The euphoria of selection had a half-life. It lasted exactly as long as it took to walk from the inner sanctum back to the heavy iron doors of the entrance.
They had given us three days. Three days to pack our lives into a bag, say our goodbyes, and return to the Severance Tower to begin our training. The Wardens called it a grace period. As I stepped back out into the noise of the square, the sun glaring down on us, it felt more like a wake.
We walked in silence. The air in the city felt heavy again, the crushing humidity of Valdrence returning the moment I left the climate-controlled miracle of the Tower. My chest hummed—a low, vibrating warmth where the Taint had touched me. It wasn't unpleasant. It felt like a second heartbeat, slower and deeper than my own.
Father wouldn't look at me. He walked with a stiff, mechanical gait, his eyes scanning the cobblestones as if looking for a fault line. Uncle Finn kept close to Lira, who had dried her tears but now wore a mask of hollow shock.
We were three streets away from the forge when the screaming started.
It wasn't the panic of a riot, but the sharp, recoiling terror of a crowd that has seen something unnatural. The flow of people ahead of us split like water hitting a rock.
"Back," Father said instantly, his arm shooting out to bar my path. "Kieran, Lira. Back against the wall."
"What is it?" I tried to crane my neck.
"Taint," Finn whispered, his hand already on the dagger at his belt. "A leak."
Forty meters ahead, the street had buckled. It wasn't a large break—just a cracked cobblestone where the city's suppression seals had failed—but from that fissure, darkness was coiling up like pressurized smoke. It didn't dissipate in the wind. It moved with intent, sluggish and thick, grasping at the ankles of the fleeing civilians.
The air grew sharp, tasting of ozone and rot.
Then the bells tolled—a frantic, double-time rhythm.
"Make way! Wardens!"
The crowd scrambled aside as a squad appeared. I watched, breath held, expecting the shining knights I had idolized my whole life.
Three Wardens in pristine blue and gold strode at the front, shouting orders, their faces masks of calm authority. But behind them trailed four others—figures in drab grey uniforms, no gold stitching, no glory.
Hollows.
They didn't march; they shambled. They looked exhausted, their skin possessing a greyish, waxen quality, dark circles etched deep beneath their eyes.
"Containment pattern!" the lead Warden barked.
The Wardens formed a perimeter, drawing batons that hummed with white light, pushing the crowd back. They didn't touch the Tainted mist. They just made room for the Hollows.
One of the grey-clad figures stepped forward. He couldn't have been much older than me—twenty, maybe. His hands trembled as he raised them toward the coiling black smoke.
"Absorb," the Warden commanded. Cold. Clinical.
The young Hollow squeezed his eyes shut and thrust his hands into the mist.
The effect was visceral. The darkness didn't just fade; it was sucked into him. It flowed into his pores like water down a drain. The boy's back arched, a guttural sound tearing from his throat—half gasp, half sob. His veins bulged black against his pale skin, pulsing violently before fading back to grey.
I stared, transfixed. This was it. This was what I had been chosen for. It wasn't a battle. It was a filtration.
As the last wisp of smoke vanished into the boy's shaking hands, a sound rippled through the air. It wasn't wind. It was a whisper, projected directly into the skull, loud enough to make my teeth ache.
"…remember… remember me…"
Beside me, Father went rigid.
I looked at him. His face had drained of color, his eyes wide and fixed on the spot where the smoke had been. It was a look of pure, unadulterated horror—and beneath that, a terrible, agonizing recognition.
"Gareth," Finn hissed, gripping Father's arm hard enough to bruise. "Not here."
Father's jaw clenched, the muscles jumping as he forced himself to look away, but the damage was done. He had heard it. He knew that voice.
The young Hollow in the street staggered, catching himself on the shoulder of a comrade. The lead Warden, a tall man with a severe, aristocratic face, turned to address the crowd.
"The threat is contained," he announced, his voice smooth as polished glass. "Return to your homes. The Wardens protect."
His gaze swept over the frightened civilians, disinterested, until it snagged on us. He paused. His eyes—pale and sharp—lingered on me for a second, assessing, before sliding to my father.
A flicker of cold amusement curled the Warden's lip. He stood amidst the swirling Taint as if he were standing in a garden. His argent hair caught the dim light, and his eyes—the color of winter salt—locked onto my father. In that moment, the heat of the forge felt miles away, extinguished by the sheer, absolute cold emitting from the man.
"Gareth," the Warden called out softly, though the silence in the street carried the sound perfectly. "Still forging blades, I see. Some trades run in families."
The implication hung in the humid air like a blade.
Father said nothing. He didn't bow. He didn't speak. He just grabbed my shoulder, his grip iron-hard, and steered us down a side alley.
