**THE HOLLOW KING**
*Chapter 1: The Night the World Burned*
The smell of burning cedar wood was the first thing that told Eithan something was wrong.
He sat bolt upright in bed, the embroidered blankets slipping from his small frame. The scent didn't belong - not at this hour, not in the family wing of the Veyne estate where servants kept braziers burning sweet incense through the night. This was sharper, darker, carrying the acrid tang of something that should never be burning.
Moonlight streamed through his balcony windows, painting silver stripes across the toy soldiers arranged on his floor. Seven-year-old Eithan rubbed sleep from his eyes, his bare feet hitting the cold marble as he padded to the door. The wooden sword his father had been carving for him leaned against the wall - still unfinished, the hilt rough where Lord Aldric had promised to sand it smooth tomorrow.
A scream shattered the night's silence.
Eithan froze, his small hand hovering over the door handle. That hadn't come from the servants' quarters. That was his mother's voice.
The second scream was worse - cut brutally short.
He opened the door just a crack, enough to see the hallway outside. The usually pristine marble floors reflected an ominous orange glow from somewhere deeper in the estate. Shadows danced wildly along the walls, not from lanterns but from uncontrolled fire.
Something wet gleamed on the stones near his parents' chamber door.
Eithan's breath hitched as he recognized the dark liquid spreading across the veined marble. Blood. A lot of it. His bare feet made no sound as he crept forward, the wooden sword clutched in suddenly sweaty hands.
The grand double doors to his parents' chambers stood slightly ajar. Through the gap, Eithan saw his father kneeling on the family crest inlaid in the floor, his ceremonial armor - the silver-and-blue plates he'd worn at last week's victory parade - now dented and streaked with crimson. Behind him stood a nightmare figure clad entirely in black, its face hidden behind a smooth Obsidian Mask that reflected no light.
"Where is the boy?" The voice sounded wrong - hollow and distorted, as if coming from the bottom of a deep well.
Lord Aldric coughed, a trickle of blood escaping the corner of his mouth. "Go to hell."
The masked figure sighed. "Unfortunate."
Steel flashed.
From the shadows, Lady Seraphina lunged, her hands wreathed in the blue-white flames of her House magic. "RUN, EITHAN!"
Time seemed to slow.
Eithan watched as his mother's flames arced toward the assassin. Watched as the black-clad figure pivoted with unnatural grace. Watched as a dagger flicked out almost lazily, its edge catching the firelight for one terrible instant before disappearing into his mother's throat.
Seraphina's body hit the ground with a wet thud, her blue eyes wide and unseeing, still fixed on where Eithan stood hidden in the doorway.
He didn't scream. Didn't cry. Didn't do anything at all except tighten his grip on the wooden practice sword.
The assassin turned toward the door. Toward him.
"Ah." The masked head tilted slightly. "There you are."
Eithan's breath came in short, sharp gasps. His chest felt too tight, his limbs too heavy. The assassin took one deliberate step forward, then another, the bloodied dagger held loosely at his side.
Something inside Eithan fractured.
A pressure he'd never known existed suddenly burst outward from his core. The wooden sword in his hands blackened and crumbled to ash. The air itself seemed to vibrate, then warp, as a pulse of pure darkness erupted from the small boy's body.
The assassin's mask cracked.
The man staggered back, clawing at his face as the obsidian splintered. His body convulsed, bones snapping audibly, flesh twisting in ways flesh should never twist. For one terrible moment, the assassin hung suspended in the air, his form elongating grotesquely before collapsing inward like a deflating wineskin.
Then there was nothing left but dust settling on bloodstained marble.
Silence.
Eithan looked down at his hands. They trembled violently, but not from fear. From something else entirely. Something cold and vast and hungry that had awoken inside him and now refused to go back to sleep.
From the ruins of the chamber, a weak cough broke the stillness.
"E-Eithan?"
Lord Aldric still lived, barely. His armor was ruined, his breathing wet and labored. One gauntleted hand reached weakly toward his son.
Eithan walked forward mechanically, stepping over what remained of his mother without looking down. He knelt beside his dying father, noticing absently how the blood pooling beneath them avoided his bare feet, as if repelled by an invisible force.
Aldric's trembling fingers brushed Eithan's cheek. "Listen... to me... the Hollow Blood... it's not a curse..."
Eithan said nothing. Felt nothing. The numbness spreading through him was more complete than any winter's chill.
"The Obsidian Order... they fear..." Aldric's breath hitched. "You must... control it... or it will..."
The hand fell away.
Somewhere in the estate, a beam collapsed with a thunderous crash. The fire was spreading. Eithan should have felt the heat, should have smelled the smoke more acutely. But everything seemed distant now, muted, as if he were underwater.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway - too many to be more assassins. Shouted orders, the clank of armor. The city guard had finally arrived.
Eithan remained kneeling beside his father's body, staring at his own small hands. At the darkness still swirling just beneath the skin.
The first guardsman to burst into the chamber recoiled at the sight - the dead lord and lady, the strange dust pile that had been an assassin, and the small, black-haired boy sitting amidst it all with eyes as empty as the Void between stars.
"Hells," the man whispered. "The Veyne heir... he's Hollowborn."
Eithan didn't react to the word. Didn't react when rough hands lifted him away from his parents' bodies. Didn't make a sound as they carried him from the burning ruins of his home.
But deep inside, in a place even the numbness couldn't reach, something stirred.
Something remembered.
And when the time came, it would make them all pay.