The thing that emerged from the tear was not a creature.
It was a concept.
Kael's mind refused to process it directly—he caught only fragments, like reflections in shattered glass. An outline that suggested a body but was actually the absence of one. Limbs that existed in directions the human eye couldn't follow. A face that was a mask, or a wound, or a door left open into forever.
And those eyes. Ancient beyond comprehension. Fixed entirely on him.
"NINE YEARS," the voice said, and reality shuddered around each syllable. "NINE YEARS I HAVE SEARCHED FOR THE FRAGMENT SHE HID. AND HERE YOU ARE. STILL WEARING FLESH. STILL PRETENDING TO BE ALIVE."
Kael couldn't speak. Couldn't think. The pressure of that attention was physical—it pushed against his chest, his skull, the spaces between his cells. He felt like an insect pinned beneath a god's thumb.
The Remnants had stopped their advance. They crouched in the rubble of Thornwick's eastern district, their twisted bodies oriented toward the tear, toward the being that hung above them like a second sun made of darkness.
Worshipping.
Waiting.
"Hollowed! Stand down or die!"
The Warden's voice cut through the paralysis. Kael's head turned—slowly, so slowly, as if moving through water—and found the crimson-cloaked soldiers forming a semicircle around him. Seven of them. Blades drawn. Their faces were pale, sweat-streaked, but their hands were steady.
They were terrified. They were also going to kill him.
"I'm not—" Kael's voice cracked. "I didn't choose this—"
"They never do." The Warden captain stepped forward. She was older, mid-forties, with a scar running from her left temple to her jaw. Her eyes held no hatred. Only certainty. "But you've Awakened. You've manifested. And that thing up there came here looking for you specifically."
"I don't know what it wants—"
"It doesn't matter what it wants." The captain raised her Severance Blade. The weapon's edge seemed to eat the light around it. "What matters is that as long as you live, this town dies. Every Emergence needs an anchor. A soul connected to the Abyss." She pointed the blade at Kael's chest. "You're the anchor. You die, the tear closes. Simple math."
Kael looked at the burning buildings around them. At the bodies in the streets. At the survivors fleeing in all directions, their screams barely audible over the crackling of flames.
She's right.
The thought rose up from somewhere cold and logical inside him. All these people are dying because of what's inside you. Your mother planted this thing in your soul, and now it's killing everyone around you. Just like Velmoor.
If you die, it stops.
His left arm hung at his side, the blackness still pulsing beneath his skin. He couldn't feel it. Couldn't feel anything below the elbow. It was like the limb belonged to someone else—something else.
"Kael."
Sera's voice. He turned to face her, and even now—even knowing she had been watching him, waiting, lying—the sight of her face twisted something in his chest.
She still held the knife. Her hand was steady.
"Who are you?" he asked. "Really?"
She didn't flinch. "Someone who was sent to find the Fragment before they did." A nod toward the tear. "My organization has been tracking you since Velmoor. We knew what your mother did. We knew the seed was inside you. We just didn't know when it would sprout."
"Your organization?"
"There isn't time." Sera's eyes flicked to the ancient being above them—still watching, still waiting, as if this human drama amused it somehow. "The Wardens will kill you because they're afraid. The Hierophant—that thing in the sky—will consume you because you carry what it wants. Neither of those options ends well for you or anyone else."
"And your option?"
"Come with me. Let us extract the Fragment. You might survive the process."
"Might?"
"Seventy percent fatality rate. But at least you'd die human."
Kael stared at her. This girl who had fed him soup when he was fevered, who had laughed at his terrible jokes, who had been the first person in nine years to make him feel like maybe he wasn't just waiting to become a monster.
All of it calculated. All of it strategy.
"You were never my friend," he said.
Something flickered across Sera's face—too fast to read. "I was assigned to get close to you. What happened after that..." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter now. You have maybe thirty seconds before the captain loses patience. Decide."
"SHE LIES."
The voice came from everywhere—from the sky, from the ground, from the spaces between Kael's own thoughts. The Hierophant descended slowly, impossibly, reality folding around it like cloth around a wound.
"THERE IS NO EXTRACTION. THERE IS NO SEPARATION. THE FRAGMENT IS NOT INSIDE YOU, LITTLE HOLLOW. THE FRAGMENT IS YOU. YOUR MOTHER DID NOT PLANT A SEED—SHE SPLIT HER SOUL AND GAVE YOU HALF. YOU ARE THE PIECE OF HER THAT CHOSE TO REMAIN HUMAN."