"Dad," I whispered, stumbling to keep up. "Who was that?"
"High Sage Korr," he grated out, not slowing down. "And you will stay as far away from him as you can."
Dinner that night was a study in silence.
We ate stew made of root vegetables—things pulled from the deep earth, bitter and hardy. The bread was dark and dense. Usually, the meal was a time for Finn to tell tall tales or for Lira to complain about her chores. Tonight, the only sound was the scrape of cutlery on wooden bowls.
"Well," Finn said eventually, his voice too loud in the small room. "The odds were against it, but here we are. Kieran, you'll be at the Sanctum in three days. You'll be learning from the best."
Lira poked at a piece of carrot. "What's the Sanctum?"
"It's where the Hollows live and train," Finn explained, trying to force a smile. "In the Tower itself. The western wing. Your brother will have his own quarters, Lira. A whole community."
I felt a surge of pride, but it was dampened by the memory of the Hollow in the street—the way his hands had shaken. I'd seen Wardens in parades, gleaming and proud. I'd never seen a Hollow at work before. Never seen what the absorption cost.
Father wasn't eating. He was staring at me, or rather, through me, with that same etched look of inevitability I had seen earlier.
"Did you hear what it said?"
The question dropped into the room like a stone.
I looked up. "What?"
"The Taint," Father said. "In the street. Did you hear it?"
I hesitated. "It sounded like… like words. It said 'remember.'"
Father's knuckles went white around his fork. The silence that followed was pressurized, vibrating with things unsaid.
"It's just noise, Gareth," Finn said gently. "Corruption trying to confuse people. It mimics humanity. You know that."
Father didn't look convinced. He looked haunted.
Lira pushed her plate away. She was staring at my chest, right where the warmth was still humming beneath my ribs.
"Can you feel it?" she whispered. "The Taint? Is it inside you right now?"
I wanted to tell her yes. I wanted to tell her it felt like a star caught in a jar, warm and alive. But looking at the fear in her eyes, I couldn't.
"No," I lied. "It's… it's not like that. It's gone now."
She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine. She knew. She stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the floor.
"I'm not hungry," she said, and fled the room.
Sleep eluded me that night.
My room felt too small, the air too still. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rhythm of the house settling. But louder than the house was the presence in my chest.
It wasn't painful. It was just… there. A passenger. When I closed my eyes, I didn't see darkness; I saw swirling patterns of violet and grey. And the whispers were there, too—faint, unintelligible static at the back of my mind, like a radio tuned between stations.
I lay in the dark of my room, but the silence of the house felt heavy and stagnant compared to the humming peace of the Tower. The Taint in my chest felt agitated, a low-frequency thrum that made my muscles twitch. It was as if the darkness inside me was homesick for that glass vessel. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure that feeling of weightless relief I'd felt in the square—the moment the 'divine needle' had taken the burden off my shoulders.
I sat up and pulled the locket from under my pillow.
In the moonlight, the silver looked almost black. I ran my thumb over the worn edges. There was no portrait inside, just a small, empty compartment. I turned it over, squinting at the inscription on the back that had been almost rubbed away by time.
A. to G. — Remember.
Aldric to Gareth. My grandfather to my father.
What did they want to remember?
The command from the locket echoed the whisper from the street. A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature crawled up my spine.
I woke before the sun. Sleep was impossible, so I drifted downstairs, drawn by the smell of coal dust and ozone that had permeated the floorboards of our home for generations.
The forge was already awake.
The main chamber was a cavern of heat and shadow, illuminated only by the angry orange glow of the furnace. The walls were blackened with decades of soot, lined with racks of heavy iron tools that looked more like weapons of war than instruments of creation. In the center sat the anvil—a massive block of black iron, scarred by a thousand hammer strikes, anchored to the floor like a stubborn root.
Father was there, his silhouette framed against the fire. He wasn't making a weapon today; he was just hammering a piece of scrap metal, folding it over and over. The rhythmic clang-clang-clang was the heartbeat of my childhood, a sound of order in a chaotic world. Here, inside these thick stone walls, the Taint felt miles away.
We worked together in silence, the rhythmic clang of the hammer on steel a familiar comfort. For a few hours, I wasn't a chosen Hollow; I was just his son, helping him shape metal.
Around mid-morning, a knock came at the heavy wooden door.
The knock wasn't from a customer. A Warden stood there—a younger man I recognized vaguely from past commissions.
Father's demeanor changed instantly. The warmth vanished, replaced by a cold, professional mask.
"The commission is ready," Father said, gesturing to the wrapped bundle on the counter.
The Warden stepped inside, his eyes landing on me. A slow smile spread across his face.
