The Hollow didn't breathe like the world above. It pulsed.
Alex crouched near the shattered archway, his chest still rising and falling in sharp, shallow gasps. His cloak was torn. Blood had dried in streaks across his ribs. The earth beneath him felt damp—not from water, but from something older. Something living.
He didn't move for several minutes.
The wind didn't touch this place. There were no birds. No distant echoes of life. Only the thrum of arcane pulses emanating from the stone beneath his boots.
He rose.
Each step away from the threshold felt heavier, as though the fight with the wraithlike creature had drained more than strength—it had taken something from his soul. The crimson fire that had lit his blade was gone now, the spirit's power receded back into the silent well of his blood.
Kaer Thalor did not speak.
That worried him more than anything.
He circled the gate, scanning for runes, looking for wards, or even a relic of the creature that had attacked him. But there was nothing. As if it had never existed at all.
Just ash, now smeared across the cracked stones.
He sat on a flat slab near the ruins and unwrapped the ration pack from his cloak. The food tasted like chalk. He forced it down anyway.
He needed strength.
The air in the Hollow shifted suddenly.
Not wind.
A sensation.
Like fingers brushing the back of his neck.
He stood, sword half-drawn before he realized what was happening.
The glyphs along the ancient stones flared again—not red this time, but gold. They pulsed slowly, like the beat of a slumbering heart. A sound accompanied them—distant, melodic. Music carried on no air. Like a lullaby long buried beneath centuries.
He followed it.
Through the broken buildings, beneath fallen archways, down slanted corridors littered with stone and bone. Deeper and deeper until the light of the sky above faded entirely, and only the glow of his mage-stone guided him.
The hallway ended in a chamber.
Circular. Quiet. Sacred.
At the center, half-buried in stone and roots, stood a statue. Time had worn away the details, but Alex could still see the figure's outline—tall, regal, armored in flowing robes, hands resting on the pommel of a massive blade. Its face was gone, shattered, but at its base lay an inscription in the ancient tongue of Eldoria.
He could not read it.
But he felt it.
This was a tomb.
A memorial.
"Do you know it?" he whispered.
The silence stretched.
Then Kaer Thalor's voice returned—faint, frayed.
"I knew her name. Once."
Alex blinked. "Her?"
"The Warden of the Hollow. She was the first to bind me."
He stepped closer.
"She was Eldoria's blade. The last guardian of its truth. When the kingdom fell, she sealed what remained within this Hollow. Not to protect the world from it... but to protect it from the world."
Alex reached out. His hand brushed the cold stone of the statue's sword.
And visions bloomed in his mind.
A battlefield drenched in red. Screams. The clash of steel and spell. A woman cloaked in silver fire standing between the ruin and the abyss. She bled. But she did not fall. She chanted words that split the sky.
A prison made of light.
And something sealed beneath.
Alex stumbled back, breath ragged. His heart thundered.
The chamber fell silent again.
Kaer Thalor murmured, "There is something here that remembers. And it is beginning to stir."
Before Alex could speak, he heard footsteps. Not echoes—real, deliberate, coming from the corridor behind him.
He turned, sword drawn.
A figure emerged from the dark. Cloaked in gray, face hidden beneath a mask of bone etched with serpent sigils.
The Order of the Serpent had arrived.
Alex didn't wait.
He lunged.
Their blades met in a burst of sparks. The enemy moved fast, striking with practiced precision. Alex parried, rolled, countered. But the agent was strong—too strong to be alone.
Another shadow darted from the side.
Alex caught the second blow across his shoulder. Pain erupted. He lashed out with raw mana, the energy crackling from his hand in a burst of flame. One agent staggered back.
He pivoted, drew from the spirit bond.
The crimson fire lit his sword again.
Kaer Thalor's voice was no longer calm. It surged.
"Strike true. No mercy."
Alex did.
He cut through the first attacker's defenses, his blade searing through flesh and bone. The second tried to flee—but Alex's spell caught him in mid-step. A binding rune locked their legs in place, and the sword finished the rest.
Two bodies fell.
Silence returned.
Blood soaked into the ancient stone.
Alex stood panting, the fire dying from his blade.
The Order knew he was here. He didn't know how many more would come.
But more would come.
He looked once more at the statue.
"I'll find what you guarded," he whispered. "And I won't let them have it."
Then he vanished into the tunnels.
And beneath the Hollow, something ancient smiled in its sleep.
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