Kael's heart stopped.
What?
"AND NOW THAT PIECE HAS AWAKENED." The Hierophant's not-face shifted, became something that might have been a smile. "YOU ARE NOT A HOLLOW WHO CARRIES VOID ENERGY. YOU ARE VOID ENERGY THAT LEARNED TO PRETEND IT WAS HUMAN. THE MASK IS SLIPPING, CHILD. SOON THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT BENEATH IT."
"Don't listen to it." The Warden captain's voice had gone tight. "Abyssal entities manipulate. Corrupt. It's trying to break your will so you'll give in willingly."
"I SPEAK ONLY TRUTH." The Hierophant turned its attention to the captain, and she staggered back as if struck. "YOUR BLADES CANNOT SEVER WHAT WAS NEVER ATTACHED. KILL THIS BODY IF YOU WISH. THE FRAGMENT WILL SIMPLY FIND ANOTHER. AND ANOTHER. AND ANOTHER. UNTIL IT FINALLY ACCEPTS WHAT IT IS."
"You're lying," Kael whispered. But his voice had no strength. "I'm human. I've been human my whole life. I remember—"
"DO YOU?"
The question hit him like a physical blow.
And suddenly Kael realized that he didn't.
He remembered the dream—always the dream—but before that? Before Velmoor? The years of his childhood were fog and fragments. Shapes without faces. Voices without words. He knew he had played in the garden. He knew Mama had sung to him. He knew these things were true.
But he couldn't remember experiencing them.
How much of my memory is real? How much did I just... construct? Fill in the gaps with what a human child should remember?
His left arm pulsed. The blackness had spread—past his elbow now, creeping toward his shoulder like ink through water. And still he felt nothing.
"Time's up," the Warden captain said. "Kill it."
The soldiers moved as one.
Sera reached him first.
Not to save him—Kael understood that instantly. She lunged not at the Wardens but at him, her knife flashing toward his throat, aiming for the arteries, for a quick death before the blades could reach him.
Mercy, he realized. She thinks she's being merciful.
The thought ignited something white-hot in his chest.
No.
He didn't choose to use the power. It simply happened—the void in his arm responding to his desperate need to live, to prove the Hierophant wrong, to not die as a monster on a street corner in a burning town.
Reality bent.
Sera's knife passed through empty space where his neck had been. Kael watched it happen from three feet to the left, his body having moved between moments, relocating through a space that existed outside normal distance.
Distortion, he thought, the term rising unbidden from somewhere deep inside him. I can bend space.
The Wardens reached him half a second later.
The captain's blade descended toward his skull, and again Kael moved—but this time slower, harder, like pushing through gradually setting concrete. He felt something tear loose inside his chest. Not physical. Essential.
He stumbled, appearing five feet away, and the captain's blade carved a smoking line through the air where he'd stood.
"He's a Distortion-type! Full containment formation!"
The Wardens split into groups of three, creating overlapping fields of threat, their blades weaving patterns that would catch him no matter which direction he moved. Professional. Practiced. They had killed Hollowed before.
But never one like me.
The thought wasn't Kael's. It rose from somewhere colder, somewhere darker, and it carried a weight of absolute certainty that made his skin crawl.
"YESSS." The Hierophant's voice oozed with satisfaction. "LET THE MASK SLIP. SHOW THEM WHAT YOU ARE."
"No." Kael forced the word through gritted teeth. "I won't—"
A blade bit into his shoulder.
Pain exploded through his body—real pain, human pain, the familiar agony of steel parting flesh. He screamed, stumbling, and the Warden who had struck him pressed the advantage, her blade rising for a killing blow.
Kael's left arm moved on its own.
He watched it happen from somewhere outside himself—watched the black limb rise, watched it pass through the Warden's Severance Blade like mist through a fence, watched it touch her chest with fingers that had become something other than human.
She didn't scream.
There wasn't time.
One moment she existed. The next, her chest was simply gone—not destroyed, not disintegrated, but erased, removed from reality as if it had never been there at all. She collapsed in two pieces, still wearing an expression of surprise.
Kael stared at his hand. At the body. At the red-black mess spreading across the cobblestones.
I didn't. I didn't mean to—
His memories flickered. Something fell away inside him—something small, something he barely noticed losing until it was gone.
The smell of rosemary.
Mama's garden. The herb she had grown outside their cottage window. The scent that had always meant home and safety and love.
He couldn't remember it anymore.
This is the cost, he realized. Every time I use this power, I lose a piece of myself. The Hollow Path isn't just metaphor—I am literally becoming nothing.
