Chapter Seventy-Five: The Weight of Infinity
The world was pale with frost when Kael, Lyria, and Druaka set out. Their cloaks hung heavy with snowmelt, their hoods drawn low to obscure their faces. They moved quietly, accompanied only by Umbra's silent shadow at Kael's heel. Thalos and Fenrik had argued bitterly against the journey, but Kael left them with no choice—this was his path to walk.
The kingdom loomed in the distance, its high stone walls etched in frost, watchtowers glowing faintly with the light of braziers. Smoke from hearth fires curled into the winter sky, a false picture of safety.
But the road to its gates was not empty.
The ambush came swiftly, a chorus of rough voices and steel. Figures emerged from the treeline, their armor mismatched, their breath steaming in the cold. A dozen, perhaps more, bandits—no, Kael realized with a bitter curl of his lips—slavers.
Their leader, a thick-shouldered man with a scar splitting his cheek, raised a hooked blade. "Well, well," he drawled. "Three strays wandering without escort. That'll fetch us a fine price. Drop your coin and weapons—or drop dead."
Druaka's lip curled, a flash of her tusks showing. Lyria's hand was already on her bow, her eyes like shards of ice. Kael, however, only tilted his head.
"You've chosen poorly," he said, his voice quiet but edged with steel.
The man sneered. "And why's that?"
Kael's shadow stretched, thickening unnaturally across the frostbitten ground. From it, black spears erupted like jagged teeth, skewering the first two slavers before they could blink. Screams tore through the clearing.
Chaos erupted. The slavers charged, some breaking formation to circle, others rushing straight for Kael.
Druaka met them with brute force, her war cry splitting the air as her blade cleaved through a man's chest. Blood sprayed across the snow like crimson paint. Lyria moved with precision, her arrows striking throats and eyes before her enemies could even close the distance.
Kael, at the center of it all, let the shadows dance. Spears, blades, and tendrils tore through the slavers as easily as parchment. One lunged with a chain meant to bind him, but Kael snapped his fingers and fire burst from his palm, engulfing the man in screaming flame.
The scarred leader tried to flee. Kael's shadow surged, wrapping around his legs and dragging him down. Kael loomed over him, his crimson eyes burning.
"You should have stayed in your hole," Kael said softly. "Now you've learned what hunts in the dark."
When Kael and the others finally reached the city gates, their cloaks were smeared with blood. No slaver lived to tell the tale.
The kingdom's guards eyed them suspiciously but waved them through after a cursory inspection. Kael kept his head down, his shadow pulled tightly against his feet. Inside, the city was a riot of sound and smell—vendors calling from stalls, smiths hammering steel, the stench of beasts and sweat mixed with spiced bread.
Yet Kael's mind was elsewhere. Their goal was not coin or trade—it was knowledge.
By nightfall, they found it. The Grand Archive rose above the city like a silent sentinel, its marble walls etched with runes, its great iron doors flanked by statues of scholars.
Sneaking in was easier than Kael expected. Shadows bent eagerly to his will, shrouding them as they slipped through side entrances and empty corridors. The silence inside was oppressive, the smell of parchment and dust thick in the air. Rows upon rows of tomes stretched before them, each one a lifetime of knowledge waiting to be plucked.
They searched feverishly, scanning shelves until Druaka let out a low growl. She pulled a thick, black-bound tome from the shelves, its cover marked with spirals of crimson ink that seemed to writhe in the candlelight.
Kael's hand brushed the cover. The moment his skin touched the leather, the book pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.
Lyria stiffened. "Kael… that's not normal."
He opened it anyway.
The pages whispered to him. The text writhed and shifted, yet the meaning was clear in his mind. Chaos magic. The power to create from nothing. To shape beasts, to tear reality, to twist mana itself into whatever he willed.
He saw visions in the margins of the page—creatures of impossible size, storms that devoured armies, flames that burned cold, shadows that whispered of eternity. And beyond that… the suggestion of more. Limitless, bound only by imagination and will.
Kael's chest tightened. Not with fear, but with the crushing weight of realization.
This was power without horizon.
He closed the tome slowly, his hands trembling ever so slightly. Lyria's eyes searched his face, worried, while Druaka's expression was unreadable.
Kael finally spoke, his voice low and rough. "This… is not just power. It's creation itself. And destruction. No kingdom, no army, no god could rival it if I learn to wield it fully."
Lyria stepped closer, her hand brushing his arm. "And that terrifies you."
Kael looked at her, his crimson eyes burning with something both fierce and uncertain. "No. It terrifies the world."
The silence in the archive pressed in around them, the weight of what they had uncovered settling on their shoulders like a mantle.
For the first time, Kael truly understood the burden of his blood.
And the Hollow would never be the same again.