The Hollow Wastes didn't just hum anymore.
They throbbed—like a heartbeat buried deep beneath the cracked earth.
Null tightened his cloak around himself, the tatters swirling with every gust of poisonous wind. The broken monolith behind him had crumbled entirely now, reduced to black sand that refused to drift away.
Ahead, the horizon flickered unnaturally.
Where once there had been endless dead plains, now structures formed from the mist—ancient ruins half-swallowed by the desert, spires bent under invisible weight, doorways that bled light.
It was starting.
He hadn't just disturbed a memory.
He had woken something older.
[New World Event: Epoch Reawakening – Minor Fracture Detected.]
[Danger Level Increased: Hollow Wastes – Rank B → Rank A+]
Null grinned darkly.
Good.
Let them come.
As if summoned by his defiance, the sands ahead ruptured.
Figures clawed their way out—corpses wrapped in silver wires, their bodies moving like broken puppets. Their eyes glowed a sickly green, flickering with the last scraps of memories that should have long since rotted away.
He recognized them.
Remnants of the first cities.Victims of the Timefall.
And they were still trapped—still suffering.
Still hostile.
The lead corpse, wearing a rusted general's armor, screeched, a sound like glass shattering underwater.
Then they charged.
[Enemy Type: Chrono-Fallen.][Weakness: Severed Time Anchors / Void Disruption.]
Null didn't hesitate.
He called the Void.
It answered like a starving beast.
His Hollow Core pulsed—and black tendrils erupted from his shadow, lashing forward and impaling the first five creatures instantly.
They burst into mist, their broken anchors collapsing with a hiss.
The others hesitated.
He used the moment.
A thin, cruel blade formed from the void energy in his hand—a jagged thing that looked as if it had been forged from the absence of reality itself.
He named it without thinking.
"Epoch Fang."
And with it, he tore into them.
Every slash wasn't just physical—it unwound them, severing their existence from cause and effect.
A corpse tried to strike him.
Its axe swung—only for the event to be deleted mid-swing, leaving the creature blinking, confused, before Null split its torso apart.
[Skill Activated: Epoch Rend.]
[Target Severed: Chrono-Fallen Champion.]
The largest of the horde—a massive thing stitched from dozens of dead soldiers—staggered, its momentum ripped away. Null dashed in, leapt onto its shoulder, and rammed Epoch Fang straight into its skull.
The creature didn't even have time to scream.
It crumbled, breaking apart like wet paper.
The battlefield fell quiet.
Dead again.
Or whatever passed for dead in this cursed place.
Null lowered his weapon, breathing hard.
Void mist curled around him, seeping into his pores. It should have felt sickening.
It didn't.
It felt natural.
Like coming home.
[System Message: First Epoch Rift Stabilized.]
[Reward: Hollow Sovereign's Crest – Fragment 1/7 Acquired.]
[Side Quest Unlocked: Gather the Seven Fragments to reconstruct the Sovereign's Lost Authority.]
Null blinked.
That was new.
Lost Authority?
Something stirred deep in his chest.
An old, broken part of him.A memory not yet remembered.A throne.An oath.A war that never ended.
He shook it off for now.
Survival first.
He turned toward the ruins ahead.
At the center of the structures, he could just barely make out a spiraling tower, half-swallowed by sand and mist.
And at its peak—
A faint, flickering light.
Alive.
Moving.
Watching him.
He grinned again.
"I'm coming," he whispered, the void hissing eagerly around him.
"And I'm not leaving without tearing your lies apart."
Without hesitation, he began walking—deeper into the Wastes, toward the first true stronghold of the past.
The Hollow Sovereign was no longer sleeping.
And the dead world was about to remember why it had once feared him.