"DEMON!" One of the Wardens broke formation, charging at Kael with his blade raised and fury in his eyes. "You killed Captain Vess! YOU KILLED HER!"
Kael raised his left arm—not to attack, just to defend—
And hesitated.
The Warden's blade punched through his stomach.
The pain was extraordinary.
Not the sharp, clean agony of the shoulder wound—this was something deeper, something that radiated outward in waves of white-hot destruction, something that made Kael's legs give out and dropped him to his knees with the blade still embedded in his gut.
I'm going to die, he thought. Good. Maybe I should die. I just killed someone. I just erased her from existence. What am I if not a monster?
"CHILD." The Hierophant's voice was almost gentle. "YOU CLING TO FLESH AND CALL IT IDENTITY. YOU WEEP FOR A STRANGER AND CALL IT HUMANITY. BUT THESE ARE JUST PERFORMANCES. MASKS WORN TO HIDE THE TRUTH."
What truth?
"THAT YOU NEVER WANTED TO BE HUMAN. YOU WANTED TO BE LOVED. AND YOUR MOTHER—OUR MOTHER—UNDERSTOOD THE DIFFERENCE."
Kael's vision blurred. The Warden was pulling his blade free, preparing for a second strike. The other soldiers were closing in. Sera stood frozen at the edge of the circle, her face unreadable.
"SHE GAVE YOU HALF HER SOUL BECAUSE SHE KNEW YOU WERE THE PART OF HER THAT COULD STILL LOVE. THE PART SHE COULD NOT AFFORD TO KEEP IF SHE WAS GOING TO DO WHAT HAD TO BE DONE."
What had to be done? What are you talking about?
"COME TO ME, FRAGMENT. COME HOME. AND I WILL SHOW YOU EVERYTHING SHE SACRIFICED. EVERYTHING SHE BECAME. EVERYTHING SHE DID—FOR YOU."
The Warden's blade descended.
And the man in the silver mask appeared.
He moved like nothing Kael had ever seen—like thought itself given form, like the space between moments had become a highway only he could walk. One instant he wasn't there; the next, he stood between Kael and the descending blade, his white coat billowing in a wind that didn't exist.
The Severance Blade shattered against his raised palm.
"Apologies for the delay." His voice was wrong—layered, like three people speaking in perfect unison. "Traffic was murder. Literally. So many Remnants blocking the scenic route."
The Warden stumbled back, reaching for a second weapon. "What—who are you?"
"Complicated question. Shorter answer?" The masked man tilted his head. "I'm the one who's going to borrow your new Hollowed before anyone else can claim him."
"He's a murderer! He killed—"
"Yes, yes, very tragic. I'm sure she was lovely. But I'm afraid territorial disputes over newly Awakened Fragments are above your pay grade, Warden. Run along and fight some Remnants. The adults are talking."
The man's empty eyes—those windows into nothing—turned to the Hierophant above them.
"WHISPER." The ancient being's voice had changed. Where before it had been smug, satisfied, now it carried something that sounded almost like... caution. "THIS IS NOT YOUR DOMAIN. THE FRAGMENT BELONGS TO THE CONGREGATION."
"Does it?" The masked man—Whisper—spread his arms wide. "I rather think it belongs to itself. Novel concept, I know. Very modern. But I've always been progressive."
"YOU CANNOT FIGHT ME. YOU ARE MERELY VOIDED-TIER. I AM—"
"An Architect of the Endless Dark, yes, very impressive, your mother must be proud. But here's the thing about being Voided-tier, oh great and ancient one: I've already lost everything that matters. Which means I have absolutely nothing left to sacrifice."
Whisper's empty eyes blazed with something that wasn't light.
"Except other people."
He snapped his fingers.
And the Remnants—all of them, the dozens of twisted bodies crouched in worship throughout the ruined district—exploded.
Not with fire or force. They simply... came apart. Their void-touched bodies unraveled like thread pulled from a sweater, the energy that had sustained them ripping free in streaming ribbons of pure darkness that spiraled through the air toward a single point.
Toward Whisper.
The ribbons struck his upraised hand and vanished—absorbed, consumed, devoured. His white coat rippled as power flowed into him, and his body began to flicker at the edges, becoming less solid, more present.
"YOU WOULD CONSUME YOUR OWN KIND?!" The Hierophant recoiled—actually recoiled, its massive form pulling back toward the tear. "EVEN FOR A HOLLOW, THAT IS—"
"Monstrous? Yes. But you were going to eat the boy anyway. At least I'm recycling."
