small camp.
Three figures sat around a flame that burned with no wood just silver-blue fire rising from a ring of shattered bone. Their faces were shadowed, but they weren't Hollow Kings.
They were travelers.
Maybe.
Calyx stepped down slowly, hand near the shard beneath his cloak.
"Hello?" he called out, voice firm but not threatening.
All three turned at once.
Two were wrapped in traveler's cloaks, faces hidden. The third had no hood. A woman young, with skin the color of moon-ice and eyes too bright to be normal. Her hair was braided with bits of glass and stone.
She stood first.
"Not often we see someone walking alone through Hollow King lands," she said, voice calm.
"I didn't mean to cross any lines," Calyx replied.
"You didn't," she said. "But they saw you anyway."
He nodded slowly. "They gave me something. A thorn."
At that, all three stood up straighter.
The man on her left whispered, "He bears a thorn…"
The other: "Then he's been marked."
The woman stepped forward, gaze locked on his.
"What's your name?"
"…Calyx."
"Not anymore," she said.
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
She pointed to the silver thread tied to the thorn.
"That thorn was grown in the Bleeding Grove. It only blooms when the Hollow Kings name someone. But they never say the name aloud. They just… give you a future. And wait to see what you become."
"And what does that mean for me?" he asked.
She looked him over.
"It means you're being tested. Watched. And if you live… maybe you'll be more than just another lost name."
He stepped closer to the fire. "Who are you?"
She smiled faintly.
"My name is Serah. These two are Wren and Bast. We're Pilgrims of the Quiet Flame."
Calyx raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like a religion."
"Not really," Serah replied. "We don't worship. We remember."
"Remember what?"
She gestured to the fire.
"That even in a world without sun, the spark inside us matters. We find stories that were swallowed by the dark, and we pass them on. We carry memory."
Calyx looked at the flame. It didn't crackle. It hummed low and steady, like a lullaby sung in a ruined temple.
"Can I sit?"
Serah nodded.
As he settled by the fire, Wren handed him a cracked waterskin. Bast gave him a strip of dried root-meat. No words. Just small kindnesses. For a moment, it felt like peace. Then Serah spoke again.
"What did they show you? The Hollow Kings."
Calyx hesitated.
"A memory," he said. "Or… maybe a future. I saw myself. Killing people. With a weapon made of light and bone."
She didn't blink. "And how did it make you feel?"
"…wrong," he admitted. "But part of me also felt like I'd done it before."
"Not in this life," Bast muttered.
"Maybe not," Serah said. "But echoes run deep in this land. Sometimes your past self finds you before you're ready."
Calyx stared into the fire. "I don't know who I am. I don't know if I want to be that person."
Wren finally spoke. "It doesn't matter who you were. Only who you choose to be now."
He looked up. That was the simplest thing anyone had said to him since he left the forest. Serah reached into her satchel and pulled out a small metal disc. She handed it to him. It was a coin etched with a symbol. Three curved thorns woven around a single eye.
"This is a Mark of Passage," she said. "It means you're protected, at least by those of us who remember. If you ever find the city of Duskmire, show that to the gatekeeper. You'll be let in."
"Thank you," Calyx said quietly.
She nodded. "But take care. There are others who won't want you to reach Duskmire. Others who heard the same echoes the Hollow Kings did… and they're not so patient."
Wren added, "The Shadeknots are moving again. And they feed on those who carry memory."
Calyx clenched his fist around the thorn.
"I'll be ready."
The fire pulsed. And for the first time since entering the Hollowlands, he didn't feel entirely alone.