The mist was alive.
It curled around the stone walls of the fortress like grasping fingers, thick and wet, carrying whispers that clawed at sanity.
The Savage Moon hung bloated above, no longer silver, but the sickly color of spoiled flesh.
Lyra stood atop the outer battlements, cloak snapping in the bitter wind, her heart pounding a slow, relentless rhythm against her ribs.
She could feel them coming.
Not wolves.
Not men.
Something far worse.
Behind her, Callan approached in silence, his eyes narrowed against the mist.
"They're close," he said.
Lyra didn't answer.
She already knew.
The air itself seemed to twist and buckle under the weight of the approaching threat.
She descended from the walls, boots striking stone, her captains gathering around her.
Only a handful now — the strongest and most loyal, bound to her not by oaths, but by blood, by survival.
Among them: Drenna, scarred and hard-eyed; Sorik, grim and silent; and Jast, the youngest, still burning with the reckless fire of those too young to know true terror.
Lyra's gaze swept over them.
Warriors.
Broken.
Reforged.
Ready to die for her.
Or with her.
"The Hollow Ones are near," she said, voice cutting through the cold.
"They will not come like men. They will not come like beasts.
Steel alone will not save you. Nor will faith."
She unsheathed her sword — a blade blackened by rituals, humming with cursed power.
"You must fight with everything you are.
And when that fails — you fight with everything you fear."
Not a single warrior flinched.
Good.
They would need every shred of courage.
The fortress gates creaked open.
Fog rushed in like a living thing.
Lyra led her warriors into the night.
The world outside was unrecognizable.
The forest had twisted.
Ancient trees sagged and wept black sap.
Roots writhed across the ground like worms.
Shapes moved in the mist — quick, elusive, wrong.
The Savage Moon bled light over the landscape, turning everything to shades of nightmare.
They moved in tight formation, blades drawn, senses sharp.
Every breath was a struggle against the heavy, cloying air.
Every heartbeat thundered in their ears.
Then they heard it.
A sound that did not belong to this world.
It was a choir of hollow voices, layered atop one another, whispering, weeping, screaming.
Words twisted beyond understanding.
Pain given sound.
Jast flinched.
Sorik tightened his grip on his axe.
Drenna snarled low in her throat.
Lyra raised her hand.
They stopped.
Waited.
Listened.
And then, from the mist, it emerged.
The Hollow One.
It was not a creature.
Not a man.
Not a spirit.
It was an absence given form.
A towering shape, gaunt and skeletal, its flesh translucent and slick as wet paper.
Its face was a void — a maw where a mouth should be, black and endless.
Its arms were too long, its fingers ending in razored points that dripped a foul ichor onto the cursed earth.
Its body writhed and folded unnaturally as it moved, as if it was not bound by the laws of flesh.
Lyra stood firm.
Her warriors did not.
Jast stumbled back, gagging.
Sorik cursed under his breath.
Even Drenna, fierce Drenna, took a step away.
The Hollow One spoke.
Not with words.
With memories.
Each warrior heard something different.
The voice of a dead mother.
The scream of a fallen brother.
The broken sob of a lover left behind.
Lyra gritted her teeth.
She would not listen.
She would not break.
The Hollow One lunged.
Faster than sight.
Sorik was the first to fall.
A single touch from those razored fingers and his body withered, collapsing inward like a dry husk.
A scream echoed through the mist — short, sharp, final.
The Pack roared.
Instinct overcame terror.
Steel flashed.
Drenna swung her axe in a vicious arc, cleaving through the Hollow One's arm.
Or so she thought.
The limb splintered into mist, then reformed.
Whole.
Stronger.
Mocking.
The Hollow One lashed out, sending Drenna sprawling.
Blood sprayed.
Lyra moved.
She was the storm now.
All fury.
All survival.
She drove her cursed blade into the creature's side.
The impact was like plunging a sword into ice — resistance, then a sickening give.
The Hollow One shrieked — a sound that curdled the blood.
The mist around them thickened, darkened.
Reality itself seemed to warp.
But the blade burned.
The ancient sigils along its edge flared with savage light.
The Hollow One reeled back, hissing, its body unraveling in streams of black smoke.
Jast, inspired by Lyra's courage, rushed forward, swinging his sword in a clumsy but desperate blow.
It connected — barely — slicing through one of the creature's legs.
The Hollow One staggered.
Weakened.
It howled, and from the forest, more shapes stirred.
Smaller Hollow Ones.
Lesser spawn.
The Pack formed a tight circle.
Back to back.
Fighting not just for victory now.
Fighting for existence.
Steel sang.
Magic screamed.
Blood soaked the cursed ground.
For every spawn that fell, two more rose.
The Hollow Ones fed on fear, on despair.
The more the warriors fought, the more the mist thickened, until it was a living ocean of screams and hate.
Lyra roared, her voice carrying above the cacophony.
"TO ME! HOLD THE LINE!"
They rallied.
They fought.
They survived.
Drenna, bleeding but unbroken, drove her axe through the skull of a spawn.
Jast, reckless but fierce, impaled another on his blade before being dragged down under a swarm.
Callan fought like a man possessed, his sword a blur of death.
And Lyra — Lyra was a goddess of blood and rage.
With every stroke of her cursed blade, the Hollow Ones recoiled.
With every snarl from her lips, the mist faltered.
With every drop of blood she shed, the Savage Moon seemed to pulse brighter.
Finally, with a roar that shook the trees, Lyra drove her sword into the Hollow One's chest — deep, deeper, until the blade punched through its spine.
The Hollow One shrieked.
It writhed.
It burned.
It died.
The mist recoiled.
The spawn wailed and scattered, dissolving into nothingness.
Silence fell.
The Pack stood amid a field of corpses — theirs and the enemy's.
Broken.
Bleeding.
Alive.
Barely.
Lyra sank to her knees, breathing hard.
Her vision swam.
Blood dripped from a dozen wounds.
Her hands shook — not from fear, but from exhaustion.
Callan knelt beside her, his face grim.
"You did it," he said.
Lyra looked up at the Savage Moon.
It leered down at her.
Mocking.
Hungry.
"No," she whispered.
Her voice was hollow.
"We survived."
She pushed herself to her feet.
Her warriors followed, ragged and weary.
This was not victory.
This was warning.
The Hollow Ones were not the true threat.
They were scouts.
Harbingers.
Something worse was coming.
Something ancient.
Something that even the Savage Moon feared.
And Lyra — Queen of the Savage Moon, Slayer of Betrayers — would face it.
Or she would be swallowed whole.
She bared her teeth in a savage grin.
Let it come.
She would meet it in blood and fire.
Or she would drown the valley in her fury.
There would be no surrender.
There would be no mercy.
Only survival.
Or obliteration.