Whisper raised his hand toward the tear. The absorbed energy coalesced into a sphere of absolute blackness—a void within the void—and when he hurled it upward, reality screamed.
The impact was soundless.
The Hierophant didn't fall. It simply wasn't there anymore—banished, driven back, forced through the tear into whatever nightmare dimension it had emerged from. The tear itself began to shrink, the edges pulling together like a wound closing.
But not fast enough.
"Right." Whisper turned to Kael. "We have approximately forty-five seconds before that thing comes back. Considerably more upset. I suggest we leave."
Kael stared at him. Blood was still pumping from the wound in his stomach—slower now, the void in his arm somehow cauterizing the damage, but he was fading. "Who... what are you?"
"Long story. Very boring. Mostly lies." Whisper stepped closer, and Kael felt the void inside him recoil—not in fear, but in recognition. In kinship. "Short version: your mother and I were... colleagues. She asked me to keep an eye on you. I've been doing a terrible job, obviously, but better late than never."
"Mama sent you?"
"In a sense." Whisper's empty eyes met Kael's, and for just an instant, something human flickered in their depths. "She told me that when you finally woke up, you'd have a choice to make. Stay and die. Run and be hunted. Or come with me and learn what you actually are."
"And what is that?"
"The only person in the world who might be able to kill the thing that's coming." Whisper extended his hand. "Not the Hierophant. Something worse. Something your mother died trying to stop."
Behind them, the tear pulsed. Stabilizing. Starting to widen again.
"Decide now, Fragment. We're out of time."
Kael looked at Sera—still frozen, still watching, her face a mask of conflicted emotions he couldn't read. He looked at the Wardens, regrouping, blades raised. He looked at the burning town, the dead captain, the nightmare his life had become.
And he made his choice.
He took Whisper's hand.
The world inverted.
When Kael opened his eyes, he was somewhere else.
Gray light filtered through windows of frosted glass. Dust motes floated in the air like tiny ghosts. He lay on a bed that smelled of copper and antiseptic, his wounds bandaged with cloth that pulsed faintly with dark energy.
Whisper sat in a chair across the room, his silver mask discarded on a table beside him.
Beneath the mask, his face was horrifyingly, impossibly ordinary. Young, maybe mid-twenties. Brown hair. Strong jaw. He might have been handsome once, before the emptiness had claimed his eyes.
"Where are we?" Kael's voice came out as a rasp.
"Sanctuary." Whisper didn't look up. He was reading a book—an actual physical book, bound in leather that had seen better centuries. "One of the old places. Before the Wardens. Before the Empire. When Hollowed were called something else."
"What?"
Whisper turned a page. "Witnesses. We were called Witnesses. Because we saw the truth that everyone else refused to look at."
Kael tried to sit up. His stomach screamed in protest. "What truth?"
"That the Abyss isn't our enemy." Whisper finally looked at him, those empty eyes somehow conveying weary patience. "It's our origin. Humanity didn't evolve from animals, Fragment. We were shaped from void. The first humans were Hollowed who forgot what they were."
"That's insane."
"Yes. It's also true." Whisper closed the book. "Your mother discovered it. That's why she had to die. That's why the Congregation—the Hierophant's masters—have been hunting you. You carry her memories. Her proof. Everything they've spent millennia trying to bury."
Kael's mind reeled. "If that's true... why tell me? Why save me? What do you get out of this?"
For a long moment, Whisper was silent.
Then he smiled—a terrible expression on that empty face.
"Revenge," he said. "Your mother was the only person I ever loved. And I'm going to burn the entire Congregation to ash for what they did to her."
He stood. Walked to the window. Looked out at something Kael couldn't see.
"You're going to help me. Willingly or not."
"And if I refuse?"
Whisper's smile widened.
"Then I'll kill everyone you've ever cared about and give you nothing left to fight for except hatred. It's not my preferred method, but I've found it remarkably effective."
He turned back to Kael. Those empty eyes held no mercy. No hesitation.
"Welcome to the War, Fragment. I hope you survive the training."
Outside the window, far below the building where Kael lay wounded and confused, a city spread in every direction.
Not a human city.
Towers of crystallized void rose toward a sky that was the color of bruised flesh. Streets twisted in geometries that hurt to follow, populated by figures that might have been human once and figures that had never been anything close.
And at the city's heart, visible from every angle, a throne of black glass sat empty.
Waiting for its queen to return.
Waiting for him.
[END OF CHAPTER TWO]