The forest did not begin with trees.
It began with silence.
Not the gentle hush of wind through leaves, nor the quiet of sleeping earth — but the kind of silence that listens back. The kind that presses against your ribs and waits for your heart to falter.
On the night the Hollow chose its vessel, the sky over Vaelthorne Vale split open without thunder.
Kael Vaelthorne was seventeen when the stars vanished.
One moment they burned cold and distant above the canopy. The next, they were swallowed whole — as if some vast, unseen hand had closed its fist around the heavens.
The villagers would later swear it was a trick of the clouds.
But Kael knew better.
He felt it.
A pulse beneath the soil.
A breath beneath the roots.
The forest inhaled.
And something exhaled his name.
He stood alone at the tree line, boots half-sunken in damp earth, black hair stirred by a wind that did not touch the rest of the valley. His eyes — dark as ink — reflected no starlight now. Only the endless lattice of branches above him.
The trees bent.
Not with the wind.
Toward him.
A single crow fell from the sky.
It struck the ground at his feet with a dull, final sound.
Kael did not flinch.
The bird's body twitched. Black veins spread beneath its feathers like spilled ink in water. Its pupil fractured — a jagged crack splitting through the dark.
Then its eye turned red.
Fully red.
Kael staggered back.
"I didn't—"
The crow's beak opened.
And the Hollow spoke.
Not in words.
In understanding.
In hunger.
In recognition.
It had found him.
Far beyond the vale, in forgotten ruins where stone had fused with root and bone, something older than kingdoms stirred.
The Hollow Seraph shifted within its prison of thorns.
Chains carved from starlight trembled.
A whisper threaded through dimensions and decay:
He lives.
And deeper still, beneath grave-soaked soil and cathedral-dead forests, Gravemother Xyra smiled in the dark.
The chosen vessel had awakened.
Kael dropped to his knees as pain tore through his skull.
A crack.
Not in bone.
In something deeper.
His vision split down the center.
For a heartbeat, he saw the world twice.
Once as it was.
And once as it would become.
A sky devoured by fire.
A sea boiling under black suns.
Cities swallowed by roots and shadow.
A crown of thorns pressed into his brow.
And at his feet—
Elara Moonveil.
Alive.
Crying.
Reaching for him.
As his eyes burned red.
The trees snapped upright.
The pulse beneath the soil ceased.
The stars returned.
The crow lay still.
Dead again.
Kael remained kneeling in the dirt, breath ragged, fingers trembling.
He did not understand what had chosen him.
He did not yet know the names:
Ravion Vaelor.
The Umbral Accord.
Velkryss, Devourer of Suns.
Ashwyrm Nyxaroth.
He did not know that gods were watching.
He did not know that the Hollow never chose twice.
He only knew one thing.
Something ancient had awakened.
And it was inside him.
As Kael rose, the wind finally moved through the forest.
Soft.
Reverent.
Obedient.
The Hollow had found its king.
And somewhere in the darkness between worlds—
Something else had noticed.
The hook:
That same night, as Kael walked back toward the village, he did not see the figure standing at the edge of the trees.
Elara Moonveil had watched the sky split.
She had heard the whisper.
And unlike Kael—
She understood what it meant.
She whispered into the dark:
"It has begun."
And the forest answered her.
Not with silence.
But with fear.