"Ah, Gareth's son. I heard the news. Chosen." He nodded at Father. "You must be proud. Following in the family tradition."
The air in the forge turned brittle.
"He makes his own choices," Father said tightly.
"Of course," the Warden replied, picking up the blade and inspecting the edge. "Though talent does run in bloodlines. Your father, Aldric, was quite remarkable. Before his… unfortunate end."
I froze. "You knew my grandfather?"
The Warden glanced at me. "Everyone knew Aldric. He was brilliant. Until the Taint twisted his mind."
I looked at Father. He was gripping his hammer so hard his hand shook.
"What happened to him?" I asked.
"He went mad," the Warden said casually. "Started asking questions that had no answers. Claimed the Taint was misunderstood. He fled the Sanctum before he could be helped. Died out in the wastes, consumed by his own corruption. A cautionary tale."
He looked pointedly at Father. "Such a shame. The Taint can break even the strongest minds."
"He wasn't corrupted," Father said. His voice was flat, dangerous.
"No?" The Warden raised an eyebrow. "Then where is he, Gareth?"
Silence stretched between them, taut as a bowstring.
"That's what I thought." The Warden sheathed the blade. "Your craftsmanship remains exceptional. Almost as if your father taught you… unconventional techniques."
It was a threat. He knew.
"I learned from the best," Father said. "Before you decided he was mad."
"Careful, Gareth," the Warden said softly, turning to the door. "We wouldn't want the son to follow the father's path. Or the grandson."
He left. The door clicked shut.
"Dad," I said, my voice shaking. "What was he talking about?"
Father stood there for a long time, staring at the closed door.
"Your grandfather wasn't mad," he said finally. "He was right."
"About what?"
Father turned to me, his eyes blazing with a fierce, terrifying intensity.
"Everything."
That evening, the forge was dark, the fires banked low. Father called me to the back room—a place he usually kept locked.
"I can't stop you from going," he said. He looked older in the dim light, the lines of his face etched deep with exhaustion. "I know that now. But I need you to know—if something happens. If you need to run, to hide, to disappear—you come to your uncle. Not me."
"Why not you?"
"Because they'll be watching me. They've been watching me since Aldric vanished." He lowered his voice. "And they're watching you now, too. They'll be waiting to see if you have his mind."
He unwrapped it slowly to reveal a knife. The moment the cloth fell away, the air in the room felt different—charged, like the moment before lightning strikes.
It was beautiful and strange. The blade was shorter than a sword but longer than a dagger, the metal shimmering with a weird, iridescent sheen—not quite silver, not quite black. The patterns folded into the steel seemed to shift when I looked at them directly.
"Keep this," he said, pressing it into my hand. "I used the last of the ore he left me to make it. It… resists."
"Resists what?"
"Everything," Father said. "Just promise me—you'll keep this close. And you'll remember who you are."
The morning of the third day—the departure—was grey and still.
Lira wouldn't come out of her room. I stood at her door for a long time, listening to the silence on the other side.
"Lira," I said softly. "I have to go."
Nothing. Then, a muffled, wet sound. "I know."
I wanted to go in. I wanted to tell her the statistics, that I'd be safe, that I'd write every day. But I knew Finn had already told her the lies. I didn't have the heart to add to them. Some goodbyes hurt less as silences.
I walked to the front door. The locket was warm against my chest, hidden under my shirt. The iridescent knife was strapped to my calf, concealed by my boot.
Father didn't say anything. He just gripped my shoulder, hard, then nodded once. A release.
Finn walked me to the gate.
"Listen to me," he said, his voice dropping so low I had to lean in to hear him. "At the Sanctum, you'll see things that don't make sense. Don't ignore them. Don't let them explain them away. Remember the fear in that Hollow's eyes in the street."
He pressed a small, rough stone into my hand. "If you see something wrong—truly wrong—you send word to me. Immediately."
I nodded, throat tight. "I will."
I walked the ten miles to the Tower alone.
With every step, the white needle grew larger, dominating the sky until it blocked out the sun. The Taint inside me stirred as I approached, a flutter of anticipation.
Other families were gathered at the gates, weeping, hugging their children. I walked past them, head high, trying to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach.
A Warden met me at the archway—the same place I had stood three days ago.
"Welcome back," he said smoothly. "Hollow Kieran."
Not to the Sanctum. Just the title. My name was already becoming an adjective.
I stepped through the archway. The massive iron gates groaned, closing behind me with a final, resonant boom that felt like the lid of a coffin slamming shut.
The Severance Tower swallowed me whole for the second time in three days.
This time, I didn't think I was coming back out.
The Taint shifted in my chest, warm and eager, and I could swear I heard it whisper:
Finally.