CODEX OF THE HOLLOW FLAME

"So I'm gonna be executed," Draum muttered, voice low like thunder buried in stone.

"Calm down," Nyshara said, glancing at him.

"Calm down?" he barked, twisting toward her, chains clinking. "We're in a gods-damned prison, woman! Execution's not a theory—it's the main event!"

"We'll figure something out," Vaelric replied, his voice steady but edged. "We always do."

Draum threw up his shackled hands. "Oh, wonderful. The poetic freak and the cursed prince are on the case. You know where this place seems to me? Like a grave already dug. These fools think we're Wendigos—those skin-stealing horrors I've never even seen with my own eyes!"

He fell silent after that. Not because he was out of words, but because the silence pressing in around them had shifted. It wasn't the silence of still air or muffled chains—it was listening.

Vaelric glanced toward the iron-barred door. The shadows beyond were no longer moving. No voices. No clatter of boots. Just stillness.

"Something's wrong," he said, stepping closer to the bars. "The guards… they're gone."

"What are you two waiting for?" Nyshara's voice came from behind them.

They turned—and there she stood, free.

"What?" Draum blinked. "How—?"

"I used my hairpin," she said, holding it up with a shrug as she knelt beside Vaelric's shackles. "Pretty little thing. Turns out it picks locks better than it holds hair."

In a few moments, the chains clicked open.

"You're amazing," Draum and Vaelric said, almost in unison.

"Tell me something I don't know," Nyshara grinned.

But before she could say more, a scream tore through the air—not human, not beast. It was steel grinding steel, echoing across the city like the sky itself was breaking.

The bells of Virelion rang out—but there was no rhythm, no order, no call to worship.

Only chaos.

Smoke coiled upward from the merchant district, black and thick like a funeral pyre. Flames gnawed at rooftops. Crimson banners—once proud—now curled in ash. Somewhere beneath that choking sky, the Emperor's Black Mantle hunted through the alleys like wolves through tall grass.

And Vaelric, Nyshara, and Draum were among the hunted.

They ran.

Boots slammed against the wet cobblestones as they ducked into narrow passageways slick with rain and blood. Screams rose and died around them, drowned by thunder and collapsing stone. The capital had turned rabid, and there was no telling friend from foe anymore.

"They're closing the gates!" Draum shouted as a crossbow bolt shattered stone inches from his head. "Any more ideas, lad? Or are we dying poetic and misunderstood?"

Vaelric clutched the Codex beneath his cloak. It pulsed cold against his ribs, its voice silent since the vault—withdrawn, wary. Even it feared what walked in the Emperor's name.

"We don't go through the gates," Vaelric said suddenly, skidding to a stop beneath a collapsed archway.

"Then where?" Nyshara panted.

"We go under them."

"The aqueduct tunnels?" she asked. "They'll be crawling with sentries."

"Not the aqueduct," Vaelric said. "The Hollow Way."

Draum's expression twisted. "You mean the grave under the city? The one haunted by the cursed dead? That Hollow Way?"

"They sealed it after the Forsworn Rebellion," Nyshara said. "No one's walked it in a century."

"I have," Vaelric said. "And I remember the sigils."

And with no other hope left, they turned from the roads of men… to the bones beneath them.

They reached it through the ruins of a forgotten chapel near the city's eastern edge. The stained glass had long shattered, saints melted by fire and time. Moss crept up the stone like fingers, and rain pooled in the hollow where an altar once stood.

Beneath that altar, a rusted grate sat nearly fused shut.

Vaelric knelt, placing one hand upon the old stone. He whispered—not in any mortal tongue, but something darker, older, older than even the Empire's blood-stained crown.

The Codex flared.

The grate moaned as it unlocked, groaning like a corpse trying to breathe.

Draum stared into the opening below. "You sure you're not some flavor of death god?"

Vaelric didn't answer.

They descended.

The Hollow Way swallowed them.

