The Hollow was too still.
Vex stood at the balcony of her war room, flame-crowned and barefoot, feeling the weight of the sky pressing down like a hand.
The trees below her bowed against no wind.
The rivers forgot how to flow.
Above, the stars flickered—not twinkling, but twitching. Like dying nerves.
Rhydir was already awake behind her, sharp-eyed and silent. He hadn't asked what woke him.
He knew.
"Something's wrong," he said, low and certain.
"Not wrong," Vex murmured. "Inevitable."
She closed her eyes, feeling the tether between her flame and the world stretch thin. It had never broken. Not even when she'd bled out on the cold stone of her betrayal.
But now?
Now it frayed like rotten silk.
Agni stirred within her, restless, spitting sparks in her veins.
"You feel it too," Vex said inwardly.
"It is not your enemy yet," Agni replied, voice like coals cracking. "But it is no friend. And it remembers me."
Vex opened her eyes, narrowing them against the oppressive sky.
"Who is it?" Rhydir asked behind her, voice unreadable.
"An old hunger," she said. "Something they buried and forgot to fear."
She turned from the balcony, her bare feet silent against the cold black stone.
The Hollow's walls moaned quietly, the old spells shivering. Not breaking. Bracing.
She would not be caught unready.
Not this time.
————————
Preparations for War — But Not the Kind They Know
By morning, the Hollow's outer scouts returned pale and tight-lipped.
They spoke of shadows at the treeline that stood still as tombstones.
Of figures glimpsed not with the eyes, but with the space behind them — like something missing from a portrait.
And the crows — gods, the crows. They perched like sentries atop the old battlements, their glassy eyes watching not the Hollow, but what watched the Hollow.
Vex heard every report in silence.
Then she summoned her council.
Tavren arrived first, armor still dusted from morning drills, suspicion carved deep into his veteran's frown.
Eira swept in behind him, her fingers already ink-stained from the old scrolls she had been ransacking.
The Bone-Witch came last, shuffling with a low muttering under her breath — language old enough that even the walls strained to understand.
Rhydir stood at Vex's right hand, arms crossed, silver eyes alert and wary. His presence alone anchored the room.
The Hollow's war table dominated the center — black oak carved with maps, cities, river veins.
But now, across the eastern flank — where Elaria once bloomed — the carvings smoldered faintly.
Not flames.
Not destruction.
Memory burning.
The outlines of towns blurred like half-forgotten dreams. Roads faded into nowhere.
As if even the wood refused to remember what once stood there.
Vex placed both hands flat on the table, her palms steady as stone.
"This," she said, her voice like tempered steel, "is no ordinary invasion."
Tavren scowled, glancing at the blurred territories. "I've fought ghosts before. Wraiths. They bleed if you cut them deep enough."
"This is not a ghost," Eira whispered, almost afraid to say it aloud. "It's something older."
"Older than war," Vex agreed. "Older than kings."
She pulled a small object from her coat.
Not a token of war.
Not a banner or sword.
A piece of mirror.
Cracked right down the center. Sharp enough to bleed just from looking too hard.
The shard caught the light—and twisted it.
For a heartbeat, each council member saw themselves reflected wrong.
Not older. Not younger.
Just… not themselves.
The images flickered. Tavren missing his face. Eira aged into ash. Rhydir smiling a wolf's grin, something brutal in his reflection.
The Bone-Witch cackled softly.
"The enemy fights not with blade or fire," Vex said, setting the mirror in the dead center of the map.
"But with memory. With what is remembered — and what is erased."
Tavren's mouth tightened. "Then what do we fight with?"
Vex smiled grimly.
"We weaponize the truth."
She tapped the cracked mirror once, letting its fractured surface hum with quiet power.
"Stories. Symbols. Blood-oaths sworn in sight of witnesses. Artifacts too stubborn to forget their origins. We root ourselves so deeply into history that even Syridan cannot erase us."
"And if he tries?" Eira asked.
Vex looked up, her eyes burning bright as open flame.
"Then he tears himself apart trying to rewrite a world that refuses to forget."
The Bone-Witch chuckled again, a low, phlegmy sound that curdled the air.
"Memory is a stubborn beast," she crooned. "Feed it right, and it bites."
—————
In the Quiet Hours
That night, as Rhydir slept light and tense beside her, Vex sat alone before the old brazier.
She called the flame with a snap of her fingers.
Agni emerged in the smoke, half-forming — flickering between a bird and something else, something older, harder to look at.
"You knew him," Vex said, staring into the fire.
Agni ruffled its half-made wings.
"I knew what he was. Before he was given a name."
Vex leaned forward, voice low and dangerous.
"And?"
"He is not like the others you have slain."
"He is not a tyrant you can dethrone."
"He is the disease in the throne itself."
Vex smiled then. A razor-thin, hungry smile.
"Then I will burn the throne to ash."
The fire cracked like a laugh.
And somewhere far away—
Beneath a bleeding cathedral, under a king without a crown—
Syridan smiled too.
As if he had heard her.
And as if he was waiting.