Its tunnels were ribbed with arching stone, slick with moisture and time. The air was thick—wrong—and every echo sounded like something breathing too close to their backs. Along the walls, the iron bars of forgotten cells stood twisted and corroded. Bones lay scattered across the floor like broken promises.

Draum grunted as they walked. "I hate this. I hate this. If something jumps out, I'm cleaving it in two just out of principle."

Vaelric's voice was distant. "This place was built by the First Hollow Crown. It carried secrets the surface could not bear."

"And now it's carrying us," Nyshara muttered.

They paused at an intersection of tunnels, breath shallow, eyes wide. Nyshara leaned closer to Vaelric, her voice barely above the wind.

"Back in the vault… when you touched the Codex. That vision of Seraphyne—the Hollowed One. Do you think the Emperor knows what it really is?"

Vaelric's jaw tightened. "I think he's terrified of it. And terrified of what I've become."

Draum moved closer, axe drawn. "He didn't send the Black Mantle for you, lad. He sent them for the Codex. Because it talks back."

"Because it remembers," Vaelric said.

A deep tremor ran through the floor—subtle, like something shifting far below them.

They froze.

"…Did you hear that?" Nyshara whispered.

They weren't alone.

From the far end of the corridor came the sound of dragging steel.

Vaelric drew his sword, the runes along its blade catching the purple gleam of Nyshara's spell-light.

Then it stepped forward.

An armored figure—towering, rusted, draped in tattered royal silks long faded to rot. Its helm had fused to a crown shattered by time. Horns curled from its skull, twisted like the bones of ancient kings. In its hands, it held a sword of melted thrones.

"A Hollow King," Draum breathed, his voice full of dread.

Its eyes burned—no pupils, just emberlight.

"The gatekeeper," Vaelric whispered.

Then it charged.

The tunnel exploded with noise.

Vaelric met the blow head-on, his sword ringing against the massive blade. Sparks flew. The force hurled him into the wall. Draum roared, throwing himself at the thing's legs, axe biting deep—but barely slowing it.

"Any time now, sorceress!" he shouted.

Nyshara twisted her hands, arcane light spiraling into a spear of violet flame. She thrust it forward—it slammed into the Hollow King's ribs, making it shriek. It whirled toward her.

And then—

The Codex flared.

Vaelric rose again, his voice no longer his own. It was layered—resonant—like a choir of broken kings speaking through him.

"By the Ash of the First Flame… return to your oath."

The Hollow King froze mid-strike.

Its burning eyes flickered.

And then, slowly—it knelt.

It drove its massive blade into the floor. Smoke hissed from its armor. The light in its eyes dimmed… and then went out.

Silence.

Draum stumbled backward, panting. "What in all the cursed hells was that?"

"Authority," Vaelric rasped. "The Codex remembers every king who's broken their vows."

Nyshara helped steady him. "Let's keep moving. Before the next one wakes."

They emerged hours later through a hidden mouth beyond the city's eastern wall, soaked, cold, and blinking into the storm-lit night. Behind them, Virelion burned like a pyre to forgotten gods. Ahead, the Empire stretched like a beast in slumber.

But it would not sleep long.

Vaelric looked down at the Codex.

Its cover… was changing again.

Not stone. Not leather.

Something… like charred skin. And it twitched, ever so slightly, as if it breathed.

"I saw her again," he said, voice hollow. "Seraphyne. In the vision. She was weeping fire… and whispering a name."

"What name?" Nyshara asked.

"Thraemor."

Draum stiffened. "Doesn't sound like anything good."

Vaelric didn't speak for a long moment. Rain fell in thick sheets, and somewhere in the distance, a thunderclap rolled across the hills.

Then he turned to the road, eyes dark.

"Someone out there knows it," he said. "And we're going to find them."

Behind them, deep in the Hollow Way, the Codex pulsed again—once.

And far beneath the city, something answered.